The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW "Free Indeed" from Addiction and Much More

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

"Doc" Roberts and Jeff Weiss, authors of "Free Indeed" join to talk about the path out of addiction, prison ministries and the persecuted church in Pakistan.  TheWordSays.netIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here: SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-show Or you can send a donation throughMail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7 Money should have intrinsic value AND transactional privacy: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silver For 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

joining us now we have a couple of guests doc roberts and jeff weiss and um i know jeff because i've been on with him and trent loose and uh he lives here close uh close by and uh when i covered a couple of weeks ago i covered a path away from addiction It was a guy whose name was Stoner. And that's the way he got started was with marijuana. And he and his wife got moved into harder and harder drugs. And it was a sad story about how they were trying to substitute methadone for heroin and all the rest of the stuff and all of the side issues that happen when you become dependent on methadone and other things like that. And Jeff called me and he said, you know, that's exactly what we do in our ministry. He's got a couple

of ministries that he and Doc Roberts are doing. And as we talked, I said, yeah, you know, it really is. He's got a prison ministry as well as a ministry helping people with addiction, helping people to not just get rid of that in their life, but also to fill that void. But I said, you know, when we look at this, I told Karen, I said, this really is about people who are, maybe some of them realize that they are locked in a physical prison. Some people are locked into a spiritual prison, and some people are imprisoned and they don't know it. And so I wanted to get them on and talk a little bit about the program that they got. So joining us now is Doc Roberts and Jeff Weiss.

Thank you for joining us, gentlemen. Our pleasure. It's wonderful to be here, David. And, you know, as an avid fan of yours and getting a lot of my news and stuff from you, it's just a pleasure to be on with you, and I certainly appreciate you giving us this time. And it's funny you mentioned our journey and how we came to where we're at, because our ministry is actually called Free Indeed, and it's based on the fact that Jesus explained his statement in John 8, 32,

of very truly I tell you the truth, the truth will set you free, right? And you would have thought that pretty much would have cleared the air, but there was pushback, right? They're like, wait a minute, who are you talking about? It's unfree. We've never been anything but free. And that's when he reminded them that you can replace anything bad in your life with something good. You can do whatever housekeeping you want. But if I, the sun, doesn't set you free, you will never be free indeed. And I couldn't, I couldn't, you led me in so good to give you one particular story of what I use all the time. And that is freedom has nothing to do with your location and where you're at. I know, man, my life has changed so much over the

years and came into understanding I'm a spirit with a soul and a body and that my spirit's eternal. And so I've met some of these men who quote, by our cultural standards, have done some crazy, horrible, horrific things. But in the same breath, I've watched the power of Jesus Christ and the freedom that he can provide and the chains and the shackles that he can remove. And so giving you that example, we go and serve at the state prison here quite often to where we've taught our book in there before. It's being taught now. But I was going quite a bit and had a friend there,

and he had committed multiple murders, was never getting out. But I'm telling you what, you could see the joy of Christ in this man. He was a light to where he was. And when you met him and talked to this man, you would understand that there is nobody that's any more free than this man who will never see what we would consider freedom. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, that's one of the things, you know, people on the outside don't realize that they need him.

And that's what Jesus would say so many times to the people. He says that those of you who are well don't need a physician. But the people that you mentioned, and you said this to me that you come across in prison they're desperate for this type of thing and they're serious about it unlike many of us on the outside we are so distracted and we're living in this wonderful uh bubble that we live in and um we feel like everything's just fine and we don't need j, right? Yeah, the other side of that, David, is so then I go to guest speak at a large church two weeks later. And I visit and talk and meet people who are so shackled and imprisoned and have no idea they are. They are not in existence that is absolutely nowhere close to

the abundance of life that we have been created to have and that's what doc teaches and we teach in our book that there was a blueprint to how to live this life yeah and so we call it the jesus filter so once you start going outside of that that's when yeah a disaster ensues that's right yeah i want to get you guys on, especially this time of year, because we've got the New Year's coming up. A lot of people are examining their life, thinking about things that they would like to change that they don't like about their life. And you don't have to be addicted to drugs or to alcohol or have some other major addiction to sex or anything like that. But there is really a freedom that I think a lot of us are missing.

And you've got a book. It's called Your Ministry is Free Indeed. You've got a book about that. Your current website, I think, is thewordsays.net. Is that correct? And you've got another one that is coming up that's going to incorporate Free Indeed. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah. And what is that website going to be in case people see this and repeat? Oh, it's so wonderful, David. It just rolls off the tongue. I'mfreeindeed.com. There you go. Okay, that's great.

Ultimately, when you look at the scripture in John, and I want Doc to go in and speak to all of this, but that is the purpose in this life and how we make a difference is we become free through Jesus Christ. We begin to live in Christ, and we learn that the total secret is to be able to love somebody else more than we love ourselves. How cool is that? That's right. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like what Jesus said, doesn't it? Tell us a little bit about your background, Doc. Yeah, I'd be happy to.

Thank you. Well, I was the oldest of five and uh i first uh experienced alcoholism when i was 15 and i had an aunt who passed away and uh and uh it just broke my heart and i couldn't understand it because she was the only one that followed jesus christ in my family never went to church and uh it was devastating to me and And probably, David, for the next 40 years, I probably didn't have a day go by where I didn't have some kind of artificial substance in my body that altered the way I thought and how I felt. And about 16 years ago, I met Jesus in my garage. I was a broken man. I was a broken soul.

And been searching for that void you talked about. And that's the thing. We have to first understand there is a void. And I don't understand what that void is now. But I came out of that meeting with Jesus a completely different person. The desire for me was taken away because I wanted it to be taken away I knew there was more to life than what I was living and I'll have to say

I've never met a person that hasn't thought there's more to life than what I'm living that have the questions of why am I here what's the purpose of all this? Surely I wasn't just born to be spanked on the butt to start crying to when I'm laying in a coffin there throwing dirt on top of it. That's right. There has to be purpose to life. And, you know, I discovered that purpose because God designed it only one way and that is through jesus christ and while it was on my mind and we were talking about being stuck and being in prison not only the jails but in in our own mind i find today what so many people are addicted to is anxiety yeah that's right they're addicted to

it to the point where they call it their own. Yeah. How we saw that in the last four years, you know, the fear that people have, the anxiety. And, you know, they they did all kinds of that's why I think we see this this continuing thing about the face mask and the rest of the stuff. They hang on to that. It's like a security blanket for them. It's a security blanket. They think that's who they are. They identify themselves with. And I'll just say, well, listen, why do you call it my anxiety? You're grabbing ownership of it.

And as long as you want ownership of it, you're going to have it, and you'll never be relieved of it. And so what they do is they go to counseling, and they get pills to try to help dull these anxious feelings. And so what they're doing is they're playing right into the trap of what it causes. And Scripture really says, you know, in Philippians 4, 4 through 6, be anxious of nothing, but in everything, in everything, give requests to God. And verbatim to the rest, but I will tell you how it is, and you will find peace that

is in Christ Jesus. Yes. And we all want peace. That's right. You know, when I was talking about it, one of the things that I thought was really amazing about that article, when they tried all the different psychological things, and they tried other substitutionary drugs and everything, and then they talked about other types of programs, like Alcoholics Anonymous, where they have kind of a generic higher power or something like that.

And then people who went to a Christian counseling and Christian help and that type of thing. And it was amazing how much more effective the Christian counseling was than anything else. It was more effective for them to go to Alcoholics Anonymous or something with a higher power than it was for the substitutionary drugs. But the thing that really was very powerful was the Christian counseling. And it was kind of interesting because Anthony Hopkins, the actor, has talked about this several times. And he talked about how he struggled with alcoholism for many decades. And he would push back against even the Alcoholics Anonymous. Finally, somebody said, well, why don't you just give it a try you know and he said when he did it

it actually changed his life and uh and and that's uh that's i guess what you're talking about as well that's what jesus does he changes he is his lives you know uh i've been through uh celebrate recovery i've uh i've been in a recovery years ago. And now that I have this relationship with Jesus, I've come to realize that we even hold ourselves short by even using the word recovery. Yeah, that's right. When we recover, we're going back to the place we were before we started. And that wasn't a good place for me to begin with. So what we talk about is transformation being changed, where now you don't have to no longer be identified by that, but now you're starting to be identified by your life in Christ

and in God, because guess what? That's who our real identity is in anyway. And it was taken from us. We gave it away in the garden. And ever since then, mankind has been trying to find their identity in the world. And guess what? It's not there. And that's why we struggle so much in this world because we're trying to get these spiritual needs of love and worth and value and security in our being from the world. And God set it up. It can only come through him, through Jesus. That's right.

And once we realize that and we step into that, and we step into that, then we're starting to understand that void you mentioned earlier. It's starting to be filled with what it was designed to be filled with. Yes. Yeah, and that's what Jesus said when he began his ministry. I've come to free the captives. And so I think it really is interesting that, and of course, Jeff,

I know that you also work with people, Christians in Pakistan, who are under tremendous persecution there. And we talk about that coming up here. But the other two things, you've got so many different irons in the fire here. The other two things, the people who are in prison and the people who are spiritually in prison, addicted and that type of thing. Just talk a little bit about what you tell people with your program, what you do said it, that he came to set the captives free. The problem is most of us, because we don't have what we would consider a biblical worldview, right? We don't understand that we are captives. So therein lies

your number one challenge is having people understand that there is more out there. You know, I've heard you know, one of the sayings when I was growing up was, well, life's hell and then you die. You know, we hear some of the old songs, the old rugged cross. They're brutal. But when you look at their history, those were slaves trying to get through the day, trying to just make it till they actually died. Where what we feel like is that God came and through his son, we were to have life and have it abundantly as we live here, right? That it is for you. But the scripture that comes to mind right

now is the one where it says, woe to the man who sees himself in the mirror and as he walks away, immediately forgets what he looked like. That's who we are because of all the creature comforts. Now, I don't want to discount the drug addiction and what it has. But what we're saying is that if your identity is that I'm a child of God, they call me Jeff so that they don't get me mixed up with everybody else. Yes, I do real estate. Yes, I'm pastor of a church and I do all these things. He is here. But that's not who he is.

I am a child of God. We use over and over the palm tree to where during a hurricane, the palm tree might literally be bending over 90 degrees. But the next morning after it's gone, where is that palm tree standing straight back up? And that is to be our identity, that the storms of life, not when they come, they will. And so what we deal with and talk a lot about is spiritual warfare we believe in the full armor of god and if you're going to pick up these pieces and put them on you're going to have to admit that there is something going on that i need to defend and i think that is why our prison the jail ministries the recovery ministries the pakistan 98 mus, but we're growing. We've got several thousand now following us in free indeed there.

They're being asked to go preach and teach free indeed at other Christian churches there. And it's because once you get that identity that you have an eternal mindset, which is the biblical mindset, the woes and the arrows of this world that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6 through the armor of God that will come, they don't have any kind of effect on you because you're eternal. We're in America particularly, we tend to judge everything by our last job, our last relationship that's broken, our last critical time, a pet that's sick, or whatever it is. You know, we tend to not be the palm tree. We tend to be identified by that storm yes that's right where one of doc's favorite teachings that he does so well

is jesus in the boat he said we're going to the other side right what's your deal that's right yeah yeah that's the thing is that if people don't realize you know if they if they're um their standard and so many christ, their standard is just their circumstances of what is happening right now. And as long as everything's going on fine, that's fine. But, you know, if we got some kind of a storm, then maybe I'll turn to Christ and maybe something will happen there. is a positive relationship that is there even when things the circumstances are good and that positive relationship is going to carry you through the bad times and so you need to lean into that grow into that so that you're ready for those bad times as well and i think that's the key thing so many people there might be people listening who are struggling because they're addicted or you

know something is controlling their life. And it doesn't have to be drugs. It could be a lot of different things. It could be sex. It could be your love of money. It could be bitterness. It could be so many different things that are controlling your life. But those are the most obvious ones when we talk about drug addiction and alcohol addiction. But the key thing is to take an inventory of your life. I think this is a good time of year to start that and to see if there isn't something better, something higher, something deeper that people can find. And there always is, especially deeper when you consider Jesus.

You know, Scripture says, I am in Christ and he is in me, right? And if I may, the first chapter in our book, David, is there is a God and it's not you. That's right. You know, and what we don't realize is that because of our sinful nature and the fall of mankind, we became our own individual gods. And we can just call that individual God ourselves pride. Yeah. we can just call that individual god ourselves pride yeah and we end up finding is the god of me pride is always in war with the pride of god of somebody else and then what do you have you have kmos you have turmoil you have rage you have destruction and if all the ways that we humanity

could have been created that we could exist why are we always at odds with each other why are we in a state of where there's always sabotaging relationships and we're hurting each other and we envy and we murder and we why are we that way because we couldn't have been created any any way yeah and you look you look in genesis i urge everybody, meditate, study on the first three chapters of Genesis, and you'll see why humanity is in the plight that we are. And as you move on, you now can see what the answer is to take us out of that plight, because there are spiritual issues. And one of the things that we're naive about,

I used to be naive about is that there is a spiritual realm that is is over if i may say or rules over the physical realm yes and you know it's almost like earth is a border between heaven and hell and the wars at this border called earth yeah that's a good analogy yeah and we'll go back to genesis you know that as you point out everybody thinks that their god wants to be god and so he got all these different gods fighting each other and i think from a from a political standpoint because i cover politics so much we can see that in the governments of the world all these governments all these leaders uh think that they're god they aspire to be, and so they want to, first of all, most places like that, they attack Christianity internally,

but then that's why they attack other countries, because there can only be one. I mean, it is this mania to rule everything, and it all does come from pride. And that's one of the key things. We always look at the sins that we commit against each other, whether it is murder or adultery, like in the life of David. And yet the thing that David was really punished for was pride, and it had a lot of consequences for the people who were under him. And that was something that we actually almost hold pride up as a virtue in our society, don't we? Yes, we do.

Yes, we do. And if you're looking in Ezekiel and Isaiah when it talks about the Lord casting Satan out of heaven, it was pride that got put. And so the Lord and pride, they don't mix. Yes, that's right. They don't mix. But that's the thing about it is if we can see that and how we were not created to be that way, that we were created in the righteousness of God. And that's how it was designed. But because of the fall, it just twisted everything around.

When I first started uh really studying genesis and spiritual warfare i got that i got this thought of uh what would an alien say if it just happened to look and study humanity for a while what one word would it come come away with and the word that kept coming to my mind was chaos. Just chaos. And it's sad. That's what the old word. And we see that in the newscast. And I don't even like watching the news because of all that.

Because I'm just so focused on getting people to understand the spiritual war that's not only going on in the world, but going on in your families. And normally that going on inside of you. Darrell Bock Yeah, that's right. Well, you know, when you look at Genesis, it's a chaos formed without void at the beginning, and what happens? The Holy Spirit hovers over that and brings order out of that chaos, and that's what can happen in our life. If we submit, if we look for God, that is the benefit that comes from that new creation.

Yes, sir. And Dave, one of the things that we've focused on and understanding is how in the Bible we've got all the tribes, right? And how everyone was at war against each other. And we tend to look back at the Old Testament as something that doesn't repeat itself where man i'll tell you what we are in a culture where if you use apple products you cannot just not use the other products you have to dislike the other people yeah you know we're in a culture where sports you know you can't if you're a dallas cowboy fan well you have to hate the Philadelphia Eagles or the Washington,

whatever they're called, right? So, we- I don't know now. But that is, I think they're going back maybe, I don't know. But the point is that this is how the enemy works. Because he knows if we all understood our identity at one time, that this thing would be over with. That, you know that the enemy would not be able to flourish. And so what we tend to wind up talking a whole lot is about this, that when you take your identity and so politics that, you know, I follow it a lot because I'm a listener of your program and love it dearly. But that's what when I see that people take identity.

Yes. They take the identity as a political party, right? Or they take identity as a doctor or a lawyer or whatever these things are. And I would encourage all of us to begin to refer to each other as a child of God who is experiencing a period of being a doctor, right? That's right. A child of God who is experiencing anxiety. Don't help people say, oh, you've got anxiety. No, you don't. You're a child of God. And we go through the book of James. We've been talking about some. What a great book it is. But it teaches us, once you're aware

of who you are, number one, I'm a child of God with a spirit, with a soul, living in a temporary body. And then I understand that I am in a war, that this is a spiritual war. I need to put my full armor of God on. We begin to have this discernment and recognize the attacks as they come. And then what they do, we'll go right to the anecdote, which is always in the Word. And in James chapter 4, verses 7 and 8, he tells us, hey, when it comes, just submit to God, the devil will flee, right? That's right.

So, if we're willing, we have to be seeking this as a thing. And most of us are so comfortable because of what I've talked to you about, I feel like we have just come through at least one full generation of what I like to call the abdication generation. We don't, we abdicate everything, including the knowledge of something, to someone else, and we just believe the little cliff notes or the little crawl at the bottom of the screen is all we need to know to let somebody else do the heavy lifting. Well, it's not working out well in any part of our society.

That's right. And that kind of dependency has been inculcated in people, I think, going back to school. You just tell me what to do, and I'll do it. You just kind of passively sit there thinking that education is going to be them filling up your empty bucket. And that kind of passivity just permeates the society anymore. I've seen so many people who we talk about people being imprisoned in different ways. I've known people who were miserable in their profession, but because they had gone to college and they had a degree in teaching or they had a degree as an engineer or whatever, well,

I can't do anything else. I have to do this. And in a sense, that is the kind of, we can construct prisons around ourselves of all kinds of things. Just like the heart is an idol factory, it is also a factory of prison bars that we can imprison ourselves in all kinds of things, isn't it? A lot of times our prison bars are shame, guilt, fear, vengeance. Those are the things that keep us in our own cell, a self-made prison. It wants us to stay right behind there. And parents out there, what we find in what we do, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cases and years down the road,

is when you meet someone and they either are a child of God experiencing, whether it be alcohol addiction or drug addiction or whatever, the very first question that we always ask and want to know is, tell me about your childhood and your parents. And what would be the percentage, you would say, of the ones that don't even know who their father is? It's way up high. It's high. Most of them don't. Most. Well, I'm talking three quarters. Well, their father wasn't involved in, probably more than that, their father wasn't involved in their lives at all of course god god set that up for the father to be the spiritual leader yes so if the evil one can

get to the father i mean he's got the whole family basically you know that's right and that's sad and that's just how he does it you know he you know he really has characterized uh being the biggest change i think in my life see how the family has just been torn apart. It used to be a really big deal, you know, if you had a movie star that got divorced and got remarried. Now nobody would even think twice about that, you know. They had to hide it from everybody because it was going to be box office poison for them. That was not accepted as something that was healthy. People realized how that was going to influence them and their children to these types of things.

And now it has just permeated our society. We've accepted it, and it's a cliche, but they're searching for love in all the wrong places. I believe the fall didn't catch God by surprise and in his wisdom you know i'll just i'll just say there's a spiritual dna need in us that we need to be loved spiritually we need love we need to express love we need to receive love uh and also we we need to know that we are worthy that we have value there's a lot of people out there that feel I was a case at one time, too. I just didn't think I was even worthy to even begin to be able to fall at the Lord's knees or my knees at him. And then there's a sense of security that we need to know.

We need to know that we're safe. And these are spiritual needs that only can be satisfied through Jesus because he is the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And until we understand that, and because they are spiritual, and the spiritual is deeper or higher than the physical, we know they're there, but we try to get them satisfied in the world. And the world can't give you what it doesn't have. And that can only come from Jesus. So when we start realizing that and we start receiving from him because he's already given it to us all on the cross,

we start receiving from him. Then we all of a sudden understand that's what we've been searching for all these years. And there's joy in that. And there's peace in that. There's patience in that. And now all of a sudden, you're starting to see how you're now loving other people that before were very unlovable to you you know you start having more patience with people that earlier you would just fire back at them that's right and it just starts changing you from the inside out because now you got the holy spirit living in you and you're moving that pride away where you're letting him work on you instead of you work on everybody else.

That's right. Tell us a little bit about, you said you met Jesus in the garage. Tell us a little bit about that. Had you prayed to him? Were you looking for him? People will always kind of say, you know i don't i used to say i found jesus in my garage but he found me he wasn't lost that's right and uh that uh for years i was addicted pornography i was uh i was i was molested by an uncle when i was young and i

and i really as i look back on it i got really uh confused about this love and lust connection because he was my father figure because i didn't have my natural father biological father in my life and mom two or three stepdads but uh during that time in my life and i was in my mid-50s i was mainly just uh a struggle with alcoholism and uh man i got some good stories about how the Lord worked on that on me. But I just got to the point, I was in my garage, and actually, David, I was looking for an article I like to write, and I was looking for an article I had written probably 12 years earlier in my garage.

And it is basically, quickly, it was basically, I wrote a dialogue story about a man talking to a, buying drugs from a man that he thought was a dealer. But it was actually in the story Jesus in disguise. And in that, Jesus asked me, he says, well, why do you get high? And my response in the dialogue story was uh because when i'm high i'm free and the response was was have you ever considered being high because you were free and and for some reason at that moment it hit me in such a way, and I wrote that 12 years ago, so it's been over 30 years since I've written that. It hit me in such a way, I started crying, and I started

crying out to him. And for the first time, I'll have to say, I had this experience of being held by a father I never had. And it reminded me who my really father was. And the desire for the drugs, the pornography, just seemed to melt away from me. And I knew this was what I'd been searching for all my life. And first thing I did was went up.

And my wife was experiencing alcoholism at the time. Told her what had happened to me. And and went in and deleted my porn site. And I haven't been the same person since. And I mean, if I had any regret and I don't this, you just move forward. I wish it would have happened much younger in my life. But who knows? Lord may keep me in this body for another 30, 40 years. That's right. Because as long as I'm here, I'm going to be an advocate for Jesus Christ

because I know that's what everybody needs. I know that's what they're searching for out there. And because they're searching for love, they're searching for value, purpose, and everything in this world will fail you in that. And those are even Solomon's words. Well, in terms of the timing, it's always in God's timing. And all of that bad stuff that happened to you, that was all preparation for your ministry,

wasn't it? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. And I know that now, right? I know that now. And it's amazing what revelations he gives you with this and how some of those things that you used to believe about yourself just melt away because you understand that's not who you are. And but then again, you know, I was just spiritual at the time and I had a lot of I'm still not going to do.

You know, there's a saying i love that that you know when when you're ripe you're right when you're green you grow and i want to stay green in jesus yeah that's great green in jesus but i think your uh best things in the book do you got that uh or do i have my book here one of our one of our uh quotes that we dearly love, David, and I'll share with you real quick here, is from C.S. Lewis. And I know, there it is. I highlighted it blue because I love this so much. And to be honest, it was a little deep for me. Part of this is I'm accomplished because I understand what this means and this is something

I just I just love I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else that's a great quote yeah yeah and so that that for us is what the light of christ is represents you know and when we've seen what he can do uh we also find that you know we have fallen asleep to the miracles as we have been presenting some christmas messages lately uh you know we just got stuck on this whole you know okay there was a virgin birth and wait what you know you get you get caught in realizing the miracles that that got us to where we're at and and talking about the people that were witnessing that in anticipation of the birth of christ right and here we are two thousand some years later with all of the miracles but they're so mundane now because we don't even consider that. And one

thing that Doc had talked about and the thing that we deal with a lot is that people don't have a sense of self-worth. Well, when you're aborting almost a million babies a year, is it any wonder that since 1973, the value of a life has been discounted? When you see gang members on TV that are arrested for murder and they're happy because in their mind, in their culture, they have actually made it to the big time. And then you look at how this spreads out to everything else. It spreads out to euthanasia. It spreads out to physicians letting people die.

And we don't have any respect for life at any level we didn't have what about fatherhood what does it say about the rule of fatherhood as well when life isn't worth anything right that's right yeah yeah we uh held life pretty cheap i think in uh 2020 you know one of the things that they were doing to people and still holding it cheap there's no no penalty for any of that stuff but you know when you're we're about this, and I want to talk a little bit about Pakistan because I'm curious, how did you get involved in that? And how do you find people in Pakistan and that kind of repressive thing? It's one of the worst places on earth to be a Christian in terms of persecution.

And how do you find this people? How does this all work out? How did you get involved in that? You know, my unique, I speak fluent Urdu. Do you? No. That wasn't it. This is where you ask for forgiveness?

Yeah, okay. No, that was just a mistake. No, it's crazy, David, how it all started. Now, we're coming up on a two-year anniversary of Free Indeed Pakistan. But about four years ago, maybe even more than that, you know, on Facebook, you begin to get these around the world. Hello, how are you? You know, or maybe even not that grammatically correct you know like whatever whatever so this man i thought was doing this you know well can i pray for you can i pray for you and so uh we went through uh several things uh uh and so i'd throw it out there

okay okay okay but what struck me is we go a year year and a half almost two years in this relationship and this person from pakistan had never asked for anything from me except for prayer. So one day, you know, tell me what you need. Well, anyway, long story short, turned out that Samreen, who I was conversing with, is a woman who is now part of our family that we all dearly love. And she speaks English. And she was raised, we have actually via the internet, we've never been there. But in the internet, we've been out to the so called village where she was raised, which is basically a little side of a mountain, like kind of a cave that her mother still lives in. And her father was a Christian way back then, and he wanted her to have an education. Because as a Christian believer, you can't get any kind of a job at all unless you convert, right?

So anyway, she started in her, she showed me her little bedroom with a little hole in the side of it for whatever, and then this little cot. And she would move her cot during the day and started off with four or five children that she began to teach at 16 years old. And so now we're up to, I don't know how many schools, but between 800 and 1,000 students now, and she's administrator over six or seven of these schools, which might sound fancy, but they live in complete poverty. So we've been able to come in. I was able to ship books to her. And so now we teach free indeed. We actually have an annual retreat now that we've had two Bible camps where we do a solid, very hard, long week that we're there in Bible camp, and we teach identity in Christ and the freedom from this. I am a child of God, right?

Yeah. Freedom that gives somebody right. We've even forgiveness is a big part of what we talk about in our book, not because the other person deserves it, but because that's what hinders the Holy spirit from really doing its work through you because of what unforgiveness does. Now imagine living in a country where 98% of the people hate you. So the whole forgiveness ceremonies we've done have been so powerful,

they weren't even aware because it seems natural to hate the enemy. But they have been freed of so much of this, and it's allowed. I mean, it's just flourishing, David. I can get her on any time. She loves doing this. She she's on shows she's been around with us with trent before uh just uh so uh because um the things that there was one one example uh one night i called her because we were preparing for an upcoming meeting and i'm like samarine it's dark in there what why aren't you where she said no we have no electricity i said oh the power's off no we did not have enough money this month to pay our bill like you know

what let me know we'll help you out she said no you don't understand we found 15 families with no food like why would we be so arrogant as to have power when we found these 15 families back here that didn't have anything to eat we went and fed them we'll get power next month what a difference to uh that and the american church you know we're here we go multi-million dollar building you know i was just talking about what was happening with uh in silicon valley i said oh this is really great look christianity's on the move there we got p got Peter Thiel is coming, and we've got this $12 million building that we put up here and everything. It's like, I don't recognize any of that. It's what she's doing that's the real thing. It truly is. That's amazing. And of course, there in Pakistan, as you point out, it's not just the fact that

you won't be able to get a job. And of course, who knows? We might wind up with something like that pretty soon as well. Because I constantly cover people who are being dictated to violate their conscience and their religious beliefs. And if they don't, they are purged. They're purged off of social media. They're purged out of their job and so forth. So that type of intolerance is working its way here as well.

But it's even worse than that, because have they had any people in the group that you work with that have been harmed? Oh, gosh, yeah. We had about a year, year and a half ago, there was, we, okay, so we had this issue uh the roads are terrible potholes everywhere and the way these pastors and the people that are working in our ministry travel was by these motorcycles and so by the time they're 35 38 40 max their backs are gone from bouncing up and down these roads so anyway we were blessed and able to get them a van. Well, she puts free indeed John 836 all over that van. We're just like, hey, hang on here. You know, is this safe for us to do?

She was like, oh, yeah, it's safe. Well, it wasn't long after that. And I will tell you, we can tell stories about our wonderful interactions with Muslims there because what we're told is not true. The guy that does all of our typesetting in Pakistan, I can show you all the stuff she does over there, all the banners and all the things that we have. He is a Muslim that does this. And she has told me that she has gone to him and he is reading some of this. And he is like so curious about this Jesus that we know, because he knows him as a prophet, but yet he's terrified to ask any more questions, right? So anyway, this moves along to where we're doing good in this Jern Wall of this area that we're at, kind of a Christian little area. And so out of the blue,

the government decides that they're going to put a Christian on the government as an advocate. Sounds good, right? Not so fast, right? Because the uprising, they burnt 99 homes, they killed a baby, they burnt 20 churches, and the government's response was, of course, to fire the guy that they were going to call as an advocate. We've one of our men beaten severely to an inch of his death because somebody took a page of the Koran, threw it out in front of him. He walked by, stepped on it, and they said that he blasphemed the Koran. And so, you know, this identity in Christ to them, the reason that they're happy is they know every day could be that day for them standing up for Jesus.

But now that they realize they're an eternal spirit with a soul that's going to live forever and that we have a whisper of a life and that things here are rubbish, they get all that and they clutch onto it. So that's why, although I was happy to talk about some of the drug addiction, you see now what I'm saying, that this is so much bigger of an issue. It's identity. Who am I? You know, what I have decided, once you say you're a believer, there are certain conditions to all this. We want to act like in our culture, oh, say a little prayer, do what you want, go to church on Sunday, be a good person, and you're going to go to heaven. But if you read in the Bible, there's nowhere anywhere that substantiates that.

It is purely conditional for those in Christ. Therefore, those, if you're in Christ, you're a new creation, right? Romans 8, 1, you know that there is no condemnation for those in Christ, right? And you miss that richness. I mean, the fact that these people can be content with their life, probably more content than most Americans, under these difficult circumstances, that is the thing that we're missing here. We have so much, and yet it is so shallow, so materialistic, and they can transcend that.

And a large part of that, and we can always look at this in our own personal lives, so materialistic, and they can transcend that. And a large part of that, and we can always look at this in our own personal lives, so many times the difficult things are the times that we grow and we get closer. And just like in your life, Doc, the fact that you had such a long, difficult period of darkness makes the light so much sweeter, doesn't it? Yes, it does. It definitely does. Well, not only that, the whole idea of testimony. This man has been able to sit eye to eye with countless people,

person after person after person on a one-on-one basis, and that person know. Just the last week or two, I had a situation here at the house. There was a worker and he you a pastor i'm like yeah and he was at a breaking point i mean this guy was ready to give it all up and so you know he reaffirmed his his uh love of christ and he said hey will you do this with me i said well i will but i got somebody else and so because he had suffered a period of alcoholism was still in the in the throes of it and that evening uh doc had about a period of alcoholism and was still in the throes of it.

And that evening, Doc had about a 45-minute conversation with the man because I knew that was the handoff, right? Six months after I'd been saved, the guy that led me to the Lord said, hey, there's a guy I need you to talk to. I'm like, it might not have been six months. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about? You're the pastor. You're a world evangelist. He goes, yeah, but I've never been divorced. So this concept is what the Bible teaches. You know, you want to hold someone's hand, and who better to hold someone's hand than someone who has already walked the path that that person is maybe going to be walking down. That's very wise. Yeah,

that is very true. In the same token, it doesn't matter what that path is. Jesus is the antidote. That's right. He's the antidote for all the bars that we're behind in our own prison. You know, if somebody had told me years ago I'd be doing this, I'd have thought they were crazy. You know, I'd have probably asked them what they were smoking, to be honest with you. Let me ask them. But, you know, the Lord's plans are not my plans.

And I'm learning every day to be that light for others. Because you can talk a good game all day long, but if you are not demonstrating that in experience, because we know life is just accumulation of experiences. And I tell these men, even, listen, I've never been incarcerated, but I could have been. But the Lord touched me to start a local jail ministry about 12 years ago. But then I found out that over 95% of the people that are in jail or prison, it's somewhere down drug or alcohol related. They're always usually not a,

they're not a sober mind, you know, when the crime, whatever they've done, they've done. So, uh, you know,

uh, like you said, the light is the brightest where it's the darkest. That's right. And a lot of times that's where the darkness really is the deepest. Well, it truly is amazing what you guys have been involved in. But, of course, as you'd point out, it is Christ who's leading you to that, leading you through that, and helping you to lead other people out of that. But it is wonderful to go back

and to look at the power, especially as we're coming into a new year, the power that Christ gives us to completely change our life, to give us a new start. And I just hope that everybody takes a look at it because there isn't anybody that's arrived. There isn't any of us who can't find

some richer, deeper walk with Christ, richer, deeper meaning in life coming up in this next year. And so it's great to talk to you guys again. You've got a book, Free Indeed. You've got a website, thewordsays.net. Of course, that's going to redirect to your new website that is going to be up pretty soon, I guess. Pretty soon. And anything else you want to tell people before we go? I just wanted to leave with this word of hope. Pretty soon, I guess. Pretty soon. And anything else you want to tell people before we go? Any other questions?

I just wanted to leave with this word of hope. And I think it's the first scripture that comes into our book. And our hope is that people would embrace the fact that being free indeed is something that's attainable in this life. Not to give in to this attack. And so 2 Corinthians 3, verses 17 and 18 say this, Now the Lord is spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory

are being transformed into His image with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is spirit. Get your identity going this year. Make that your, not New Year's, but the rest of this existence on earth to understand the spirit with a soul, and this body is very temporary. Amen. Well, thank you very much, Jeff Weiss and Doc Roberts. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you for what you do. Thank you for the positive message that all of us can benefit from. Thank you so much. Thank you, David. Thank you so much. Thank you. God bless you. Hello, it's me, Volodymyr Zelensky. I'm so tired of wearing these same t-shirts everywhere for years. You'd think with all the billions I've skimmed off America, I could dress better. And I could, if only David Knight would send me one of his beautiful gray MacGuffin hoodies or a new black t-shirt with the MacGuffin logo in blue. But he told me to get lost. Maybe one of you American suckers can buy me some at thedavidknightshow.com. And David is giving a 10% discount to listeners from now until 2025.

At that price, you should be able to buy me several hundred. Those amazing sand-colored microphone hoodies are so beautiful. I'd wear something other than green military cosplay to my various galas and social events. If you want to save on shipping, just put it in the next package of bombs and missiles coming from the USA.