Welcome to Celebrating life in Recovery. I'm Cheri, your host.
Today we'll look at how messed up we can get
and exactly what do we need to restore us the sanity.
Come join us. This is an incredible show.
In the book " Steps to Christ"
the second chapter starts out with the statement that says,
"Man was originally endowed with noble powers
and a well balanced mind."
And I think of myself and the people I know,
I think "What happened?"
And I want to say just kidding, but I'm serious,
what happened?
I read the newspapers and we are anything but balanced.
I try to deal with my own recovery and try to figure out
how to walk in recovering those kind of things.
And I'm watching movies
and the movies are kind of about my own lifestyle
most of the time, and I don't want to watch them,
and all that kind of stuff.
And I ask God, I'm praying,
"God O.K, what can I watch?"
And He says, "Anything that's not dark, with dark themes."
And I'm thinking, I turned on a commercial and I said,
"Oh, can't watch that."
And I haven't even got to the movie yet.
This show is called "Powerless without Jesus".
Will cover how to heal,
how to allow God to restore us the sanity, fill us with joy
I'd like to introduce you to the people that are at the cafe.
We've got Brenda Stoeker, and Brenda I love you.
We're going to talk to you some time today.
And Fred Stoeker.
You have helped me to heal in ways that you don't even know.
We've got the pastor and his wife, Richard, Annette, Curly.
I'm blessed by you and I want to tell some stories
about when we first met too.
And Pam.
I want to say as we start this show, "Powerless without Jesus",
I'm going to tell you some stories
and I really want to turn to my life,
I want to talk about where I came from
and why I think this show
is the most important show that we'll do.
I was born to 14 and 16 year old addicts, they were a mess,
I was homeless by the time I was 13 years old.
When I ended up on the streets, at 13 years old,
the options that I had as far as work, how to survive,
how to be fed, how to be housed,
all those kind of things were so ugly.
And some of that I'm not even going to talk about
because it was too ugly.
If your kids are around right know
this is not going to be a show for kids.
It is a show for people
that are struggling with various addictions,
it's a show for someone that is working with anybody
on the planet.
Anybody that's struggling with stuff.
Because you really do need to understand what's out there.
We spend more money on our darker addictions
than we do on all entertainment, all sports entertainment,
all movies, all video games, all those kind of things
that you think we spend so much money on.
We spend more money on our darker addictions
and all that stuff.
When I ended up on the streets I was homeless.
When I was 14 years old I got picked up by a motorcycle gang.
When I was picked up it was probably...
I saw the guy come up on a Harley Davidson,
I didn't have a place to stay,
I was not in a place where I was being safe,
the person kind of raising me was in jail, and I was stuck,
I was stuck without any place to go.
He said, "Do you want to go camping?"
I'm like, "Shut up!
How fun would that be?!"
I've never been camping, my family are addicts, right?
And even when I was little my dad,
who the first time he got caught molesting me I was 3 months old,
and I think I was molested from birth,
he was kicked out finally when I was 4,
my mom moved a bartender in who was alcoholic and really a mess.
And I loved them, I just have to say.
As much as messed my family is, though my family.
But this is just the reality of how I grew up.
But we never went camping.
Child protective services always came to my house
trying to remove us from the home.
We didn't have a kind of upbringing
that most people would have.
So when somebody said "camping"
I was just like, "How fun!"
I was a drug addict by that time.
I started doing drugs when I was 11 to survive.
The first time somebody gave me drugs I was 11 years old.
My family asked me to leave the house.
They didn't want me there.
It was real clear they didn't want me there.
My mom, like I said, was 14 when she had me.
She had 5 kids by the time she was 21.
The house was a mess.
So I was introduced to drugs at 11.
The first time I took drugs it was a sedative.
And I didn't feel like dying.
I thought, "Oh, men!
How good is this!"
I remember thinking that if one makes me feel like not dying
could somebody give me some more?
I stayed high for the next 10 years.
When I say "high" to a lot of people they...
I don't think you get the picture.
I had to hold on to things a lot of times
when I walked around.
I was pregnant by the age 12 because I was on the streets,
I was using.
Somebody said, "Who is the father?"
"I don't even know."
I ended up getting married by 13,
before I ended up on the streets.
I married a guy in the navy, went over seas,
moved me into his mom's house.
Him mom hated me, of course.
I was a 12 year old drug addict that just ruined his sons life.
I thought,
"I don't have to stay here anymore because I'm an adult,
I'm married."
When I ended up on the streets
I got picked up by a group of heroine addicts
So that is how I ended up standing in front of this biker
saying, "Do you want to go camping?"
He gave me some drugs.
From the time I first started doing drugs
I was never not high.
If I had to deal with life how it was in front of me
it was too painful.
I would just want somebody to take me out.
Could somebody just throw me in front of a train?
Because I don't want to be here.
But if I was high I didn't care.
So we went camping and he gave me some drugs.
We got to the camp side.
It was 300 people, there at least.
I got off the bike and I'm thinking,
"This is going to be so much fun!"
I started walking to the main group and he said,
"Excuse me, but did I tell you could walk away from me?"
And I'm like, "What? Did I ask you?"
I started laughing
and he hit me in the face as hard as he could.
I fell into a tree, slammed into a tree actually, and slid down.
I thought, "I can't believe hits guy hit me."
I jumped up and I hit him in the face as hard as I could.
I was 14, he was 38.
He was sergeant of arms in a bike club and he was built.
A big guy.
When I say I was 14 I used to think I must have looked older,
I must have been...whatever.
I looked 14, I was a kid.
When I hit him again, he hit me again I hit the same tree
and everybody started laughing,
it started gathering people around us that said,
"How fun is that?!"
I was furious.
I thought, "Are they laughing at me?"
It was almost like every injustice in my life came up.
When I talked about my dad molested me when I was a kid,
there was a guy across the street from my elementary school
that got an apartment separate from his house
so he could molested kids from the school.
There was people in my family that were very abusive sexually,
very sexualized behavior.
When you have a molested kid he usually draws molesters.
They will attract people around them because they are so needy.
I didn't know that but my history was very intense.
And so when I'm lying there after being hit
all that stuff just started coming up to me and I thought,
"He is not going to hit me like that."
And I jumped and hit him again.
And he hit me again and I fell back down,
and I remember just went into a rage,
literally went into a rage.
I jumped back up, I hit him, scratched him,
and he was laughing so hard he couldn't hit me.
I thought, "He is laughing at me."
I went nuts, I literally went crazy.
He was trying to hold me from hitting him again.
And as he stopped laughing and getting control
he hit me so hard that he knocked some teeth out
of the front of my mouth.
I felt like my face had cracked.
I was lying there and I felt blood everywhere.
I was trying to check with my tongue
how many teeth did I have left.
I knew that I had lost some teeth
and I'm trying to check that.
As I was doing that he walked up and he said,
"You know, I think you are so gutsy. I like that.
I'd like you to be my old lady."
I thought, "Is he asking me out?
Is this guy asking me out?"
And he was.
What he was saying is that in that lifestyle.
Because I could take a beating and get up and defend myself.
He wanted me as his girlfriend.
Anybody want to guess what I said?
"No, thank you.", that's what I said.
"Absolutely not!"
And he informed me that this was really not a question.
He wasn't really waiting for an answer from me.
But my feeling was "Absolutely not."
But now I'm his property.
In that lifestyle the bikes are number one,
the brothers, or his partners, are number two,
women maybe are number three.
But it maybe even drugs and that kind of stuff.
Women are very far down the road.
Now I'm his property.
They picked up three girls from the street. I didn't know that.
So three girls were picked up from the street.
They were picked up to be turned out.
What that means
is that they were having initiation for new members,
they were bringing new bikers into the club,
they needed girls from the street
in order to initiate the new members.
And they were brought in to be beaten and whatever.
I could tell you some of the things they did to this women.
I wasn't one of them now because I was taken as his girlfriend.
So I was not one but I watched
a 13 year old that first night until she was dead.
People say,
"On the street,
did you have anything that you didn't get over it well?"
This was one of the things that I had nightmares
for years and years.
Because I heard this girl just screaming all day long,
all night long.
Out of the 300 people that were there, men and women,
this girl was abused by all of them.
What was funny to them is not only raping them
but beating them, hitting them, all that kind of stuff.
She was horribly abused and when she started to die
her scream's changed, the sound of her voice was different.
I started screaming, "She is dying!"
I've never heard anyone die but it's so obvious.
It's so obvious when someone has this sound of death to them.
I remember him coming to my face and just saying,
"Shut up. You either take her place or shut up. I'm serious."
I couldn't shut up, I kept screaming,
"You've got to stop them."
And pretty soon I got beat up
and taken to another part of the campground.
Eventually he had to take me and we left the campground early
because I could not stop.
I was so outraged by the abuses I saw and the damage.
The first time I got into a Bible study, when I met God,
and I'm going to go through that on various shows
because it was incredible.
It took me two weeks to leave those bikers,
to escape from there.
In those two weeks I watched abuses
that I cannot even say on the set.
Because if I tell you, not that I don't want to tell you,
because I want to tell everyone,
and the reason I want to tell everyone
is not because I want to exploit anything,
not because I want to shock anyone,
but as Christians I want us to finally say,
"You know what? It matters that we are here.
We need to get out there.
People are so destroying themselves.
Sin has them so twisted
that some people will never be able to untwist
unless we say there is hope."
There is a Saviour that says,
"I even know...", the theme text for this show is Isaiah 57,18,
"I know everything about you.
I know all your garbage and I will heal you anyway."
That is what God is saying.
He is saying it to these bikers.
He is saying it to me,
to this homeless kid that ends up on the street.
He is saying it to you, any of the things that you deal with.
He is saying that to us.
So it takes me two weeks to escape.
I end up going through all this kind of stuff on the street.
I was on the street from that point for the next few years.
I got off the street at 23 when I meet Jesus Christ.
In a drug house, sitting on a bed trying to kill myself.
I was so done. I had seen that kind of situation
plus worse throughout the years.
I had been strung out on heroine for the last few years.
I was selling drugs.
The Vice that was supposed to arrest us for selling drugs
was actually trading favors off with the kids
that I ran with
so they wouldn't arrest us.
I saw darker things.
If I met a pastor on the street
it was because of a darker addiction.
If I met a doctor on the street
it was because of a darker addiction.
I met a guy that was head of cardiac surgery one time.
And I was in a drug house, wasted.
And he said he was a doctor,
head of cardiac surgery, did heart transplants.
I wanted to see his hands because I thought,
"Wow! That is amazing!"
I remember all of the sudden thinking,
"You're a doctor? You do heart transplants."
I went up to him and I said, "What are you doing here?"
And he is like, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what are you doing here?"
And he is like, "What do you mean?"
And the people that I was running with,
the other child prostitutes, the addicts are saying,
"Cheri, shut up."
The reason they are telling me that is,
"Don't bug him, he brings money here.
We're playing this guy"
And I'm telling this guy, "What are you doing here?
Do you have a wife? Do you have kids?
Do the people you work with know that you're here?"
I wanted so desperately for someone to be normal.
Does that sound crazy?
I'm sitting there trying to kill myself. I'm so done.
I remember getting everything ready, I'm not in the pain.
My first suicide attempt was when I was 8
and I jumped of a house.
When I figured out where I was going to jump, at 8 years old,
I put a mattress down so when I hit I wouldn't hurt myself.
So I'm not in the pain and I got some different things together
and I'm ready to kill myself
and I felt like the presence of God just came in the room.
And somebody says,
"Did the room changed, did it light up?"
I think it did.
But if you had a video camera nothing happened.
But I felt like the Holy Spirit, God Himself came in the room.
I had never had any encounters with God.
My family is not Christian.
God said, "Cheri, I love you."
I felt safe for the first time in my life,
I felt loved and no reason for that.
I said, "Look at me."
I had teeth missing and my hair went addict.
I don't even know anything.
I'm illiterate, fairly illiterate.
I could probably read like second grade level.
And God says, "I love you.
I want to show you who I see when I look at you."
He gives me this image.
And I don't know He does that when He shows you something
but you see nothing, but you see everything.
I don't know how the Holy Spirit does this
but He shows me who I am in Christ.
And who I am is His beautiful child.
I thought, "No way, no way..."
You know what hit me about this image?
It was so innocent.
I said, "I've never been innocent in my life."
I was molested from the first time I came out of the womb.
I've never been loved.
And God said, "You've always been that way to Me
and if you trust Me stand up, I'll walk you into this image."
And I did, and I trust Him.
We're going to talk about a God that says,
"I don't care what your junk is.
I want to restore you to sanity.
I want to bring you to a place
where you can stand holy in the presence of the holy God
with all your junk."
He's talking not only to me
but to every biker that was there that weekend.
Every person that I met on the street He was talking to
and He said, "I don't want anyone to perish.
I don't want anyone to die outside of relationship.
I want to bring you life."
So stay with us.
I'm going to introduce you to a friend of mine, Fred Stoeker,
that you will be blessed by him.
You will be blessed by what he brings to the table.
Don't go away.
We want to introduce you to a beautiful book
called "Steps to Christ".
Each program in this series is based on a different chapter,
showing you how to become a Christian
and gain victory over your addictions.
"Steps to Christ" is our gift to you, free of charge.
Call us at (618) 627-4651 during the regular business hours
or write to Steps to Christ, P.O Box 220,
West Frankfurt, Il 62896
Welcome back!
I think the funniest think I ever learned
when I first came into Christianity
and I first started studying the Bible,
someone told me a story about Mary Magdalene
and the woman that was dragged to Jesus' feet.
She was a prostitute caught in the act,
and all that kind of things.
I just wept because I thought that Christ looked at her
and in love He said, "You know what?
Go and don't hurt yourself anymore. Don't sin anymore."
I really don't believe
that He said it in the way "don't do wrong"
He's like, "Don't hurt yourself. Stand up, live your life."
And then they told me this story and I will never forget it
because they said, "You know what?
I want to tell you the story
about a guy that was filled with demons
and had foam at the mouth, and just horrible.
He was cutting himself with stones.
He was beating people up.
They chained him up, he broke the chains.
He lived in the cemetery, all those things."
And the person said, "Did I tell you he was ugly?
With foam at the mouth, filled with thousands of demons?"
I thought "You did."
A little while later he didn't tell me what happened but said,
"Did I tell you? This guy was ugly."
And I'm thinking, "You did tell me. I know he was ugly."
And the whole time they are talking I'm thinking,
"You know what? I think I dated that guy."
I was so serious that I thought I dated him.
I wanted to say that when I listened to the story,
one of the things I wanted to know with everything in me...
because you heard the story about the bikers.
I've seen people filled with demons.
I've seen people in such destructive lifestyles
that are just unbelievable.
Murdering each other and all that kind of stuff.
I wanted to know what would Jesus do, what would God do.
He said He walked up to him, everybody ran.
And He is standing there.
And as He stood there the guy opens his mouth
and instead of pleading for God to change something,
he casts them out, curses them out.
And God doesn't move, Jesus doesn't move.
He just stands there.
He said that He saw within this guy soul a small part of him
that wanted to be restored, wanted to be in his right mind.
And He did that for him.
He pulled all the demons out,
restored this guy to his right mind.
And for the first time, in I don't know for how long,
this guy stood in his right mind next to Christ.
I thought, "Oh, I want that."
I want to introduce you to Fred and Brenda Stoeker,
no that Fred reminds me of the demoniac.
Thank you for being on the show.
It's great to be here!
You both have blessed me in ways that you don't even know.
We're going to cover all of the today.
You have a ministry that is international.
You've been definitely all of the U.S.
Introduce yourself, a little bit about the ministry
and then let's get into your testimony.
I found a living in true ministry.
It's designed to help men to learn how to live normally.
From my own past, I grew up in kind of a dysfunctional home
and I got into sexual sin.
It took me a while once I became a Christian
to really understand what I needed to be.
That's what I want to do for men now.
I want to go out and help them see.
Is it because you understand the gift that Christ has given you
and how He wants to restore us?
Oh, sure. In Psalm 51 it talks about the fact that God takes us
cleans us up and then sends us out to teach others.
I'd like to think at that as my destiny.
I need to be out helping other guys
to experience this freedom that I'm experiencing.
Since the purity came in my life,
my wife and I had such a wonderful marriage since then.
We've been married for 25 years and we're having a great time.
That's what God wants for us.
He wants us to live lives that are reflective of His word
and that we can just be happy.
Obviously we need to be helping Him reach others as well.
We're going to get into both of those things.
Brenda, when he says "I'm happy." is he right?
He is really right.
I just had to check.
We are very, very blessed.
As we get into this you're going to come back on another show
and just hear your testimony.
You've written a book called "Every heart restored".
And so, as we listen to him,
I want people to know that we will cover your restoration too.
Fred, tell us.
Dysfunctional home, getting into sexual sin,
what do you mean by that?
I know it really bothers some folks talking about that.
But I want people to know that I do ministry all over the world.
I have been fortunate enough,
I think God has given me the opportunities to talk to people
in prisons and rehab centers and jails and churches.
And every single time sexual sin comes up,
and I don't get out of the churches
usually until 2.30-1.30 at night
because people are dealing with these.
And so I'm so grateful for your ministry
and that you are able to say out loud there is hope.
There is a lot of hope.
When I went out to college, I went to Standford University,
for those who would know what that is,
and when I got out there
I was probably a thousand miles away from home and very lonely.
It wasn't long before I started to get hooked on porn
because it was something that made me feel connected somehow.
It wasn't long before I had the dates memorized
when those magazines would come
into the campus bookstore each month.
And I would be the first one on campus to get those.
So it was really important to me.
Then I began to chase women.
Probably, maybe in a year of college I had four girlfriends,
I was sleeping with three of them,
and I was essentially engaged to be married to two of them.
None of them knew about each other.
It was a time of my life
when I really didn't know that that was wrong.
It seemed like everybody was having a good time,
no one was getting hurt.
But there was something nagging in my heart
about "Who am I really?"
It was starting to get hard to keep all the balls in the air
and it felt like a gerbil on the wheel.
There was a night that I was in my office,
I was working as a stock broker at the time,
so I was sitting in my office, I was looking out the window,
and there was a sunset, it was just coming down in California,
there are beautiful sunsets out there,
and I decide, "I'm the last one here. I want to go home.
I need to go home, but I want to watch this sunset
before I go home. Just to enjoy myself, relax a little bit."
I sat down and I put my hands behind my head,
I put one feet up on the credenza
and I started watching that sunset.
What you said earlier about your salvations
struck me right through my toes
because I've never heard anybody else say what you said
except me.
I don't know how God did it but He suddenly changed the scene
and I could see everything that I'd become.
He didn't actually show me anything
and yet He showed me everything that I'd become.
It was in that moment that I understood
that something had to change.
So I bowed my head and I prayed a simple prayer,
"Lord, I'm ready to work with you
if You are ready to work with me."
When I got up from there and went home
I didn't even know I was saved.
I had no idea that it stuck, so to say.
But over the next few weeks I was on my way back home to Iowa.
The Lord seem to move everything in my life
and I was moving back to Iowa
leaving all those girlfriends behind.
I had a chance for a new life.
When I got back there I began going to a church
that was doing some Sunday school classes on marriage.
As I was going through the list of Sunday school classes
and I came to that class I thought to myself,
"If there's anything I need
it's I need to know how to treat women."
Even though I wasn't married
and I didn't have a fiancée or a girlfriend at that time
I started going to this class.
And over that year I just fell in love
with what God has said about women.
The pastor was teaching us about how different they are from us
and how important it is for us to understand that,
and how awesome God made them.
By the time that year is up I pray again.
I love that!
I got on my knees, it was in my apartment,
I've just gotten to the point
when I need to see what one of these looks like.
I've bee going to church,
obviously there were Christian women there,
but I didn't really know any of them.
So I prayed, "Lord, can You show me a woman
that embodies these characteristics?"
I just wanted to see.
It's one thing to read about a giraffe,
it's another thing to see one.
Are you a giraffe?
I didn't think so.
In my world she became one I guess.
Because in a couple of weeks
I'd kind of forgotten about the prayer, but my dad called
and he had set up a blind date with Brenda and me.
I didn't know Brenda at that time and never seen her.
We were going to go to church
and then go out to eat afterwards.
When I was in the seat that day and my dad leaned over and said,
"Freddy, here she comes."
I turned and looked at her and the Lord said,
"This is the girl you're going to marry", as I looked at her.
It was very exciting.
But the thing that was most impressive to this story
is that as I began to know her better and better
I knew that she really did embody
all those characteristics I've been talking about.
When I began to understand that
I really wanted to do well as a husband.
Really wanted to do well.
I stopped looking at porn before we got married
and I have not purchase porn and looked at it on the computer
since our wedding day.
Did you know his history Brenda?
I knew that he had had a lot of relationships with other girls.
That was as far as I knew that it went.
So I assume when we got married
I thought everything was in the past.
I had no idea there is any on going problem for him.
I thought I had left it all behind
because I wasn't dating other women
and I wasn't looking at porn.
But you see,
the Bible's standard is different from our standard.
In Ephesians 5:3 it says that we are not to have
even a hint of sexual immorality in our lives.
So when I read that and I began to meditate on it and I thought,
"What in the world does a hint meant?"
And over time I began to understand that what it means is
that we are not to get any sexual gratification
from anyone or anything except our spouse.
By that standard I was failing miserably.
I was still watching the R-rated movies,
there was still a lot of self stimulation
with lingerie ad inserts
and department store inserts on Sunday mornings.
There were joggers, exercise shows,
all sorts of things that they still had me captured.
What the lord was trying to say to me was,
"These have to go too."
Can I ask you something? Because in my own recovery,
one of the things that I learned about God
is that He was trying to teach me when He says,
"Don't even look on somebody with lust.",
is He wasn't saying "That's a check list that I have"
"I will fill you up with so much joy and so much health
that you'll be surprised at what actually is to love someone
and this will get in your way."
So it wasn't "Don't do this because I said so,
it was because "I want to pour into you some good stuff."
And that's the most amazing thing about God
that I've found over time is that
a lot of times we think of Him saying "No premarital sex,
no this or that."
In other words, "Don't have any fun
because I'm God and I said so."
Exactly.
What I've come to find is that it's nothing like that at all.
I'm a father and I have a 23 year old son
and a 15 year old son
I want to come back to that a little bit
because since I've had my sons I understand
how a father looks on the purity of his sons
and what he wants.
There's never been a time in my life
where I've looked at my sons and said,
"Look, you need to stay pure.",
that I did it because of my ego or because of my books
or because I want them to have no fun.
It all has to do with freedom, peace, so that they can enjoy
their sexual relationship in their marriage better.
All of it is out of love.
We need to understand that that is why He asks us to be pure.
When you really into my life and you the prices I was paying
just for those small things.
What were the prices because you're saying
that I'm looking at adds, I'm getting lost in the TV still,
if somebody drives by I'm still following them.
What most people would say is, "Those are little things.
They have nothing to do with anything.
You need to lighten up.", is what they would say.
But these are the prices that I was paying.
Should we talk about what you would say?
We'll save that for later.
At this time she didn't know anything about it.
Nothing at all, everything was going fine.
Our sex life was good.
I seemed to be the rising young star in our church,
I was teaching classes.
We were the family people wanted to emulate kind of a thing.
I came from a totally different background from Fred's
and I knew almost nothing at all
about men's sexual differences with women.
It never even occurred to me, I had no clue of anything.
She comes from 4 generations of Christian people
and so for her everything is always been
pretty much kind of a straight narrow path
and I am way off to the left somewhere.
People were saying, "Look, knock it off.
You can't control your eyes, your mind does, so just relax."
I knew I was paying prices and I had to find out why.
One of the things I noticed was that, for instance,
when I'd be in church, looking around
and seeing other people worship,
I knew I wasn't making the same connection
that the other men were making.
But the worst thing
when it came to my relationship with the board
was that I couldn't look the in the eye anymore.
There were so many times I had said I will stop these things
and I broke my promise every single time.
And after a while you feel like a goof to go back to the board
and say, "I'm going to make one more promise."
After a while it's hard to pray,
it's hard to even be serious with Him
because you don't even know if He cares about you some times
and there were times when I would get so despondent
I wonder if I was really a Christian anymore.
Because it was just something that had me by the throat
and I couldn't get free.
When it came to Brenda there were also some prices been paid.
I couldn't give myself 100% to her.
I knew that if she ever found out about this she'd leave.
At least I suspected that she would.
I knew that if I had given her my whole life at that point
when she'd pulled the rug from underneath me
I would just be dust.
So my own thinking was, "I can't afford to give my whole life
to her because she can leave sometime."
At one level I wasn't as committed to her
as I could have been even though I'd loved her.
There were parts of me I was holding back.
The hardest part was some of the nightmares she was having.
I don't know what you theologies are about dreams and things
but there were times where I was looking at those ad inserts
on Sunday mornings in the middle of self stimulation
and I would hear Brenda wake up upstairs and I would hear
just a sudden start and she would rush downstairs
and I would hear her crying.
She would come and she would fall into my arms
and she would say where have you been, Satan was chasing me
down dark hallways and I was looking in every room
trying to find you, I need you to protect me. Where were you?
Imagine how I felt
knowing that I was had just been sitting there sinning
and I'd been compromising my spiritual authority in my home.
Satan had freedom to mess around in my home.
When it came to my son, his name was Jason
and he was just two and he was a toddler at the time,
he had a little pacifier that would hang out of his mouth,
a little drool, and he would grin up at me
and I knew what his eyes were saying. There were saying,
"Daddy, you are my hero. I want to be just like you."
Sometimes I would brake out crying
when I would look back into his face.
Because I knew that there was no way I could keep him
from the trap I was running in.
Because my grandparents were both stuck on porn
and my dad was stuck on porn and then I got stuck on porn.
I would look into his face and he was trusting me,
he would look up and I would have to look back,
"I know I can't keep you from what's coming."
Those were really hard days for me, but they were good days
because when I would look into his face I would know
"I have to do something."
When we are hopeless the Lord runs towards us to help us.
There was one verse, Luke 6,46, that He chased me with, it was,
"Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?
He didn't bring that to me in a mean way.
It was always "Son, why?"
I would mediate on that, I wouldn't know what to do
but it was cracking my heart.
Job 31,1 it says that Job made a covenant with his eyes,
not to look lustfully at a girl.
I looked at that and I knew that covenant was a key
but I didn't understand it.
How do eyes keep a promise? I don't understand that.
The more I meditated at this two verses as He chased me
the more He was preparing me for His next salvation in my life
where I was driving down Merle Hay Road in Des Moines, Iowa.
If you've ever been to Des Moines, you know that road.
It's the key road in the city.
North-south and going down the hill one day
a jogger was coming by.
I looked at her, lusted and I knew
I'd failed God for the zillionth time.
I remember slamming my fist in the steering wheel and say,
"It stops here. I don't care what it takes"
but I'm going to learn how to build a covenant
because I'm not living like this anymore. It stops here."
For me, and I think for most every man,
the key to turning around and moving towards the Lord
is that kind of repentance where you're saying,
"I am going to turn around now
and I'm going to go back God's way.
I have to make a decision that I really, really mean."
I really meant it then.
Over the next number of weeks and months
God began to change everything in who I was.
I think that a lot of people don't get to feel,
and I know that you felt it during that time
that He was braking you in a way that gives you freedom
to come into a healthy relationship,
is that there is so much love in the way He is doing it.
There's no condemnation, there's no shame.
I remember thinking that everything
that I put on the table that I was so ashamed of, God said,
"I know that", and He cleared the table and set a banquet.
It's like "I want this stuff."
I just want you to know that God knows our stuff,
knows our generational things that have kept us in bondage
and longs to set us free.
I love listening to the way He said to you
"Fred, I want you to stand as a man of integrity."
I always thought I was a man because I was living
every American man's dream I guess: four girlfriends.
You might not be able to tell now
but I used to be pretty handsome.
I could steal a girl's heart pretty quick.
And I used them for my own pleasure, but I always thought
that was a manly thing to do.
But as I got into the Word I also began to see
that the Lord's definition of manhood is entirely different
than what ours says.
When you go back in you'll see that what he says is that
he who hears the word of God and keeps it he is the man.
That's what a real man is.
When you go back to see what Jesus' ticket in the manhood was
you get the clear picture.
When He was left behind in Jerusalem by His parents,
after the Passover, they thought He was with the company
all of them going home,
they've suddenly realized He wasn't with them
so they had to go back to Jerusalem and find Jesus.
When they found Him they found Him in the temple
and He was talking to all the leaders in the temple.
When they asked Him "Why did you do this to us?", He said
"Didn't you know I have to be about my father's business?"
That right there is the passage in the manhood
for the Christian man:
being about his Father's business.
Going in bed with a girl wasn't Jesus' passage in the manhood.
It wasn't pornography, or drugs, or any other wild thing
that any of us could think of.
He said that are passage in the manhood is man would be
to be about our Father's business.
As I began to really understand that,
that I need to hear the word of God and keep it
and be about my Father's business everything changed.
it doesn't matter how thick my beard is
or whether I have hair on my chest,
or any of the other things we think about as being manhood.
It's that image that all of us men need to chase.
That image of Christ being about His Father's business.
Because it's in that that we're going to find true peace
and true completion.
Let me ask you something then.
I hear what you say but a lot of people are going to say
"What I believe is that if I turn it over,
if I give up that, who am I as a man
and is life even exciting anymore?
What am I going to feel as a man? What is that going to be?
It's not like you have to give up everything
that you've ever done.
You still camp, you still climb mountains,
all the other things man do.
I really think that Satan has lied to us
and said that this is what's fun.
There is a part of having 4 girlfriends that's fun.
I can't deny that there was pleasure in that.
But when I escaped the old definition of manhood
where I had to be masculine, handsome, and getting women
and all those sorts of things.
When I walked into the destiny that God had for me,
which is being about His business
and Him standing with me and me standing on His shoulders
approaching the future together,
it was then that life really became extremely interesting
because what began to happen is all of my fears were gone.
I started to watch my son, who was two at the time
when I was still fearful.
At the age of 11 I told him about pornography
and the dangers of it.
He went to school one day
and told me that his friends had brought it.
I asked him "What did you do?".
Is this generation gone or what?
He said "I walked away dad. Just like you said."
He was raised in a public school,
he is a computer engineer, he could get around any defense
you'd ever want to set up and look at porn if he wanted.
He has walked through his life to the age of 23
without looking at those things
and without the self stimulation,
all the things that I knew.
So what God did for you is stopped that
when you said "It will stop here."
When he was 11 and he said "I walked away."
I cannot tell you how my soul just soared.
Because everything that the Stoeker name used to mean
was crumbling and I knew it.
You talk about excitement and fun in life.
That is watching a destiny unfold.
Not just in my life but in our life, in our kids lives.
I have got to say something.
When we did this show together and during one of the brakes
I remember talking to you about a situation
that happened to you and you had talked about,
I don't remember exactly what it was,
you talked about a girl that had come up to you
and when you realized for the first time.
It's happened many times since.
One of the things that I see that we as men have lost
is the ability to be safe for women to be around us.
I believe that we need to be heroic
in our relationships with women, not cool.
What we do is we spend all our time trying to be cool
instead of being heroic.
One of my goals in life is that
no matter what woman comes up to me she can feel safe.
If I'm left alone in a room with a girl for a couple of hours
she would know 100% she is safe.
And when she stands next to me
and if she turns around and bends over to get something
she knows I'm not going to be looking at her rear.
Right, because you are a man of God.
We tend to look at women
as an interesting collection of body parts after a while
if we get into porn and those things.
But we need to see them as fellow heirs
to the kingdom of grace our sisters, in absolute purity.
We need to see them that way.
That's a transformation.
There was a thing that you said that absolutely got me.
Is for the first time you realized "I'm saved".
And when you said that to me when we were talking
you started to cry and there was some healing that happened to me
that when I first came into the church, and I came in
hoping that there would be people that were safe
and I didn't find a lot.
I don't want to say that in a bad way but I didn't find a lot
and all of a sudden I realized
that God was working on men today in the church
and trying to bring them to a place of integrity and safety
for the other folks in the church.
You are our leaders.
It did make me cry and it still does because it's my dream.
It's the thing that God longs for us to be
and it's important for you to know, as a woman,
that it's not just you that He's working in,
He's also working in the men.
His goal is for all of us to be walking normally
the way He created us.
At the beginning of the show Curly,
I told I was going to talk about how we met.
I met Curly in front of a Chinese restaurant
with a number of kids in recovery
from Miracle Meadows School.
A couple of the kids were from adult prostitution,
one was a gang member.
We all walked out and ran into Curly and his wife.
I just had to say "Oh, excuse me,
do you have any kind of addictions to pain?"
I remember just like it was yesterday.
A lot of people are like "Wow! How many tattoos do you have?"
I'm like "These aren't tattoos these are birth marks."
But I get that a lot and I don't know if it's an addiction,
I haven't really got into it that much.
You're telling me "I bet you're addicted to pain."
At that point I've never thought about it like that.
I was saying to the kids "A lot of people tattoo and pierce
because of an addiction to pain."
When I said that you looked at me like
"I don't think I'm addicted to anything."
And all the kids looked like "He's totally in denial."
I guess that's the first sign, isn't it?
So Curly, do you have a question for Fred?
It's not a question but really a comment.
You said that "God this is one more promise."
And I believe that our God is a God of one more promises
because if you don't have that Satan will use that against you
to keep you exactly where you're at.
So our God is a God of one more promise
that you can make to Him no matter what you have done
and I believe that you hit the nail on the head with that.
I agree that He is a God of one more promise
but sometimes we don't know how we see it at the time.
He is a God of renewal, restoration, reclamation.
That is His game, His only game, that's what He loves.
For me, even though I couldn't see it at the time,
He was giving me many opportunities.
He was chasing me harder than I was chasing Him.
I guess all I can say is that for anyone out there
that would be struggling at all with God
in wondering if He still loves you,
I just want to say one thing.
He never stops loving you and He will be after you
with all of His heart for all of His days.
What He really wants
is to have you step up shoulder to shoulder with Him
and fight this battle with Him.
He is not afraid of your defeats.
If you make that decision and you trip up
He's not afraid of your defeats.
He is willing to engage those defeats with you,
learn what triggered things and move into strength with you.
I guess what I would say is that
"Yes, He's always been one right there for me."
In fact never been in any battle with anyone
that's more dependable than the Lord.
When you say that I know from myself I wasn't smart enough
to even know what direction you're going to.
It's a joke up with me because I'll lead you.
I didn't know what a covenant with the eyes meant.
But God showed me.
As soon as I made the decision to say
"Look, Lord I'm on your side on this."
He doesn't have any trouble communicating.
Brenda, we have a few more minutes of this segment
so I would like to ask you: as Fred was starting to come out
with all these kind of addictions, how was that for you
and what kind of encouragement did you give him?
I had an awful lot of learning to do because, as I said,
my background was a very sheltered Christian home
and I knew very little about male sexuality.
I had no idea where the roots
of these kind of problems come from.
I didn't know the differences between men and women very well.
I had a ton of learning to do
so that I could look at his situation with an understanding
and truthful way of seeing it.
Instead of a frying pan.
Right!
Because at first I'm sure it was just a hard reaction
but then you said "I have to educate myself".
When you find out such differences
between men and women, it makes an awful lot of difference
to learn that's not all about me.
Most women first think that "Oh, my Lord. I'm not good enough.
I'm not attractive enough."
And your self esteem is just way down hill.
Those are lies, it's not true.
You have to be able to restore your own heart with the Lord
and how He views you, how He loves you
and separate it from what your husband has been doing.
It's something separate, it's not your fault.
There's just still a lot to learn.
Fred, as she was learning lessons
and as you were learning as a couple how to survive.
Talk a few minutes on that.
One thing I would say about Brenda is that
even though she didn't know very much about this situation
she is a godly woman that chases after God's heart.
And so, when she first started to learn the differences
between men and women and our visual nature...
I remember one time I was talking to her about that
after sermon where a speaker had mentioned that men are visual
and that women need to respond to that,
I remember that night when we got home
we were talking about it and she said
"I suppose I have to prance around the room
with some cheap teddy on, like a saloon girl."
I said "No, actually just a bare shoulder once in a while
would be enough."
Because we don't think about it. Yes.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about.
She visualizes that as something different than what we need
and she just needed to learn
and I needed to learn how she was seeing things.
We're going to come back to that.
I want to say "Thank you!" for being on this show
and you have been amazing in my own recovery.
I pray in your recovery.
You've heard what they've said, that God doesn't care what it is
and I love that God doesn't care what it is,
He doesn't care where you are stuck.
He doesn't care where it's started.
He just says "Your are my children
and I want to restore you, not only you as a man of God
but you as a husband and wife, and you as a family."
I can't wait to meet your children
because they have benefited tremendously.
It's a great blessing form God and it fills my heart.
I want to say stay tuned because we'll be right back.
Amazing stories of real people and real situations.
Discussing issues that really matter.
The complete series of Celebrating Life in Recovery
is now available on DVD
and can be ordered by calling 3ABN
or online at 3abn.org hosted by Cheri Peters.
These series follows principles of the book Steps to Christ.
See for yourself how God changed the lives of the convicted,
of the accused and victims of terrible crimes.
You'll won't want to miss a moment
of these powerful interviews.
I was asked to speak to a group of people in a recovery setting.
So we had folks there, we had people from the community
still strung out on math there.
There were all kind of different folks
but in the front row were these bikers
and it caught me off guard.
My heart stopped and I thought
that I had a little bit of fear come up.
God said, "You know what?
Everybody is here to find Christ
and you go on with what you're doing."
I really felt comfortable with that
and I started talking about the testimony.
I got to the story about the bikers that I told you earlier.
We were talking about getting beat up
and the girl being killed.
All of the sudden one of the guys in the front row,
a big guy, started crying.
I stopped, I couldn't help it because he was trying not to cry
and I said "Are you all right?"
And he's like "No."
I said "Is there anything I can do?"
He's like "Could you answer me a question?"
I said "What?"
He said "Was it me?"
And I'm like "No, it wasn't you."
He thought "Was it me that was the one
that hurt you like that?"
I said "No".
I really realized that minute that God was healing him.
At the same time He was healing me.
It wasn't that He wanted to heal me because I was the victim
He wants to heal everybody at the table.
Everybody involved with this sin He wants to heal.
For many of us, when we honestly come to God
we have no illusion that there's any good in me.
I personally welcome that.
Some say we have hit rock bottom, nowhere else to go
and God says "I am crazy about you."
I remember as I sat in the drugs house trying to kill myself
God showed up, told me that He loved me,
He wanted to pull me out of all this mock, this pit.
He also told me that I was beautiful to Him.
I love that!
Even though I had never seen any value in myself
I was a creation of His
and He wanted to show me who I really am.
He created me to be lovely,
He created me to have a sound mind.
I cried and I asked Him into my life. Please do the same.
With all your junk, with all your lust,
without all your short comings, with all your insecurity.
Don't hide anything.
God knows all that, don't be ashamed, don't hide anything.
He doesn't want to condemn us.
He wants to heal you.
He wants to fill you with laughter, with hope, with joy.
I want to say it to anybody listening
that you've got to hear what was said on this show.
That God says "Every single thing that you do,
every single thing that you've struggled with,
every single thing that you hide, every single thing,
all the skeletons in your closet.
I've talked about all this.
we all have skeletons in our closets.
Bring the out, teach them to dance, let God heal them.
I really believe that with everything in me,
that He wants to heal.
And all of our junks is ugly, I know mine was ugly, I know that.
When I think about the bikers that were involved that weekend,
of the death.
Even Fred and Brenda, the things they've gone through
and the addictions that Fred had to look at.
All that stuff is ugly and God says, "I am a God of creation.
I created you in a way that is healthy,
in a way that will fill you with joy,
and I want to restore in you all that.
Next time on Celebrating life in Recovery
we're going to talk to Fred and Brenda Stoeker again.
But this time we're going to talk to Brenda
about what she went through,
and Fred about how to stay healthy,
how to walk through that,
what kind of things do I need to learn from God,
and what is repentance.
It is a gift. When you get that
you've got the secret of recovery.
So always remember that God is crazy about you.
See you next time. Bye bye!