Man360 - S02 Ep011 Michael Whittington Testimony, Travel Barcelona Spain, Technology Bible Study

Man360 - S02 Ep011 Michael Whittington Testimony, Travel Barcelona Spain, Technology Bible Study

Show Video

welcome to man 360 i'm your host brian today on the program we have a miracle testimony about how god can take bad decisions in life and turn everything around we sit down with my friend michael whittington as he shares about how god redeemed him in every way and took him from a life of drugs and prostitution to working in ministry we also have a segment where i share about the power of our free will and share some thoughts about things we can control in our life for our travel segment we head to barcelona spain to see a mind-boggling 10 square block complex that was once a hospital and is one of the most amazing examples of gothic art in the entire world then we'll wrap up the program with a quick text segment talking about a couple of ways you can study the bible in a deeper way online for free i'm glad you're here let's get started welcome to man 360. [Music] many people have been led away by the devil and wonder if those choices have taken them too far michael's been a friend of me in yolanda for many years and i can say that god's mercy never ceases to amaze me and how he can redeem the mistakes we make in life and turn them for good michael's a shining example of someone who grew up in church made some incredible mistakes and then god intervened in an incredible way and now he has the testimony to prove it if you're watching today and think that you're too far gone for the love of christ to reach you you're wrong and michael is proof that you're never outside the love and redemption of jesus here's my conversation with my friend michael whittington so michael thank you for being on man 360. and um i just appreciate you being here i know that uh you know we've known you for a long time we knew you when you were actually at church with us and leading worship and doing all kinds of awesome things for the lord for at the church and then to hear from your mom and kind of talking to your family about all the other exploits and things that happen in your life and to see you now and to know where god has brought you from it's almost just unbelievable and yolanda and i were talking we said we have to have michael on the program to share really about what god has brought you through and also where he's bringing you right now so can you just share a little bit about your testimony and to share kind of what god's done yeah absolutely uh so you know i grew up in the church where we come from good pentecostal stock and uh you know in that we felt like we had to have the pressure of like being perfect you know growing up and you know i'm a pgk pastor's grandkid uh so what do you know about yeah yeah so my grandad's a pastor still to this day and my mom was a worship leader of our church growing up and so there was like this unspoken pressure that we had to have this image of perfection and so in that came a lot of legalism and so my relationship with the lord as i grew up kind of was just really about following rules and when i went off to college it just got to this place of rebellion and i got into drinking and partying in college and ended up exploring my sexuality and started swinging both ways both men and women and it was quite promiscuous and in that living this double life i got really heavily into drinking and my parents came and and took me home uh at college and they surprised me actually it was great you know they're like surprised take you back yeah they had gotten word that i was out of control and so they came and brought me home and thus started the worst uh i got into the restaurant industry and really just started doing all the harder drugs you know you name it and i did it um and then i ended up dating this girl that i thought i was going to marry and she ended up breaking up with me not because of what she wanted to do but her family found out about my past sexual history and they were not okay with it and so i experienced this rejection um and i ended up going downhill after that and got a couple duis went through treatment i actually went through teen challenge for my first rehab and that's really where i learned the foundations of my relationship with christ of getting into the word and being in worship and prayer yeah but i was not ready to let go of everything i also didn't want to talk about the sexual stuff you know being in an all-male facility i was intimidated to talk about that so i ended up going through rehab many more times and somewhere along the lines i think of like the 12th program 12 out of 14. i ended up on the streets and i started doing meth uh and there was a an older gentleman that allowed me to stay at his place and uh he was gay and he ended up letting me stay there to let me get on my feet but really what it turned out to be and you know i was naive in the whole process thinking that you know he was just helping me out but really like he was only allowing me to be there as long as i was going to sleep with him right uh and one day those words came out of his mouth that if you aren't going to sleep with me you can get out and it hit me i had been prostituting myself and that started this journey of me actually selling myself for shelter drugs and money uh where you know i was doing meth i was shooting up and actually i started working at a bath house and prostitution became my life uh about five years ago i ended up contracting hiv and uh just really just went down this road of perversion uh a road that i never thought that i would have gone down but in the midst of all that god was still tugging at my heart speaking to me and i was rejecting it the whole time wow you know the holy spirit he speaks to us yeah but we always have the opportunity to either say yes or to say no yeah and so for a long time i was saying no and ended up on the streets multiple times and to the point where my parents really didn't want a whole lot to do with me you know i had to their credit i had burnt so many bridges with them they had tried to take me in and they wanted to love me and help me but what ended up happening is their helping was enabling and i manipulated them and lied to them and it just turned into something that it never should have been yeah so long story short i was on the streets and i had decided to just live a life of prostitution and uh using drugs and doing drugs and i um started going back to church it was this really strange thing i was going to these guys houses to to get drugs and they said you know you need to stop doing drugs but you got to go to church and it's okay to be gay they all said these things and it all sat right with me except for the gay part so i ended up going back to church and by being in the corporate presence of god the addiction started to break i started having more sober days than using days that was the only thing that changed literally just being in the presence of the lord and before i knew it i was having more sober days and then i had to do a little bit of time in jail because you know that's what comes along with stealing and robbing people and whatever it is yeah exactly yeah so uh did the time in jail and on october 17th of 2017 uh was sober for the first time and wow the lord has just done this significant work of restoring purity in my life you know i haven't looked at pornography and the whole time that i've been sober for over three and a half years uh even the lord i was hearing voices uh three months into my sobriety and i was going through this book called the bondage breaker by neil anderson and as i'm going through these prayers of repentance i hear a voice saying stop it stop saying that and once i finish the prayer i hear one final voice say oh she's going to be so mad at us and all of the voices went completely away wow so there's just this thing of like god when we repent the lord breaks the bondage that's in our life and that's what i've experienced is this supernatural ability to walk away from what i was and into this new creation that god has made me to be yeah it was interesting we were talking actually and i'll tell a little bit on you you were saying that you actually have a date coming up with a nice lady i don't know if she'll see this you know maybe be like oh my gosh he was on the program but yeah you know so even how god has redeemed so many things in you yeah and what do you feel like kind of god taught you through those things or what do you feel like you learned about god going through this yeah i think the greatest thing is just total surrender uh going through the programs that i always went through it was always i'm going to hold on to this or i'm going to hold on to that they don't know me the way that i know me you know i'm always going to hold on to something and the thing is is that god is looking for a whole heart of surrender you know when you search for me with your whole heart it says in jeremiah that you will be found by me right and that's what i learned because if i hold on to one thing then that means that i'm thinking that i know a little bit more than god does yeah uh but the case is that he knows us better than we know ourselves right so if you see or you know somebody's watching this program right now maybe it's a family that has somebody in addiction or they see that path or maybe they're speaking to someone who is actually dealing with some of these different things i mean what would you speak or would you say to them right now yeah you know i would say that jesus loves you right now you know he's not looking for you to follow rules he's not looking for you to be legalistic oh i have to get this done i have to get that he's just looking for your heart you know jesus he didn't say make all these hap things happen and then come to me you know he said come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and i will give you rest he wants to give us rest but he also he's wanting our hearts and so that that would be my biggest thing and to the families just pray you know my mom she is she's a saint first of all [Music] [Laughter] my whole family god they've got to have jewels upon jewels and they're all hanging out at the the whittington house in heaven for sure yeah exactly they have prayed and prayed and prayed but the thing that my mom has said repeatedly when she began to praise things began to change rather than pleading with god lord change my son do this and do that it's when she began to thank the lord that she started to notice changes in me wow you know there's a a scripture in second chronicles 20 where it talks about that they were being the israelites were being attacked by the ammonites in jehoshaphat he had the the singers go out before the army to worship the lord and the very moment they began to worship the lord brought confusion over the enemy and they destroyed themselves and i think that that's a great old testament principle for new testament new covenant you know we don't wrestle against flesh and blood but against spirits and principalities and when we worship i believe it brings confusion to the enemy and it also just postures our heart to trust in the lord yeah i think sometimes we keep our focus so much on the physical realm yeah that's really what the devil wants us to do is to not focus on what god has for us because he knows that if we keep our eyes on god and we just praise and thank him right for whatever situation we're in that we'll be able to find that victory through christ so michael can you pray for our viewers today absolutely just pray whatever is on your heart for them yeah well father god i just thank you for the opportunity to to come and be on man 360 lord i ask that you would just minister to each person that is watching lord if there is anybody that is experiencing bondage to sexual sin to drug addiction lord whatever it is you know what it is and so lord we just speak life to these situations in the name of jesus i bind every spirit of perversion of just immorality anything that would separate us from you lord where we say that we don't want it god i see you just invade the lives of the viewers god and that you would just permeate each household with your manifest presence because it's in your presence lord where all things are restored where we are comforted where we experience your joy and so lord we just thank you right now in advance for what you're going to do we thank you that your kingdom is going to come into the lives of these people and your will is going to be done on earth as it is in heaven god we thank you and we praise you lord in jesus name amen amen michael thank you for being again on man 360. thank you and i just appreciate you we love you love your family and just continue to pray for god to do great things through you and the ministry really that he has for you in this season of your life thank you love you guys appreciate you holy crap finding god's presence in your pain is more than just a book it's a look inside a very painful time in my life where i almost lost my eye to a disease that doctors could not find the root cause it drained us financially emotionally physically and even spiritually it's also about an awakening of a relationship with god and realizing that even though i didn't want to hold on to him in my disease that he was still holding on to me it's a known fact that at some point in life we will all go through a painful circumstance that can be difficult to navigate who we are and what we believe will be tested i know that i didn't really understand who i was until i came to the end of myself and this book is my story of what i went through and also what i learned in the process holycrapbook.com has also been set up as a resource for you to continue the conversation after you read the book you can also go there for more information about how to order the book i'm excited about helping people see that they can find the holy in the crap of their lives here's a quick teaching about six things we can control in our lives a travel segment to barcelona spain and a tech talk about a couple of online bible study websites for you to use check it out in our walks with god most times we focus on what god can control but did you realize there are a few things that we have control over here's a list of six things that we can control that are directly connected to our free will so number one is what i focus on every day you know where do we set our focus when we get up in the morning what are we focusing on are we reading our bible what are we doing to keep our focus on god to make sure that we're doing the things that he is requesting and he's asking from us and for us each day number two is my boundaries what am i doing to set healthy boundaries and healthy parameters around my life you know maybe it's with interacting with other people maybe it's your boundaries with how much time you spend with god versus how much time you spend with other people maybe it's boundaries at work all those different things but you have control over setting those boundaries number three is how do i speak to myself you know sometimes we get the in those situations where we have trouble or we do something and we have some kind of a mistake and we say i'm always so stupid i always do that wrong i'm always so dumb i'm i'll never get that right i'll always do those things wrong and those are all curses that we have an option to speak over ourselves or not so we have to be very very careful about how we speak to ourselves and to our spirit number four is how i respond so you have full control over how you respond to any situation in life in fact how you respond will be the best reflection of your heart in proverbs 14 29 it says one who is slow to anger has great understanding but one who is quick tempered exalts foolishness i love that end that says exalting foolishness we don't want to be ones and people that exalt foolishness in our lives and to be able to keep those things in check number five where i spend my time you know your heart will be a direct reflection of where you spend your time no one spends their free time on things that don't line up with their heart you know i'm not planning something this weekend for myself or for yolanda for us to go do something and to say hey i've got a great plan honey let's go up to the mountains and do something we hate we always focus on things that we like we just got back from a vacation and we were in yellowstone and we did things that we wanted to do in our lives so be very careful about how you again how you think about that number six is the way i treat others many times the way we treat others is based on how we see ourselves if we don't even like ourselves then we don't have the ability to treat others well mark 12 30 and 31 says and you shall love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength the second is this this is important you shall love your neighbor as yourself there is no other greater commandment than this you know it's interesting how we look at ourselves and if we're really focused on loving ourselves then we're actually going to be able to love others in the way that christ wants us to be loved maturity in christ is moving from the things we feel we have to do to the things we want to do and that includes lining up our free will with the will of god take some time today and evaluate your free will and how it lines up with god's word brian morris has been presenting the gospel in exciting and creative ways for over 25 years host of man 360 and the author of holy crap finding god's presence in your pain brian's mission is to help men find the joy of god even in the heaviest of life's circumstances with great responsibility comes a great need for wisdom and a true understanding of how to live a christ-like way of life ryan's heart is to help guide men to finding those things and encouraging them along the way you can have brian morris speak at your next men's event by contacting us at man360 dot tv forward slash contact we look forward to seeing you soon [Music] today i'm in barcelona spain and i thought what is my highest and best use of time while i'm here in this wonderful and amazing city and i thought you know what i'm gonna go to a hospital [Music] pretty ridiculous isn't it this is actually sa pyle which is i was a functioning hospital until 2009 when it was decommissioned and now this is the largest art nouveau example in architecture history [Music] do [Music] so this hospital in barcelona spain is an amazing example of not just going where all the tourists go but to dig in a little bit do a little bit of research and find out what's out there to really be able to enjoy the culture and also the people in cities like barcelona and countries like spain [Music] [Music] the best way i could explain here tonight is it's a celebration song it's a song of joy the bible tells us that we're two or more gathered in god's name his presence will be there and this song is just inviting god's presence into you know wherever this song is playing into the room into the car into the event center wherever we're playing this at this song is inviting the presence of god in so no as you're listening to the song someone else out there is listening you guys are listening in agreement and the presence of god is there it's a celebration of just the joy that god gives us in our life the joy of finding that new life in god make sure you listen and i hope you guys enjoy [Music] [Music] tonight the internet is an amazing tool for unlimited information so i wanted to share about a couple of online bible study tools that are free and easy to use so that you can dive a little deeper into god's word now back in the day these stacks of books represent what you needed to study the bible these are actually out of my library sometimes i still use them just for fun but today we have smartphones we have computers that can do the same job as all of these books and i have my ipad today so i want to show you some things on my ipad of a couple different sites that you can use to get a little deeper into god's word so i'm only going to show you commentaries and not other things like lexicons or how to use the strong's concordance which both these sites have available if you want to dive a little further in they also have a daily bible reading plan which is great too so first let's look at blueletterbible.com so

couple things they have a great help section that can show you how to use the site they have daily readings like i said commentaries and more so let's get on the site here so this is blueletterbible.org and you can see if you scroll down here about three quarter maybe halfway down it has the help section if you click on the quick start guide this has all the information so there's a quick start guide there's the essentials of the bible essentials of word searching if you want to search for a specific word you know if you want to search for sin you want to search for jesus any of those things it kind of helps you and shows you so if you click on any of these the 3.1 here says simple search if you click on that it actually brings up a video tutorial two minute tutorial to show you basically how to use the site which is i think that's a great great idea and a great option for you especially for people that don't really know kind of how to navigate some of these sites can be difficult so basically i'm on just the blue letter bible share real quick if you go up here to the information section here i'm just going to type in john 3 16 hit enter and show you what this does so basically it brings up the verse and you can see these are all this is 16 17 18. now if you click on this tools button this will give you all of your options on here interlinear bibles cross reference commentaries dictionaries and miscellaneous so again blue letter bible is just a it's a great great resource um there's so many other things on here that you can dive into they do also have an app i believe for android and for apple products again i'm on an ipad so this is apple so basically you can click on and just kind of click around here this is the verse or words type in john 316 again and it gives you basically i have this in parallel so i you can see up here on the top it says new living translation and also niv and then you can click on this button you can do your options here for your passage selector you can do a daily bible reading and this gives you all of your daily bible reading plans so basically this has everything compacted i would say that the online piece is a little more exhaustive than the app the app is kind of just more of a basic uh not quite as much information on there so the second one i want to show you is biblehub.com now biblehub.com is great at giving you an overview of all the commentaries on a bible on a bible verse so here's john the same thing john 3 16 and you can see i'm here at biblehub.com if you hit enter now this is really cool so what they do is they just list right here there's parallel sermons topical strongs now if you hit comment is actually commentary so if you click on commentary what you'll see is you'll see the elliott's commentary for english readers the myers new testament commentary if you go down here mclaren's expositors greek testament and then so again it just goes on and on there's a bunch of different resources on here now again same thing there is also an app bible hub this is much more remedial a little more simple if you don't really want to get confused kind of what what it is much more easy to use and again they do two apps for those as well so my overall assessment is that biblehub.com is more

basic and as long as you follow the labels then you should be good blueletterbible.com has a great help section but that's because it's much more complicated so there are many other bible study tools online that you need to pay for but i wanted to show you how much free information is out there for you to maybe take the next step in your walk with god and study the bible in a deeper way let's do our 360 degree review of today's program michael whittington was such an encouraging conversation that highlighted the love of jesus michael's perspective on what god has done in his life is something that each one of us needed to hear if you're listening to this program and need someone to connect with please go to our website right now and send us an email so we can pray for you as i mentioned previously in the program you're never too far from the love and redemption of jesus and he wants to have a relationship with you michael in our interview knew that at some point he needed to surrender his free will to christ my teaching on things i can control is so simple yet hard at the same time our free will is a powerful force and surrendering to jesus is key to us living a fulfilled and complete life you can get a downloadable pdf of my notes at man360 dot tv forward slash additional content i hope you enjoyed our quick trip to barcelona spain and the hospital complex it was amazing to see the craftsmanship put into those buildings and if you're ever in barcelona we recommend taking the time to visit technology has come so far when it comes to information and especially studying the bible all the books people used to use are now at anyone's fingertips and give us instant access to valuable bible study tools i pray that god makes you hungry to study the bible in a deeper way and see what it has to offer man 360 exists to help men be complete in every way through christ mentally physically and spiritually thanks for watching and as always you can connect with us on facebook and instagram or send us an email on our website and we'll see you next week right here on man 360. i'm so nervous sorry i've only done 65 interviews [Laughter] [Music] you

2021-11-28 09:32

Show Video

Other news