“Can you help me? Will you help me?”

A life-changing story from naturopathic doctor Mark Sherwood begins with these poignant words as, voice shaking, he shares with host Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network.

The story that touched Sherwood so deeply, he says, is a common one at the Functional Medical Institute in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he works alongside his wife, Dr. Michele Sherwood. It involves “a gentleman who is a well-known pastoral leader of a very large ministry. And everybody would know him. … He walked into my office in October 2020. I think he weighed 345-350, something like that. Very unhealthy.”

“Of course I will,” Sherwood told the pastor.

“So we went to work,” he says. “As of last week, he is down 85 pounds. He’s down about 14% body fat; his muscle tissue’s up five or six pounds. I believe his fat tissue’s down like maybe 85-90 pounds.

“It’s a lot,” Sherwood says. “He’s become so transformed. He looks like two different people. And he would tell you, and he does tell people now, ‘This is easy. This is not hard. … He was so large; now he’s become the incredible shrinking pastor.”

To find out more about what Dr. Mark Sherwood shared with this pastor to yield such a dramatic transformation, listen to the entire episode of the Greenelines podcast at this link, and subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this. You’ll also want to check out the Sherwoods’ own podcast, Hope & Health, also on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

“God, if You’re real, I’ll serve You. … I will be Your foot soldier.”

That seemed like an unlikely scenario for someone just entering prison—someone Pastor David Crank of Faith Church in St. Louis, Missouri, describes as “a very, very evil man” on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast with Dr. Steve Greene.

Second in command to “Wolf of Wall Street‘s Jordan Belfort, John Clancy entered the cell having taken “just one step” toward God, Crank says.

“He said no more than 10 minutes after that, they came in, unlocked the prison door and let him out and said, ‘We’re going to let you out, John, until your trial,'” Crank explains. “He said he couldn’t believe it. He made one step. God made a bunch of steps—he never did a day in prison.”

But that didn’t keep Clancy out of prison altogether; he returned to visit his friend and played Monopoly with him. One day, the friend told him, “I’ve got an idea. We need to start a fitness program, some gyms, and I want to call it Planet Fitness,” Crank says.

“And now today, I’m sitting here with a guy who’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but he honors God,” he adds. John Clancy is now the CEO of Planet Fitness and a real estate mogul as well as a man of strong faith.

For much more from Pastor David Crank about how honoring God with your finances can help you get out of debt and move toward a path of blessing and freedom, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines here, and subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. Check out Crank’s book, Solving Your Money Problems, available wherever fine books are sold. {eoa}

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What God tells us doesn’t always make sense. But as we listen and obey, He can use us to change the world.

Marvin Slaton received just such a word back in 2005, the director of Modern Day Missions tells host Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the charisma Podcast Network.

“I was in China on a short-term trip in 2005, and I was on a bus with a number of missionaries who were traveling to a rural village,” he says. “And I was just praying and journaling as we were traveling to this village when we were going to be sharing the gospel. And I felt the Lord speak to me the words ‘Modern Day.’ … And so I wrote it down. But it didn’t make sense. It seemed out of left field.

“And then right after that, I felt the Lord speak to me, ‘Marvin, “modern day”; you’re supposed to marry the archaic world of missions to the modern-day world of technology.’

“I’m just on this bus out in the middle of nowhere, China, going to share the gospel, and God’s downloading this—and I have no idea what it means,” Slaton says. “No idea, but I write it down. And I get back from the trip. And I have a couple of my best friends who I just submitted it to. … And we just began to pray.

“There was something there; there was a spark; it was just a word of the Lord; I began to pray … what was this about?”

To hear what God did next through Marvin Slaton and what became Modern Day Missions, listen to this entire episode of the Greenelines podcast here, and make sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. You’ll also want to check out the ministry’s new podcast, Missions in the Modern Day, also on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

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A 20-year-old granddaughter who died unexpectedly in her sleep.

The multiple losses and hardships of COVID-19.

The many other circumstances and situations that come to our lives that seem impossible to understand.

What all these things have in common, author and leadership expert Tim Dunn says, is the fact that we can’t control them. After the sudden loss of his granddaughter Mariah, he tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, God gave him an insight he now shares with others in his Yellow Balloons book, devotionals and podcast: “We really only control three things in life, we control who we trust, what we do and how we look at things, the perspective we choose.”

“Many of us really spend a lot of time and attention trying to control things we can’t control like other people or circumstances or the future or the past,” Dunn says. “And we don’t have any control of those things. And so we waste effort and increase frustration, maybe even create depression. And in doing so, we neglect the three things that we do control.”

Joey Willis, who serves as trainer with Dunn’s servant leadership group The Crossroad, also writes the Yellow Balloons devotionals. He says they “focus on the three things you can control and letting go of all of the things that you’re trying to control that you can’t. And so that perspective just helps to align people with the truth and with reality, which invites them to take ownership of what they can control and let go of the rest. So the devotionals are just kind of a daily reminder of that—a daily reminder that you’re not dependent on your circumstances.”

Willis adds that the Bible “is inviting us into a life of faith, a life of trust, a life of love, that isn’t driven by what happens to us, but is driven by the core of who God is and who He created us to be.”

For more from both Dunn and Willis on intentionally living into the three things you can control, listen to this entire episode of Greenelines here and subscribe to the Greenelines podcast on your favorite podcast platform. Find the Yellow Balloons book as a free download at this link, and be sure to check out the Yellow Balloons podcast, also on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

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“This will be your last year for teaching.”

When Lois Flewelling heard those words from the Lord, “I panicked,” she tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. But, she adds, “I had a major encounter with Him directing me, because he had a great big, huge assignment for me”—one that took her life, and those of many others, to a whole new level.

The special assignment God gave her involved a picture of a building. “And in this building, I was going to have three counselors come in; they were all going to be Spirit-led counselors. I would have an equipping and training school, also host conferences, and I would lead conferences myself.”

When God gave her the picture, Flewelling says, “I asked my husband, ‘Can you go find where this building is in our community?’

“When he did, it was in the darkest place in town. And I went, ‘Lord, are you sure you want me to go there and buy that building?'”

He did, Flewelling says. But today, that whole section of town “has been totally changed,” she says. “It’s all been renewed, and it’s wonderful.”

“That was so out of my realm,” she adds. I’m not a businessperson—I wasn’t. I am now, but I wasn’t. I didn’t see myself as a leader like that. But I am now!”

Flewelling’s leadership has extended to everything God showed her and more, including writing books and hosting a podcast. For much more from Lois Flewelling on how God continues to speak to her and use these encounters to speak to others, listen to this entire episode of the Greenelines podcast at this link, and be sure to subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. Check out Flewelling’s book, Hidden Treasures Within: Rise Above Your Circumstances wherever fine books are sold, and listen to her podcast, A New Level Awaits You!, also on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

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Breast cancer and a subsequent double mastectomy.

The loss of a corporate job and a six-figure income.

A pandemic that forced her into homeschooling.

A painful marital separation.

Most people hit by even one of these problems would feel justified in holding a pity party—or at least complaining to God. But Tonya Walker tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast that the title of her new book, It Was Good for Me to Be Afflicted, encapsulates her journey. The title of the devotional commentary comes from Psalm 119:71, but it also comes from her life.

“Because I was afflicted, it gave me an opportunity to know God in a more profound way—beyond church experiences, beyond religion, beyond what I’ve read about,” she says. “A lot of us say that we want to know Him, and it sounds good. But the truth of the matter is we can never really know Him beyond what we experience, beyond what is revealed to us. And so I had a moment in my life—and I’m still having this moment—where the Word became flesh to me.”

Her experience with cancer and the fear of having to leave her child taught her about Jehovah Rapha, the Lord our Healer, Walker says. The experience of losing her job and income as well as having to become a stay-at-home mom taught her to trust in Jehovah Jireh, the Lord our Provider. And the experience of marital problems taught her that God would love her as Christ loves His bride, the church.

“The things that He felt I needed, those things remained,” she says. “And so I came out of all of these things saying, ‘Yes, it was good; it was good; it was good for me to be afflicted.”

For more from Tonya Wood about how the Lord sustained her in her times of trial—and how He can sustain you too—listen to the entire episode of Greenelines on the Charisma Podcast Network. Subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform, and be sure to check out Wood’s book, It Was Good for Me to Be Afflicted, wherever fine books are sold. {eoa}

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It was every believing parent’s nightmare—and every teen’s as well: a school assembly in which not only was sex discussed in the most explicit of terms, but one parent stood up and confronted the presenter from across the room.

This school assembly took place in conservative Pearland, Texas, in the 1990s, and that confrontational parent and pastor was Dr. Rick Scarborough, founder of Recover America Now. That event, he tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network, helped him realize a truth that launched him into his current ministry, which seeks to mobilize pastors and their congregations to be proactive in restoring our nation’s Christian foundations.

“I’ve come to realize that our preachers will not have the freedom to preach, if we don’t also use our American citizenship to demand that our rights be observed,” Scarborough says. “There’s a real effort right now to take away every right we have to express right from wrong, not only in our pulpits, but in the public place. In fact, there are laws pending before Congress as we speak that will make it illegal to call homosexuality a sin. I don’t think we should be condemning homosexuals. Love them. But we should preach the Bible. And the reason I’m involved in the political realm is to is to make sure that our pastors had the freedom to tell their people the truth.”

“We’re focused pretty explicitly on the great social issues like abortion,” Scarborough says of his ministries. “Now [we’re addressing] transgenderism, this whole debate on whether or not we should pump kids full of drugs that will change them for their entire lives even without parental knowledge. We’re dealing with issues of all manner of sexual aberration, because in all candor, there are efforts right now to call evil, good, good, evil and literally ban any alternative speech. We’re really focused on religious freedom and religious liberties, because they’re being stripped away increasingly.”

Although Vision America had to shift to Zoom meetings with the COVID-19 shutdown, the ministry is now scheduling in-person events such as pastors roundtables and a three-day pastors event in Orlando in July as well as other upcoming such gatherings.

“We typically have a three-part program,” Scarborough says. “We bring in a historian, someone like David Barton, to give the historical background of how preachers in our founding era were involved in politics. They were the chief teachers of their people about what was happening in their government. … Second, someone like Mat Staver [of Liberty Counsel], a legal mind to teach the pastors what they can legally do. … and then also let them know that there are legal entities out there to assist. And then finally, my part is that … historically, we did; legally, we can; and biblically, we must.”

For much more from Dr. Rick Scarborough on the biblical mandate to take back America’s foundations, listen to the entire episode of Greenelines at this link, and be sure to subscribe to the Greenelines podcast for more inspiring stories like this one. You’ll want to check out Scarborough’s own podcast, Mixing Church and State God’s Way, also on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

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“If you don’t lose weight and keep it off, you’ll be dead in five years.”

Those brutal words from a cardiac surgeon served as a defining moment for Teresa Shields Parker, who, at the time weighed 430 pounds. But her solution in the natural—starting yet one more diet—provided only a temporary fix, she tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast. It took what she calls a “come to Jesus moment” for her to experience lasting change. Today, she’s lost more than 250 pounds and has kept it off since 2013.

That moment came, she says, during a meeting where she wasn’t even paying attention to the speaker, an alcoholic. “I was halfway listening to it, because alcohol has never been my problem,” she says. “But in the middle of his story, he said, ‘Alcohol is one molecule away from sugar. Alcohol is liquid sugar.'”

“And that was my come to Jesus moment,” Parker says. “That opened my eyes, and everything fell into place.” She asked a few more questions and, because this happened before anyone talked about food addiction, asked the speaker point-blank: “Can you be a sugar addict?”

“I don’t know the physical nature of it,” he told her. “But you can be addicted to anything that controls you.”

“I knew sugar controlled me,” Parker says. Many years earlier, the Lord had told her to stop eating sugar, but she resisted, sure she could come up with her own weight-loss plan. As she learned more about the spiritual aspects of her sugar addiction, she recognized sugar as a spiritual stronghold. And that’s when God took the barriers down.

To hear more from Teresa Shields Parker about how God broke the stronghold of sugar addiction in her life, listen to the entire episode of the Greenelines podcast here, and subscribe to the Greenelines podcast on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. Check out Parker’s most recent book, Sweet Surrender, at this link, and be sure to check out her own podcast, Sweet Grace for Your Journey, also on the Charisma Podcast Network. {eoa}

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“When we started writing the song, we had no idea the turn it was going to take.”

That’s what MercyMe’s lead singer, Bart Millard, tells host Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. He’s referring to “Say I Won’t,” which tells the supernatural story of longtime MercyMe friend and former merchandising representative Gary Miracle, on the band’s April 30 release, inhale (exhale).

“We started writing it back in 2019,” Millard says. “And then by Christmas of 2019, Gary had gotten really sick and had a blood infection. And he actually flatlined for about seven minutes, and we were afraid we were going to lose him.”

But then came the good news: Doctors could save their friend.

And then came the bad news: They would have to amputate all four of his limbs.

But then came the best news: “His attitude when he came out—his outlook on the whole thing—was amazing,” Millard says.

Right when the group went back to work on “Say I Won’t,” the pandemic hit. When it came to their friend’s journey, “We had to watch from a distance, and just being consumed with the story and watching it,” Millard says. “It kind of showed up in the song, and the song went from talking about identity in Christ to being an overcomer, Rocky-type moment by the end of the song, and we just realized that Gary had been all over it from the very beginning.

“And so it just felt natural to try to tell his story through the video,” Millard says.

The film chronicles Miracle’s journey from his first days in the hospital to times at home and elsewhere with his wife and family—moments of despair and destiny, of pain and promise.

“Our buddy, he went through a lot, and he really exemplifies the heart behind the song,” guitarist Mike Scheuchzer tells Greene.

The song’s chorus may express that heart best: “I’m gonna run/ No, I’m gonna fly/ I’m gonna know what it means to live/ And not just be alive/ The world’s gonna hear/ ‘Cause I’m gonna shout/ And I will be dancin’ when circumstances drown the music out/ Say I won’t.”

Watch the video here to see more of the Gary Miracle story, and for many more stories behind the songs on MercyMe’s new album inhale (exhale), listen to the entire episode of the Greenelines podcast at this link. Subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one, and check out inhale (exhale) wherever fine music is sold. {eoa}

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Revival—true revival—was breaking out in the small country of Wales back in 1904. And even in those pre-internet, pre-cell phone days, the news roared like wildfire around the globe.

Some missionaries in India heard about this supernatural move of God, Dr. R.T. Kendall tells Dr. Steve Greene on a recent episode of the Greenelines podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. What happened next resembles a familiar but modern issue: When believers encounter something God is doing, they label it as “not of God.”

“Do you know what?” Kendall asks as he continues the missionaries’ story. “They got on a ship, came into South Hampton Harbor, then came up to London and ran into friends in London.

“And their friends in London said to the missionaries, ‘We thought you were in India; what are you doing here?’

“‘Oh,’ they said. ‘We’ve come to see the revival,'” Kendall continues. “‘We’re going to Wales.'”

Their English friends put an immediate stop to that plan, Kendall explains. “Don’t bother,” they said. “Don’t bother. What is going on in Wales is not revival. It’s Welsh emotionalism.”

The missionaries got back on the ship and never visited Wales, never experienced the power of the Spirit that radically changed the lives of so many. “Fifty thousand people were converted between 1904 and 1905,” Kendall says. “The pubs closed down; jails were emptied; it was amazing.”

And why did the missionaries miss this supernatural outpouring? Kendall has the answer: “Because they took the word of their friends, who were prejudiced, and would not recognize the Welsh Revival as being of God.”

“This can happen in our day; God can be at work,” Kendall says. “And because we’re not in the middle of it, we want to say it’s not of God.”

“People don’t want to admit if God is at work, especially if it goes against our comfortable tradition; it takes us outside our comfort zone,” Kendall says. “And we want to say, ‘Well, that’s not of God.’ It’s often said, the greatest opponent to what God is doing today comes from those who are right in the middle of what God was doing yesterday. And that’s a Pharisaical view.”

For much more from Dr. R.T. Kendall on how we can miss what God is doing by clinging to our Pharisaical attitudes, listen to this entire episode of Greenelines here, and subscribe to Greenelines on your favorite podcast platform for more inspiring stories like this one. You’ll also want to check out Kendall’s latest book, You Might Be a Pharisee If … to learn if you have some Pharisaism lurking inside. {eoa}

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