Allen Jackson - Spiritual Warfare In The Workplace - Part 2
Good to be with you again. I wanna give you an invitation. You may have heard me do this before, but we've started a podcast. It's called "Culture & Christianity". I interview people who are making a difference in our culture with their faith in a whole variety of ways and professions. I think it'll encourage you. There's a new episode every Friday wherever you go to get your podcast. It's just "Culture & Christianity". Today we're stepping back into a podcast, you can see part one on YouTube, from a previous show with a friend John Amanchukwu. He's a pastor, but he's traveled our country speaking up on behalf of children to make a difference for them. His courage, I believe, will be an encouragement and a blessing to you. Enjoy the show.
Allen Jackson: But you were 19... I'm gonna change directions a little bit. You had a pretty significant life change.
John Amanchukwu: Yes, indeed.
Allen Jackson: Tell us a little bit about it.
John Amanchukwu: So, I'll tell the story. I don't tell it everywhere, but I used to be a bouncer at a nightclub. Go figure, right? And so, before...
Allen Jackson: I could see that working.
John Amanchukwu: You can see it working right. So, prior to coming to Christ, I was a bouncer at a nightclub every Thursday, every Friday, every Saturday, and every Sunday. I would put on my black shirt with security written around my chest. I'll do about 150 pushups before I would go to the nightclub. I would stop by a local corner store and buy a black and mild cigar and drink cheap liquor, I couldn't afford much while in college, I would drink some Mad Dog 2020, do some push ups, smoke a cigar, pastor, and go into the club, stand there big and bad, waiting for someone to fight so I can throw someone out of the club; and just to think about how far the Lord has brought me. You know, I can recall a sermon that I heard at the age of 19 from a pastor, his name was Pastor Cameron, he's in heaven now, but he preached so that I could see my existence. He preached me out of myself so that I could see myself, to the point where I fell to my knees saying what must I do to get saved; and God did a transformative work in me and so after giving my life to Christ, I knew that the job that I had at the nightclub, although I needed that, you know, $200 to $300 every two weeks, right, I needed that money to survive in college, I knew I had to get rid of that job, but that was a test from God, and so one of the first things I did is I relinquished that job and I had a problem during that time frame as well. I used to pump and ingest all of the hip-hop music, all of the rap music, and at that time, trying to walk the path of being a Christian, I wanted to change my rhetoric. Let me make it plain. I wanted to stop using profanity and I don't think it's becoming of a Christian to use that kind of language, you know, curse words and swear words and so therefore, the Lord told me what to do. He said, "you need to get rid of the music, change your music," And so I went to my room and grabbed my box of hip-hop music and CDs and I put it all in a box and took it outside behind Latham Hall on campus and threw those tapes away and those CDs away, and slowly but surely I noticed that my message and my tone and my response to certain things and my language begin to change, and so then I also had to learn how to practice holiness, right, and to become abstinent after living a rambunctious life, you know, and so that slowly but surely put me in a position where my walk with Christ lined up with my lifestyle and so, you're not going to be perfect, but we're striving for the masteries, and one of the things that young men and young women need to understand is that you can live a holy life at a young age. You don't have to take the mentality of these OnlyFans girls that are out there who are sleeping with 100 men in one day trying to break a record. No, that's a fast way to HIV, AIDS, STDs, and gonorrhea, right? You don't need that to qualify yourself. Honestly, when a man is prepared to get married, hear me when I say this, when a man is prepared to get married, he's not looking for the OnlyFans girl. He's looking for that sweet, saved girl who he can trust with raising his family; and so if you want to be a vessel of honor, you have to view yourself as fine china and not as cheap Tupperware and so you possess your vessel in a manner where a man says, you know, I want to marry her because she's rare, she's exceptional. The culture tells us today, have as much sex as possible. Sow your wild oats, go do whatever you want to. You only live once, you know, it's YOLO, you know, but no, here's the thing, you only die once, right, but you're living to live again, and so what we do with our vessels down here will matter on the day of judgment, and so my transformation was, I mean, remarkable. I recall getting to know the Book of Psalms well. Every morning I would get on my knees and read about 10 to sometimes 20 different Psalms before I would start my day, and at the time I had a roommate and he was in the past lifestyle with me and slowly but surely he noticed that John had changed, and I went from just simply being John to now being Preach, you know, because once you get born again you have that new zeal to win the world. I wanted to win the whole campus and so I would be on my knees in the morning praying my Psalms. He would be behind me in bed, may be a young lady that slept over with him that night, but we're in the same pod and so that was my set up.
Allen Jackson: So I'm gonna be... you're making all these changes while you're in college, playing football, living that lifestyle, and you're willing to be different, and you're making choices that allow godliness to grow in your life. See, I think one of the great, and you mentioned it, and I'll let you get back, but I think one of the great lies is the devil tells us we should kick that down the road. You know, you're in high school, just do whatever you wanna do. You're in college, go sow your wild oats, and the truth is you only go to high school once. Why not go for Jesus? You're only going to college once. Why not go for Jesus? 'Cause if you'll buy that lie, you'll be at the end of your life, you'll have spent all your years, and you'll have never stopped, 'cause in every season of life there's a reason to be selfish. You know, you get all the way to retirement and then they say, "Well, it's my time". You know, "I've raised my family, I've had a job, and now it's my time". It's the same lie that the high school student believes when they think they shouldn't honor God. So the courage it took for you to change your life in front of those folks, I know they made some fun of you.
John Amanchukwu: Oh, they did. You know, someone might say kick it down the road, focus on that later, but how do you know that later is promised? The majority of the funerals that I've seen over the past ten years hasn't always been the person that was 85 or 90. Sometimes the funerals of people who are 18 and 21, who thought that kicking salvation down the road would be the best plan. No man knows the day nor the hour that the Lord shall appear, and every breath that we take is borrowed time. So you can kick it down the road, but you could kick yourself into judgment, and that's the last thing that you wanna do. Paul says that every man, "shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ to give an answer of what they've done in their body, whether it be good or bad". Then he goes on to say, "and knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men," and so my role today is to persuade as many people as possible, not to kick it down the road, but to submit to Christ while you can, and so yes, they picked on me because they were, saying that, "Oh, Preach, man, you're not getting any play anymore. You don't have the girlfriends and you're not doing what we're doing. You're just boring and you're just dull". One night, I'll tell you a story, one of the prettiest girls on campus by the name of Tanzania, I was asleep, it was around 2 a.m. and one of my teammates came into my room. I was knocked out, you know, I was calling on the hogs, right, and he took this girl and put her in my bed at 2 a.m., and at this point I'd been practicing abstinence for eight months, right, and I was learning a new way of life, a new walk, and just doing it God's way, and I woke up at 2 a.m. and me and him had a tussle and you know who won, I was stronger than him, and then I wanted to make it clear that although I'm living this Christian life, I'm no one's doormat and the sacrifice that I'm making spiritually, it's for the betterment of my spirit, man, right, because I didn't want to be in the church, but also be in the world at the same time. I didn't want to straddle the fence and oftentimes people think that straddling the fence is the best thing. No, you have to pick a side. You know, the Bible speaks of darkness and light not having fellowship, you know, and how can two walk together except they be agreed, and so we want to live in a manner where we're united with Christ, but we live up to the standards thereof, you know, right, and when you fall and you come short of what God expects, we thank God for his mercy and his grace, but spiritual maturity comes from how we discipline ourselves. So I had to walk in discipline during that time frame, and slowly but surely I found myself finding a motley crew of teammates who wanted to live the same lifestyle, and then I transitioned from one small university and go to NC State, and then while I'm there, I lead a prayer group in the racquetball room on Monday nights at around 9:35 p.m. It would be me and about five to ten other teammates. We're smelly, we're stinking, we don't care, but we're on our knees in the racquetball room calling on the name of the Lord, and then on Tuesdays, I did a Bible study at one of the busiest dormitories on campus, and so I've been working in the area of youth ministry and working with young adults for a long time, since I was 19 essentially and so that's about 21 years; and so God has called me to the younger demographic. To really empower them and to remind them that if God can take a person who did 150 pushups outside of the nightclub every night, right, who used to smoke cigars and drink the cheap liquor and do all of these things just to impress someone to earn, and also earn a paycheck. If God can deliver me at the age of 19 from these things, he can do the same thing for you, but it requires a person being willing to trust God in their journey. Everyone has a journey, right, but I do believe that many of the benefits of finding Christ at a young age is that, number one, it keeps you from the consequences that come from living a riotous life. You know, many of the blessings that I walk in today and that I have today is solely because I made the right decision at the right time. I didn't wait till 40 to give my life to Christ. I took advantage of the opportunity when I had it that night...
Allen Jackson: I like that better. It isn't just that you didn't have so much to repent of, you were preparing. When you made those decisions at 19 and beyond, through college, with people making fun of you, when there were abundant opportunities to be ungodly, and you would make a decision to be godly anyway when you had a lot of peers and friends that were making other choices. In truth you were being prepared.
Allen Jackson: You know David talked when he heard Goliath, he talked about he'd been prepared with a lion and a bear and it feels like to me that you spent a lot of years being prepared indeed and then God called on you. You knew what it was like to be made fun of when you were 20, so in the last couple of years you've traveled our nation and stood in front of school boards in 18 states?
John Amanchukwu: Yes, 18 states.
Allen Jackson: Telling them that the filth that they've been making available to the students is not appropriate, and I suspect everybody hadn't cheered when you've done that, have they?
John Amanchukwu: Not really, they haven't, you know...
Allen Jackson: But you were developing that muscle for 20 years. Getting ready for that.
John Amanchukwu: You know, God has us all in our waiting season and on the backside of the mountain where he's preparing us and honing us, and hear me, God takes people who have gone through difficult situations. Regardless of what has happened to you in life, God knows how to mend the brokenhearted. You know, we deal with all types of adversity. Social adversity, psychological adversity, mental adversity, financial adversity. We serve a God that takes adversity and strengthens us at the same time, but the scripture also tells us that if we faint in the day of adversity, then our strength is small. So how do we know how much strength we have? God sends the difficulties and the difficulties are used to hone us. It's our spiritual treadmill that gives us the mobility and the stamina and the courage to stand, so that God can get you to the level where he's gonna use you for his glory, and I see myself doing that today. I'm accustomed to the cut downs and the nasty statements. I think it was the preparation of my early twenties that allows me to deal with people writing full-fledged articles about me. You know, it's not just a sentence or paragraph, but a full article and they put your face on it as well, right, and so you have to develop that stamina. I know what it's like to receive death threats. I know what it's like for people to say damaging things about me and my wife, you know, you receive that kind of information. I know what it's like to go to a place to speak and you check your email and someone's in the audience, but they're sending you negative comments and saying what would happen if you say certain things. I know what that is like, but I also know what it's like, where the scripture, to know the word of God and to walk in God's truth and to know that no weapon formed against you shall prosper and every tongue risen in judgment shall be condemned, and so God does use every season to prepare us. Every stage matters. There isn't a stage in the human existence that God isn't pruning and using you and developing you so that he can use you for his glory; and so as I travel to this country, I'm emboldened. I'm encouraged as never before. I'm fought against as never before, but as God takes me on this journey, on this trek of being a repairer of the breach, of bringing common sense to education, I know that my existence is for purpose, and the quest of life is finding that balance and knowing why God allowed you to be born. With all the damaging things that have come in your past, with all the hard times and difficult moments, why did God intend and purpose that I would see 2025? Every person has a special reason why God has allowed them to come into existence; and his purpose is that that individual will be used for his glory and for his glory alone. He has a special plan for all mankind. Regardless of where you're from, regardless of what side of the track you were born, regardless of how eloquent, how strong, and how courageous you are, God has a purpose for you.
Allen Jackson: I understand in California they called you "a white supremacist".
John Amanchukwu: That's what they called me. It's just a big joke, it's a big lie. They called me a white supremacist because I don't hold viewpoints that they think a black man should hold, which is rather condescending towards black men. What they're saying is...
Allen Jackson: Towards any man.
John Amanchukwu: And towards any man, you're right, you know. What they're saying is, since I believe that gender theory and queer theory and critical race theory and redefining proficiency and all of these various different things shouldn't happen in the public school system, that I have to be a white supremacist, but that doesn't make any sense. Because I believe that life is precious at every stage of gestation, I'm a white supremacist. Because I repel and I'm against the soft bigotry of low expectations, I'm a white supremacist. You know, there's white liberals, and I say this humbly, right, but historically, white liberals have a pattern of lowering the bar for minorities and thinking that they know what's best for us, than we know what's best for ourselves. They position themselves as the proverbial white saviors, where we need them, for them to be our crutch, because we're incapable of standing on our own two feet. Now, when you go back to a time frame from the 1890s to the 1950s, part of the 1960s, where the black marriage rate rivaled that of whites, when you look at the family structure of the black community during that time frame, the 1890s up to the 1960s, things were quite different, you know. You had more intact homes with two parents there, a mother and a father. We started our own businesses. We built our own schools because of issues with segregation.
Allen Jackson: Even with all the bigotry and the hatred?
John Amanchukwu: With all the bigotry, all the hatred, all the Democrat laws, all of that stuff, we overcame those things, but along comes Lyndon B. Johnson with his Great Society plan. He found a creative way to remove the black man from the home and replace him with a $300 to $400 check from the government. Because of that, it shifted the landscape of the black community. They created welfare states and a dependency upon the federal government to provide for their basic needs. That destroyed the black community, and I've heard this said before and I like to say it myself, "Since the Democrat Party destroyed the black community, I want to destroy the Democrat Party". I take that personally, because I see the trends, I see the place that we are in this culture as a result of Democrat laws that have been set up intentionally to marginalize blacks and make them think that they need to build a dependence upon the government. The government will only give you enough to keep you hamstrung and to keep you subservient to the system. We live in a country where capitalism is celebrated. The fastest way to wealth is following the capitalistic structure, not Marxism or communism or socialism, but capitalism. The fastest way to wealth is getting married at a young age, starting a family, having children at a young age, building a home, being a homeowner. Not leasing all of your life, but being a home owner. These are the fastest ways to wealth and prosperity, but what the government seeks to do is to convince you that, no, you can't do that on your own, you need us to do it, but I don't espouse to that. I believe that the greatest thing that we can do is take advantage of the opportunities that we have. People aren't fighting to get out of America. People are fighting and risking their lives to get in.
Allen Jackson: We're gonna have to... I know we gotta close this. You got a plane to catch, and I agree with what you said, but I wanna say it a little differently. Saying that the Democratic Party failed, I wanna say that differently. I don't think it was a political party that failed. I think it's the church that failed. If the church had been the church, slavery would have been addressed long before we got to the Civil War.
John Amanchukwu: I agree with that.
Allen Jackson: And the reason that's relevant to us, I believe, is the places where the church is failing today, it's destroying lives. The church has failed to speak up about abortion and we've lost more than 60 million children, and the church has been reluctant to speak up about DEI and it's allows racism to take root in our nation again, in our Christian schools and our Christian universities. The church has failed to speak up because they're afraid about LGBTQ and the redefinition of marriage, and we're abandoning a whole generation of young people, the ungodliness. So yes, I'll look back and, and with embarrassment say the church failed in a horrific way; but if the church isn't healthy and vibrant and doesn't have the courage to tell the truth now, there's a generation 50 and 60 years in front of us, will look back at us with the same sense of failure that we look back at the church when slavery and the Jim Crow laws flourished in this nation, and that's what I have so much respect for you. You're calling all of us to pay attention to the authority of scripture and not abandoned our children, good job. John Amanchukwu, thank you for your voice in our nation and your voice to our church.
John Amanchukwu: God bless you, thank you so much.
Allen Jackson: You're welcome here anytime, and for the rest of us, we've got to take our Christianity into the culture. We can't hide behind the walls of our churches and debate theology. We've gotta go live our faith out in the marketplace, in our schools, and hospitals and courtrooms. If we'll do that, I believe we'll see God bless America again. Thank you for your time today.