Sid Roth - This Is the Most Common Reason for Sickness
You're going to be as amazed as I was when my guest reveals the number one reason for sickness. Next on this edition of it's supernatural.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Dr. Jim Richards and I'm going to tell you something. This next 30 minutes I believe could very well change your life because my guest wrote a book about pain. For someone, I know this, no one can write a book about pain. No one can talk about pain and have any impact on anyone unless they've gone through a lot of pain in their life.
Dr. Jim Richards: That's exactly right.
Sid Roth: So Jim, tell me about your childhood.
Dr. Jim Richards: Well like a lot of people, my childhood wasn't ideal. It wasn't what you want. It wasn't what you dreamed of or what it should be.
Sid Roth: It's not the way Hollywood says it's supposed to be.
Dr. Jim Richards: No, it wasn't leave it to beaver. You know, my father was an alcohol and he was a very violent man, and so I grew up in a home where there was violence. My earliest memories actually were of my father beating my mother, of him coming home occasionally when he would show up. And actually, he would show up about once a month because in those days as long as you showed up once a month you couldn't be divorced for abandonment. So he would show up about once a month, basically eat what food we had, tear the house up, beat my mother, take whatever we had and leave. But many times in the process of that, of course, we would have horrible experiences as children with him. You know, one occasion he actually tried to burn us alive and my mother had to fight him literally off to keep him from burning the house down, burning us alive as children. That was how it all began. As a matter of fact, my earliest emotion, the very first emotion that I can ever remember was hatred and murder.
Sid Roth: Did you want to murder your father?
Dr. Jim Richards: Oh yes. As a very young child, I would, while he was beating my mother and I was listening to her beg for her life, I would think, tonight if I could stay awake long enough and when he goes to sleep I'll slip into the kitchen and I'll get a knife and cut his throat. And that was my deepest passion in life.
Sid Roth: So you know about pain.
Dr. Jim Richards: Oh yes.
Sid Roth: But how does someone end up with three doctorates and comes from that type of abusive background? Something in between must have transpired.
Dr. Jim Richards: You know, the great thing is you don't have to stay in pain. That's the incredible thing. You know, we've got this idea that it is so difficult to escape our past. And you know, my past didn't stop there. When he finally left, my mother remarried a man that was meaner than he was.
Sid Roth: Why was it that many people, when they get divorced and remarry, they remarry the same, it's a different partner, but it's the same person? What causes that?
Dr. Jim Richards: It's about what they believe about themselves. How you see yourself, your whole interpretation of the world around you and the next decision you're going to make is all determined by how you see yourself. And you know, if you don't see yourself in Jesus, if you don't see yourself loved, you don't see yourself as being accepted and approved, and feel right about yourself, you'll just keep making those same kind of bad decisions over and over and, and you'll think that's mysteriously happening, but it's not. It's just the decisions you make out of your self-perception.
Sid Roth: Now your stepfather you said was worse than your natural father.
Dr. Jim Richards: Oh yes.
Sid Roth: How could he have been worse?
Dr. Jim Richards: My stepfather, his desire was to drive all of the children away so he would have my mother to himself, so he was very abusive. He was abusive to my mother, but actually much more violently abusive to me and my brother than my father was. You know, it wasn't usual for us to fight through the halls, trying to stab each other, trying to cut each other's throat. It was just a horrible, horrible existence.
Sid Roth: You know, I look at you right and I find that hard to believe. I do.
Dr. Jim Richards: Well you know, like I told you one time, you know, I've had my skull fractured. One of my half-brothers knocked me out with a baseball bat. I've been hit with a brick. I had some of my teeth knocked out. I've had my nose broke. I've had my collarbone broken. I've had my wrist broken, about six of my ribs broken. And so it's almost hard for me to believe that that's the same person.
Sid Roth: Now if you wanted to, your dream was to kill your real father. How much more your stepfather?
Dr. Jim Richards: I was on my way to being really a murderer. My heart was cold. I was angry and I took that violence, because you take what you experience. You take what's going on inside you and you express it to the world around you. So I was taking that violence out to the world around me. My stepfather was so violent. Actually at the end of the eighth grade I was about 13 years, about to turn 14, I actually left home. It was safer for me to live on the streets than it was for me to live at home.
Sid Roth: I've heard a lot of people that lived on the streets. How does someone really do this? How did you do this?
Dr. Jim Richards: For me, it was kind of a degeneration. I ran away from home and so at first I spent time with relatives. You know, you run out of relatives and then you go find a friend or somebody, and many times, I mean, when I was 15 years old, I was literally living with women just as so I'd have a roof over my head. And but there were times I've slept in cardboard boxes. I've slept in the back of cars. I've slept on people's porches.
Sid Roth: Did it reach the point where you said life is too hard?
Dr. Jim Richards: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. A matter of fact, I've known the pain of life, you know, with drugs, and that's how so many people end up on drugs is the pain is more than you can bear, the loneliness, the rejection and fear. I just lived in constant, constant fear. You know, I actually went back home one time when I was about 18 years old to visit and while spending the night back home, I was lying in bed and I heard this thunderous sound. It was actually my stepfather kicking the door in to the room I was sleeping in. He and one of his friends broke into this room and all I realized is I was being beaten up very badly. And he walked out of the room, and I heard him say to the other man, he said, "I cut the little s.O.B and I was killing him". What I didn't realize was that he had stabbed me and I had been stabbed in my sleep. And after he stabbed me was attempting to beat me to death. I rolled out of bed and something I never, I always carried a weapon of some kind. Out of respect for my mother, which is kind of odd, I unloaded my gun in her house and I rolled out of my bed, grabbed my weapon, my stepfather came to, and I started clicking, and I realized he's going to kill me if I don't find a way out of here. So I dove through a window and escaped, and once I got outside I realized that I was covered in blood. And so that was my life.
Sid Roth: Now I'm told that the people you hate you become.
Dr. Jim Richards: Yes. That's a scriptural principle. You become what you behold. Whatever images you hold, you know, a lot of people want to become like God and they're not because their holding an image of God is not real, and so they're becoming like this image they hold. It doesn't matter if it's a positive image or negative image. I hated my father and I became more like him every day.
Sid Roth: Could you see yourself, I mean are you blind?
Dr. Jim Richards: I was blind. You're blind. Of course, you justify it. You know, I had these excuses for being the way I am. What I didn't realize is my father had these excuses for being the way he was. My stepfather had his excuses. Actually I could remember the first time I ever realized I had never been physically violent to a woman. And one night I was with a woman and just went into this rage. I mean, I'm talking about a rage. I was throwing furniture through the windows kind of rage. And she came, you know, tried to grab me and I spun around, and I put her against the wall. And I was just in this blind rage, and I was ready to really hurt her. And she said, "You're just like your father".
Sid Roth: There is nothing she could have said worse.
Dr. Jim Richards: No. I mean, it's true. And fortunately, I'm so thankful I didn't hurt her. But still, I realized that I was trapped in this thing of becoming this person that I hated.
Sid Roth: How did you bust yourself out? I mean, you were headed towards death, suicide, prison, overdosing. I mean, you had no chance. None. It was everything was against you.
Dr. Jim Richards: Do you know what the great thing is? It doesn't matter where you are, there's always a chance. There's always an opportunity because down inside me, you know, and I would try to kill myself by overdosing. I couldn't just outright kill myself. I can remember overdosing to the point that I would be semi-conscious and your hands and feet would go numb. My legs would go numb. My arms would go numb, my face. I would realize when this gets to my heart I'm dead. I would just lay there waiting for death. And I don't know how many times I would reach those states and somehow survive. But you know, down inside there just kept being something, Sid, there's a way, you don't have to stay here. You don't have to stay here.
Sid Roth: Did you hear that? You don't have to stay there. There is a way.
Dr. Jim Richards: That's right.
Sid Roth: We're going to discuss this. Don't go away. Be right back after this word.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with dr. Jim Richards. Unbelievable. Jim, it's unbelievable you survived. I mean, did you catch this? His stepfather tries to kill him, beat him to death. He's literally fending for himself on the streets. He's into drugs. He's emulating his father and his stepfather. He caught himself almost wanting to kill a woman and she said to him the worse thing he could have ever heard, "You're just like your father". So with all the pain that you have gone through, if you can get out of it then anyone can get out of this pain. How did you get out of it?
Dr. Jim Richards: Well you know, the greatest thing was what gets you out of pain is just somebody loving you out of it. But you know, when you're so unlovable nobody is going to do that.
Sid Roth: You're self-destructing.
Dr. Jim Richards: That's right, total self-destruction. But you know, I discovered that God loved me so much that he literally let Jesus take, become all my sin and take all the punishment for all my sin and all the alienation so that in reality I would never, ever have to be alone or unloved if I would accept that as a free gift.
Sid Roth: Okay. Wonderful. That's good for you. You had that free gift. But what about the rage in that young man that wanted to kill his father, kill is stepfather? What did you do with that? Did you just turn the other cheek and say I forgive you?
Dr. Jim Richards: You know, Sid, there is a part of my story I've never told you because I killed my father, my stepfather, my brother, my mother and my sister.
Sid Roth: No, you never told me that.
Dr. Jim Richards: I never told you that.
Sid Roth: I may not be this close to you.
Dr. Jim Richards: But I didn't do it the way you think I did it. You know, love puts out the fire of rage. Experiencing unconditional love brings healing to your heart and brings peace to your heart. And really everything that everybody has ever done to me in comparison to experiencing the love of God, it would be almost like running to the ocean with a cup and saying, I'm going to steal some water. You know what? I can afford that in light of the fact that I have this ocean. All that rage really in time turned into mercy because I realized they needed the same love and the same mercy that I did. And so the way I killed all of them is I took them to the cross and I introduced them to the same God that I met through Jesus, and they died the same death that I did so that they were able to let go of their painful past, and they were able to let go of their rage. And that was a start. That didn't mean the problem was solved.
Sid Roth: What was the key to stop you? I mean, you were becoming just like your father, just like your stepfather. There must have been some key to turn you around.
Dr. Jim Richards: There was. Key number one is experiencing the unconditional love of God through the Lord Jesus. Key number two was releasing my judgments. That was the ultimate key.
Sid Roth: Releasing your judgments. I mean, your judgments were true, weren't they?
Dr. Jim Richards: I knew what happened. But see, judgment isn't saying what happened. Judgment is the assumption that you know why the person did what they did.
Sid Roth: So like why did your stepfather try to kill you? You didn't know why, but why did he?
Dr. Jim Richards: You know, I learned things about my stepfather's past. I discovered that when he was a child his father tried to kill him with an axe. And when he was a child he was in an automobile accident and they thought he was going to die, and they didn't have enough money to take him to the doctor, so they just locked him a woodshed to die. He had a horrible past of hurt and pain that influenced his life just like the hurt pain in my life was making me go out and express rage. And so the thing is when you're a child though and these things happen to you or even as an adult, you assume that the reason of why it's happening is because you hate me. This is about me. This is all about me. And you know, I discovered that people do what they do. It really doesn't have much to do with me. I just happen to be there when they do it.
Sid Roth: Wait a second. You're an emotional being. I understand logically you're separating the two. But is there something supernatural that allows you to do this?
Dr. Jim Richards: Oh yes, yes. The grace the God coming inside you, empowers you to be and do what you've never been and done before.
Sid Roth: Okay. You told me that this judgment business is the number one cause of sickness. What happens to an individual when we they judge and they say in their judgment, in effect, I know why you're doing something?
Dr. Jim Richards: Well you know, there are several different ways that we judge and when we judge other people. But the most destructive judgment that we have is the judgments about ourselves. And we look at our own failures and we start trying to sort out why we did this, because you see, every judgment Carries with it a penalty, and there is the expectation of a penalty once a judgment is passed. We pass judgments on ourselves and we say, you know, I don't deserve to be happy because I did this because I'm a bad person. Or we come up with these reasons why and we pass these judgments. I'll tell you something interesting. With the discovery of DNA, they realized that every cell in your body has intelligence and there's analytical intelligence. There is biological intelligence, but there's also emotional intelligence in every cell in your body, and anything that you believe at a deep level, every single cell in your body works to make it happen. And if you pass a judgment that says, I don't deserve success.
Sid Roth: What if you don't pass a judgment, but someone passes that judgment on you, you'll be a failure your whole life if you accept it. You're to say every cell in my body?
Dr. Jim Richards: If you believe it, every cell in your body will work to make sure it comes to pass.
Sid Roth: I don't want that. You don't want that.
Dr. Jim Richards: No.
Sid Roth: You don't want that, do you? What are we going to do about it? Tell me. I'm all ears.
Dr. Jim Richards: That's the great part. You know, every cell in your body is working to take you somewhere that you believe. That's why whenever we meet God and we experience what he offers us in Jesus, the first thing he says he wants you to do is to renew your mind. And to renew my mind, really it's about changing my opinions. And I've got to remind my mind, and I've got to start with coming to accept how much God loves me, and I've got to come to where I only see myself as God sees me. That's got to become my reality. I am loved. I am accepted. I am...
Sid Roth: Help me out, jim. I had not seen you in person and I saw you and your wife standing in a corner waiting for me and my group to show up.
Dr. Jim Richards: Right.
Sid Roth: And I looked over at you. I didn't see the cross around your neck. I saw only one thing. I saw an earring in your ear. And I have to tell you, I thought well he's not one of the group and so I just ignored you. And then you came up and said, "Are you so and so"? And so I made a judgment. Now the judgment that I made was wrong. Isn't that a perfect example of what we do all the time?
Dr. Jim Richards: Sure.
Sid Roth: All the time.
Dr. Jim Richards: It really is. You know we would look at somebody and we would say this is why this person has tattoos. A man came, actually a man came to my church the other day covered in tattoos, I mean, from the tips of his fingers all the way up his arms, up his neck and his head was shaved up to about here, and here he had a ponytail, a weird looking ponytail. And so we have a little cafe' in our church, so I went over and sat down with him in the cafe' afterwards, and bought him a burger, and sat there and talked with him. And when he left, he told somebody, "I can't believe," he said, "For the first time in my life I've gone somewhere that people are sort of normal and they treat me normal". So he came back and asked me, he said, "Why didn't my tattoos offend you"? I said, "Because I attach no significance to them. I didn't assume anything about you because you had tattoos".
Sid Roth: He must have been so disarmed.
Dr. Jim Richards: Oh he was. And he's been back real regular since then and he's accepted the love of God.
Sid Roth: Okay. What can I do about my judgments because I have far too many. Very quickly.
Dr. Jim Richards: Very quickly, you make a decision to release the people in your past or even release yourself from your judgments. You know, I don't know why this happened. I don't know why this person did it. See, it's not enough to forgive somebody, you got to release them from your judgments. But also, you'll never really experience forgiveness or get forgiveness until you actually release judgments even toward yourself. See, I can look back and say I failed at something. I really don't know all the psychological, physiological circumstantial reasons I made that failure. I just know I made a failure and I don't have to figure out why. I can just go to God and say, God, you know what, I made this really, really bad move over here, and that's really not who I want to be. And so I release myself from all the whys and all I want to do is follow you wherever you're taking me. And life gets incredibly simple. You know, my life is so simple. Honestly, I used to wake up every morning and my first emotion was rage, I mean, if you touched me to wake me up in the morning.
Sid Roth: I have a question. Was that your first emotion, anger and rage? You know, maybe, just maybe you've been judging too much. There is a way to be free from this judgment. There's only way to be free from this judgment is recognize that you'll be judged the same degree you judge other people. You want to be forgiven? Then repent to God in the name of Jesus for your judgment. Tell God you're sorry for judging yourself, for judging him, for judging your father, your mother. There's a freedom and I can feel a river, a river of God's love that is pouring right out of this television right now and this love is equipping you totally, totally for freedom. This is your moment. Take it. Don't miss it.