Hurt People Healed: Grace Overcomes Trauma, Addiction, & Abuse

December 12, 2025

Host: Dr. Isaac Crockett

Guest: Sean DeMars

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 12/12/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, thanks so much for tuning in. Welcome to this Friday program of Stand in the Gap. Today. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett, and Tim, maybe you might chime in here, but we have a special guest today and I think that the last month or so of programs that I’ve been doing Friday, programs I’ve been fortunate enough to get new guests on. So these are first time guests and we have another guest that I’m really excited about today, a first time guest. Hopefully we won’t run him off. He’ll be willing to come back sometime, but we’re discussing some really difficult topics today. And for those of you parents or grandparents or somebody with children who’s listening with this, just want to let you know at the outset of this, we’re going to be talking about trauma, about abuse, about addiction, but we’re also going to be talking about something beautiful and that’s something more powerful than any of these ugly, sinful things of this world, but something powerful enough to break the cycle, and that’s the amazing grace of Jesus Christ.

Our guest today is Pastor Sean DeMars. Sean is the pastor of Sixth Avenue Community Church down in Alabama, Decatur, Alabama. He’s the host of a really neat podcast, the Room for Nuance. He’s the author of several different books and articles and things, including a book that we’re going to be looking at today. It’s an autobiography of his really Rebel to His Will, a story of Abuse, Father Hunger and Gospel hope. And Sean is also a husband to Amber and a father to two precious daughters. So Pastor Sean DeMars, thank you so much and welcome to Stand In the Gap Today.

Sean DeMars:

It’s an honor to be here, brother. I can’t wait to have this conversation with you.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, I’m excited and I’ll say if you want to go to our Facebook page, you can see a video of Sean sometimes. My wife is this way when she hears somebody on radio, she’s like, I want to see what they look like. Where’s a video of them? So we have a video on our Facebook site of Sean giving a nutshell version of his testimony. But before we go into the hard places that we talked about, Sean, could you help our listeners get to know you if they don’t already? How does somebody who part of your life, you were a self-described atheist end up as a Bible preaching pastor and a family man who dotes on his wife and children?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I never thought it would happen. I said that God didn’t exist and I was very angry at him for not being there. Some of my earliest memories are going through pretty horrific scenarios of abuse and praying and asking God to rescue me from that. And when I perceived that he didn’t come through for me, I relegated him to non-existence, went through a life of crime and I was a drug dealer and I was in gangs and I was a pimp and I did all these things. And then when I was 18, I was facing 20 years in prison and in God’s grace was evangelized and I repented of my sins and trusted in the gospel. And that was about 21 years ago. And a lot has happened since then, some ups and some downs. But after serving in the military and then spending four years as a missionary in the jungles of Peru, the Lord brought me into the pastorate and it’s been the best, most beautiful, most difficult thing that I’ve ever done. And I’m just so thankful that I am here because I know where I could be and I know where I really should be in hell. But God has grace rescued me from that and I’m so thankful.

Isaac Crockett:

Amen. I’m thankful for ministry too, brother. And we’ve used some documentary things about the falseness of some of the American versions of the gospel that are out there and that’s kind of where I was first introduced to your ministry seeing you talking about coming out of prosperity gospel stuff. And then you and I have connected and we were talking and I didn’t realize how deep your background and the abuse that you grew up in and some of the things you were just mentioning. And one of the things in your book, and something I have seen firsthand in my life repeatedly is that hurt people, hurt people. And those with the greatest abuse oftentimes become the abusers themselves. And so your book and your life, they seem to prove that’s true, but they also prove something bigger. And that’s what you just talked about. And that’s Jesus Christ, his grace is even greater than our deepest wounds. And we want to get into more details, but could you maybe just give us a little summary, we have a few minutes here as we’re getting into this program, but a summary of what your book or what your testimony is about?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I mean it’s my story, which I know I feel a little weird saying that Who am I? Why should anyone read my story? But the fact is, ever since I got saved, everywhere I go, people ask me to share my testimony because it is unusual. People don’t often go from being violent criminals to being missionaries and pastors. And it really just tells that story. It tells the story of a little boy who was pretty horrifically abused by the people who were supposed to love him and provide for him and protect him. And then it tells the story of a confused teenager who didn’t really know how to live in a world after kind of going through all of that and who responded with violence and anger and destruction. And then it tells the story of my salvation and then how I’ve tried to serve the Lord ever since then. And even that story has been fairly atypical living in the jungles of Peru, doing a church revitalization by God’s grace, rescuing a church from heresy and death. And I tried to be honest and tell that story with as much detail as possible so that you can see the true glory of grace in it all.

Isaac Crockett:

And that’s one of the things I love about sharing testimonies of how we’ve come to the grace of Jesus Christ, how we’ve come to be in Christ. My dad had a testimony of being saved out of violence and addiction and things like that. My grandfather on my mom’s side had a testimony actually accepting Christ as he watched 10 young Dutch med students. He was in the Dutch underground and these students had been brought out publicly by the Nazis and as they were being told to give their last words, they sang Martin Luther’s great doctrinally filled him a mighty fortress as our God. And as they were doing that, the guns were turned on them and they were killed and very dramatic and could go into details on all those. But yet my own life is a lot different because I grew up in a home more like what Sean? Your kids are growing up in where my parents showed me the love of God in Christ. And yet all of those stories are stories of grace. We’re almost to our break, but Sean, what are some of the books that you’ve written or maybe some that you’re working on right now that you could let our listeners know about?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, so the first book I wrote was on the Prosperity Gospel, trying to make that less academic, more accessible. I wrote this book which tells my story. I also wrote a book on congregational singing. So how can we do a better job as a church singing praises to God? That one’s pretty short and accessible. It’s based on Exodus 15. And then I have a couple of other smaller resources out there. But if you Google Sean DeMars books, they should just pop right up.

Isaac Crockett:

Yes, I did that. I knew of some of what you’re talking about. And then when I googled your name a couple of days ago, I was surprised a lot came up, I think with Nine Marks ministry. And then about the prosperity gospel, which is kind of where I was introduced to you. And that’s a topic we have discussed a lot on here, but a topic that bears discussion in the age of which we live, but so many other things. And then your podcast room for nuance, some really good discussions there. But we want to come back to this powerful story, rebel to your will, a story of abuse, father hunger and gospel hope. And we want to talk with Sean about this and we want to look at the home he grew up in or the lack thereof. And we’re going to ask what do we do when we see a child trapped in a similar kind of dark situation today?

So stay right here. Please stay tuned. We’ll be right back for more of this on Stand in the Gap today. Well welcome back to our program and this is Pastor Isaac Crockett. I am talking to Pastor Sean DeMars and he has been on with us from Alabama where he’s a pastor. And this is one of those programs that I think you’re going to remember. He grew up in a home where he didn’t have a father, never knew his father, and he also grew up with a lot of abuse. And one of the things he writes about in his book, his book, the title of his book is Rebel to Your Will, A Story of Abuse, father Hunger and Gospel Hope. And in that it’s this autobiography of what God’s grace has done for him and in his life. And I think Sean is on the line right now.

He was just on and then he was off, but I think he’s back on. But we want to talk to him going deeper into this now we kind of introduced a little bit of where Sean is at as a pastor and what God is doing in his life, but we want to talk about some of what went on in his life that starts this book. And so Sean, your friend, pastor Mark Dever, he wrote a forward to this book. It’s so good. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I just wanted to read a few sentences from this that he wrote about your book, rebel to Your Will. And he says this, he this is a story of God’s grace, even so this book is hard to read, but even more this book is good to read. Sean writes in a staccato style conveying his own experiences of some dark episodes of a broken life.

He writes with unvarnished honesty, juxtaposing his experiences as a child with those he and his dear wife, Amber are now providing for their own daughters. This makes the book bearable, and I thought that was a really good way of saying this. We don’t like to talk about these uncomfortable subjects, but we need to be looking at this. We need to be walking as children of light in this dark world and shining the light, the purity of the gospel and the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So Sean, in your book you reveal that in your life, your earliest childhood memory is one of horrific abuse. At what age did you start to put things together and say, you know what, this isn’t normal. This isn’t how most kids live.

Sean DeMars:

Yeah. So I would say brother, that the very first time, my very first memory is of me trying to run away from it and hide from it. So I think intuitively I understood that this wasn’t normal or right or natural. And then another one of my earliest memories is of throwing away my a pill that my mom had for her thyroid issues. And she realized I was throwing them away and she came to me and she said, why are you throwing my medicine away? Well, it was because in my mind I associated pills she took with her beginning to act erratic and abusive, and I didn’t realize that there was a difference for the pills that she took to get high and the pills that she took to keep her healthy with her thyroid. So all that to say, from a very early age, I realized what’s happening here is not normal, it’s not good.

I wanted to run away from it. I wanted to try to stop it however I could. I just didn’t have the agency to do so. I think I really finally kind of put all the pieces together. This isn’t how most people live. When I got away from most of the bad home environments that I was in throughout my childhood, most of my friends were also people with parents who had drug addictions and some level of abuse as well. So I think I finally put a stop to it when I was about 13 or 14. One day the boy became a man and my mom couldn’t really hurt me anymore. And that’s really when it all stopped.

Isaac Crockett:

Your mom had gone through a lot of really tough dark things herself as you look at it now and how God and his grace has worked in your life and you can look back at these things, how does that generational cycle work and how does the gospel break it? Maybe what are you doing to build a cycle of gospel purity for your children and for the next generation in your life?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I don’t know all the nuances of how the cycle works, but as a general rule, people practice what they inherit that could be religiously in the traditions that they’ve received in the church, but it could also be in the family. I know how to be a parent, most of all because of how my parents parented me. And so you can grow up in a house where yelling is normal and you don’t think anything of it. You can grow up in a house where beating is normal, don’t think. Or maybe you think something of it but you don’t like it, but you don’t know anything better. Well, my mom grew up in a home where there was a lot of abuse, and that’s what she passed on to me. And as far as breaking that cycle, the only hope that I really think there is any ultimate hope is salvation.

I mean, if it wasn’t for me being saved, I would still be the same broken creature that I was and I would still be just as angry and just as fearful and lacking in self-control and giving into my fleshly impulses. The only thing that stopped that was Jesus. And I can say that after having gone through pretty significant test runs with everything else that the world has to offer, I mean I got sent to bootcamp because they thought that the problem I had was a lack of discipline and that didn’t fix me. I got admitted to mental institutions and medicated on several occasions because they thought that I needed psychotropic meds and talk therapy and that didn’t fix me, and I could just kind of run through the gamut of all the proposed solutions. And none of them worked. None of them even came close to working. And usually even if I made some progress when I would rebound back to the flesh, it would just be worse than ever. The only thing that worked and really worked and stayed working was when Christ came and gave me a new heart. And so that’s why what we preach is not therapy or manly discipline. We preach Christ and Christ crucified.

Isaac Crockett:

Amen to that. And in my life, I’ve worked in case management, social working spheres. I’ve worked in public schools, some of the worst public schools where kids have gotten kicked out of pretty bad public schools, and that was what I saw make the difference as well. All these other kind of safeguards don’t really work, and it’s a spiritual issue at the heart of all of it, it all kind of comes together. But what about, maybe there’s somebody listening right now. Maybe it’s a grandparent, maybe it’s a pastor, a teacher, a neighbor. This often in our church that I grew up in was a large church. We had a lot of ministries into parts of the community where there was rampant drug addiction and things, and we often had children come to us as a safe place and we found things out. What happens when you find out or you suspect that a child is living in a circle like what you lived in and there is abuse. Are there any practical or immediate steps that you would point out that we could do to help a family to point a child to Christ and to help them from the situation they’re in?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, so this is, as you know brother, because you lived in that world, this is very tricky and complicated and it depends on a thousand what ifs. So let’s just start with the worst scenario. If you find out that a child is being abused, not just his parents are tough on him or they yell a lot, but really abused, you need to report it, you need to find someone. It can be DHR or whatever that is in your state, the police, the principal, you got to report it. The most loving thing you can do for a child who’s being seriously abused is to bring the government in, which has the power of sword for just these reasons, to do justice, to protect those who can’t protect themselves. Now, if you find out that a child that you know is living in a home situation that’s just not good, unhealthy, the best thing you can do is love them.

Just be to them insofar as you can be what their parents haven’t been for them. So when their parents just scream and cuss at them all the time, you speak to them with loving patience and gentleness. When their parents fail to give them the wisdom of Christ that they so desperately need as they’re trying to figure out how to become people in this world, you resolve to do that for them. And I know that’s going to be difficult depending on the context. It’s going to be hard for a public school teacher to talk about Jesus with their students, and you have to do that with wisdom and prudence. Jesus says you have to be wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove. So my advice would just be in whatever situation you are in, try to as wisely as possible, act and speak the gospel to that child and then just pray for fruit. Because at the end of the day, even if you do the very best job, you can’t save them. You can’t change their heart, and that’s what they need more than anything. So pray that God would do what you can’t.

Isaac Crockett:

Amen. I would just heartily agree with what you said. I have growing up at the church ministry that I was a part of and my dad, there were a number of times that I saw this happen at our church where the church contacted authorities and they said, this child is not going back to that home. It’s an unsafe environment for these reasons. Some of the same things you talk about in your book, and I’ve seen other cases where it wasn’t to the extreme of the abuse you’re talking about, but it was an unhealthy environment and the church members we called upon to step in and to be a healthy influence on the child’s life and in some cases on the parent’s life, helping throw them a lifeline as well. But ultimately, you’re right, it goes back to God’s grace and all of this and praying for his will to be done. We’re coming to the end of our time here, but real quickly, reaching out to an addicted parent with the love of Christ, is there any tips for how to reach somebody who’s in the throes of addiction without excusing their sin but also approaching that problem?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I mean, addiction is just one of the most recalcitrant sin issues that we deal with in life. Whether we’re talking about addiction to food or pornography or drugs, it’s the sin that has the highest recidivism rate. It’s just very hard soil ministry. And so I would say that the best thing you can do for someone in the throes of addiction if you are really committed to helping them is you just have to be committed to going through a lot with them. If you say, well, I’m going to have this one conversation, and if you can’t get your act together, then well, I’ve done all I can do then listen, I’m not trying to obligate anyone to a lifetime of helping somebody with addiction. I’m just trying to set realistic expectations. I have worked, have walked with addicts over the course of many, many years, and I think that’s the most normal thing you can expect if you’re trying to help people with addiction.

Isaac Crockett:

Alright, well, we’re going to go to a quick break. When we come back, we’re going to go from childhood trauma to the time that Sean spent in Mosul, Iraq as a combat medic. I don’t think we’re going to want to miss this. Welcome back to the program. If you’ve been listening to this whole program, I’m sure you’re sitting kind of on the edge of your seat waiting to hear what’s next. If you’re just tuning in, we’ve been talking with Pastor Sean DeMars and we’ve been talking about going from hurting to healed and about his book, which is really an autobiography. And Sean is a young man in his thirties with a wife and children, but he has gone through what feels like several lifetimes of trauma and abuse and things. So we are looking at his book, rebel to Your Will, A Story of Abuse, father Hunger and Gospel Hope.

And I said this at the beginning of the program, but if you go to our Facebook page on Stand the Gap today, our Facebook page, you can see a short video. And I know sometimes when you hear us on the radio, you want to see what we look like. You can see Sean, but you can also see a copy of the book Rebel to Your Will, and you can hear a short testimony, very abbreviated version of some of what Sean has been talking about with us today. Sean, is there anything more you want to add to that? I know earlier we asked about some of the books you’ve written. Is there somewhere that people can go for more information on you and the ministries you’re involved in?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, if you just go to Amazon or YouTube or Google or any of those places, if you want to learn about the Prosperity Gospel or congregational singing or addiction or church revitalization, I have resources out there on all that. If you just Google it, you’ll find it.

Isaac Crockett:

You know what a lot of us do anyways, or maybe we should be used to doing is just go to that search engine, go to Google and put that name in. But if you go to our Facebook page, you’ll see the title, you’ll see Sean’s name and all of that, and you could watch a video of him and then from there you can do a deeper dive if you want into more things. Well, Sean, we’ve been talking about the childhood that you grew up in or lack of that really you were in a situation where you were having to kind of raise yourself and take care of your mom and go through the abuse that you incurred and addicted stuff that your mom was a part of. But can you give us maybe a little bit of an overview? We want to get into what you went through serving in the Army. You were actually in Iraq at a really important time as a medic. You gave your testimony earlier, but could you maybe catch us up to speed, how you went from some of the difficulties that you were in because of sin and what happened to your life, putting your faith in Christ and then going from that to going into the army as a medic?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I wish I could say that my decision to join the army in a post nine 11 world was purely owing to my virtue and my desire to be a good citizen and serve my country. But the fact is, after I stopped being a drug dealer because I got saved, I tried to get a job and work it, and I just didn’t really know how to do that. Nobody raised me to have core character conviction, any of that stuff. So I got fired from four jobs in a row and I didn’t really know what to do with the rest of my life. I had just married my beautiful wife, led her to the Lord, and as soon as she got saved, I said, I want to marry you. And then she said, okay, we got married and I was having trouble providing and figuring out how to live life.

And one day somebody said, if you join the army, they’ll pay you money to live. And I said, whoa. And I did it. And I’m so thankful that I did, although I’m not particularly well suited for the military, it gave me discipline and it helped me establish my life and learned things that I should have learned from my parents but didn’t. And I’m also really thankful that I got to serve as a medic, got to get up every day while on deployment and go help people and save lives, which I think was my introduction into really what it would be like to be in the ministry every day, getting up with a sense of purpose that what I’m about to do is going to really help people, but even more than that, help people eternally. And then additionally, while I was deployed, I really grappled with the reality of health.

When you’re in Iraq, you see a lot of people die and most of the people that you see die are not professing Christ. And it really puts flesh and bones on this question of what’s going to happen to people when they die? Are they going to go be with God forever? Are they going to go be separated from the glory of his presence and suffer eternally in hell? And they caused me to go back to the Bible and make sure that I was reading it right. And I found that I was. And I said, okay, well if this is true, then can’t just, my plan was to live the American dream to retire after 20 years in the army, get a good job, retire again, have two retirements going into old age and live comfortably. And I realized I can’t live like that. I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong, but I think the gospel is demanding more of me. And so from that moment on, I pursued a call to the ministry.

Isaac Crockett:

So you got saved out of this life that was so difficult, and then go into the military, you end up as an army medic, a combat medic in Mosul, Iraq during what we would find out is one of the heaviest urban fighting times our American troops I’ve ever seen. I mean the casualties of the Iraqi army and the civilians just sky high. And from that, the Lord calls you from that into ministry. It’s pretty incredible. But while you were there as a medic, what did you see? What did you carry? Talk about trauma as a medic there in Iraq?

Sean DeMars:

I don’t know that I carried any trauma. I mean, there’s a sense in which when you have a hard childhood that it just never goes away. The Lord is very kind to heal and you grow and you learn. But if you get a big gash in your leg, there’s always going to be scar tissue there even if the wound heals. So that’s always there. But I didn’t particularly feel that. I think we live in a therapeutic culture which kind of encourages people to always indulge in the traumas of their past. I think a better path forward is to acknowledge it, but then to rejoice in the growth and the healing and then to just move forward. And so most of my time in Iraq wasn’t spent thinking about trauma that I experienced. It was really thinking about, okay, who is in front of me? Who needs my help today and what can I do to help them?

Isaac Crockett:

And to have that mindset with some of the things that happened is so helpful. And that’s, again, being in Christ as a new creature helps you to put your priorities. And I think even as you were going through that, your priorities of, Hey, you know what? There’s a whole kingdom of God I need to be focused on. Would we talk to somebody who, whether it’s somebody from law enforcement or military or first responders who have seen what we call traumatic incidents, I’ve seen some gory things as you even experienced, especially as a medic firsthand. Or when we talk about a child who’s had his or her childhood taken away from them and been horribly abused and these different impacts of that, how does grace work in that? And I know this is even in your testimony kind of from some of your earliest memories looking for something there and finding it maybe later in your life, but how is God’s playing a role even in the midst of those humanly horrible things going on?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, well, God’s grace is being treated better than you deserve, and so you don’t get what you deserve and you get something greater instead. And so the fact is, even though I did go through all that stuff as a child, one of the main reasons why I was angry at God is because I thought I deserved something different. And there’s a sense in which all children deserve to be raised up in a happy, healthy home with both parents, but the fact is also that I’m a sinner and what I deserve is hell. And so I try to, whenever I encounter any difficult experience in this life, whether that’s seeing people dying in Iraq or having church issues where I serve or health issues or family issues, I try to just remember that any good thing that I received from God is infinitely more than what I actually deserve from God. And then that helps give me a sense of sobriety as I examine the pain and the suffering and the difficulty of whatever thing I may be experiencing or have experienced in the past.

Isaac Crockett:

We have just a little over a minute. As a pastor, you are a shepherd. God has called you to be the elder of a sixth Avenue community church. How does your shepherding, how have those influence of what you went through in the military, what you went through as a child even really living in the jungles of Peru? How has that sharpened your skill as a shepherd of people?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I mean many pastors, I shouldn’t say many, let me modify that. Some pastors, they go from kind of being the king of the youth group to going to a bible college, to going to seminary, to then becoming a pastor, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but they just haven’t lived much. And so I would just say that Second Corinthians says that we are comforted. We comfort with the comfort by which we have been comforted. So I would say the more you’ve lived in this life, the more you’ve experienced the grace of God, the better you’ll be able to share it and administer it to others.

Isaac Crockett:

That is such a powerful passage and it reminds us, and some of the things that we go through that we don’t understand at the time, God brings things into our lives later or other people into our lives. And so even just the triaging that you did as a medic during those times or the realizations that you came to and the saving grace, I think of John Newton and his song, even Amazing Grace and His Testimony. But all of these things are testimonies of God’s grace. And no matter where you are today as you’re listening to this, and again, I would encourage you to at least go to our Facebook page and watch the testimony that Sean gives and then see maybe you need to read the book as well and be looking for people to help, but the opposite of this kind of selfish man-centered manmade prosperity gospel.

And Sean, you could talk for hours on that, but the opposite of that is true. Salvation comes because God so loved us and he sent his son, and it comes in sacrifice. And we need to be learning to live a life and live a sacrificed life, not just for others, but first and most importantly humbled and surrender to God’s will. And it’s just so amazing, Sean, to see how God has worked that way in your life. We’re going to take our last time out and we’re going to come back for our final segment on Stand the Gap today on this Friday edition. And when we come back, we’re going to kind of wrap things up and look at how you can go from being a victim to being a victor through Jesus Christ. Welcome back to the program. I’m Pastor Isaac Crockett talking with Pastor Sean DeMars on this Friday edition of Stand the Gap Today.

If you’ve been listening to the whole program, thank you so much for staying tuned in. If you’re just tuning in right now at the end of our program, let me encourage you. I’ve been letting people know that you can hear a quick version, I guess you could say of Sean’s testimony on our Facebook page, and you can see the title of his book there, rebel to Your Will, and you could get that and delve into it and maybe it would be a great Christmas gift for somebody in your life that could really use this. Maybe somebody in ministry who’s dealing with folks, maybe somebody who’s dealt with trauma or addiction or abuse themselves or maybe for yourself, but also you can go to our Stand in the Gap websites or Stand in the Gap app. If you haven’t downloaded our Stand in the Gap app, that is the best way to stay tuned with us.

You can stream it live at 1205. During the weekdays, you can get archives of any of our radio or TV programs plus extra things. Tim goes in and he does these podcast q and a programs where you don’t have to listen to the entire program. You could just listen to one question and the discussion around it. So a lot of really cool things on our Stand in the Gap app. And if you’re just now tuning in, maybe via a podcast or very likely on radio, you could get our app and then you could share the transcript or the full program with a friend or a loved one, somebody from your church that ought to hear this program. It’s there, it’s archived, and you can use it as a tool from here on out. Well, Sean, thanks again for being on our program and in your book you make it crystal clear that we’re not victims of this world of society and things.

You were just talking about that in our last segment. But ultimately, we can go from what feels like a victim. We’re all born into sin, born as children of darkness, but we can become a victor and that you found victory through Jesus Christ. You are a rebel that was conquered by grace, and you used the word saying earlier about being saved and salvation and coming to Christ. Can you just expound upon that a little bit and just share what that means to find victory through Jesus Christ, to be in Christ, to accept Jesus or to believe on Jesus Christ as savior?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, I would say that when you look at the way Paul talks about victory in the book of Philippians, he doesn’t talk about it in such a way that makes it seem like we will for himself. He doesn’t see it as him necessarily being freed from prison. He says, whether I live or whether I die, it’s all for Christ. And that’s my victory. And I think that’s what the victorious life is for Christians. That doesn’t mean that we don’t ever have victory over sin and addiction. That doesn’t mean that sanctification doesn’t happen. Of course, of course all of that does. But the fact of the matter is the apostle Paul was victorious, even though he was beaten and shipwrecked and abandoned and stoned and falsely put on trial and hungry and poor and naked, Jesus was victorious even though he was beaten and abandoned and suffered a criminal and slave’s death on a cross. And we are victorious, even though we still have to deal with so many realities of life in this fallen world, our sin and the sin of others. But Jesus is risen from the grave. He is victorious, and if we are in him, his victory is our victory. And the whole Christian life is just by God’s grace living out that reality, having faith that that’s true until the day when Jesus comes back and demonstrably proves it to be true for every eye to see and ear to hear.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, thank you for that, Sean. I would say most people listening to this program, we claim to be a Christian. We know from the way Jesus taught and we know from studies from our friends like George Barta and different ones that most people in America who profess to be a Christian don’t seem to really understand that they are sinners in need of God’s grace. And one of the things I appreciate about your book and going back to your pastor friend Mark Dever who said juxtaposing kind of the abuse you went through with the life you’re raising your children in, is that we see repentance and grace. We see faith and obedience matched in there, and that’s how every one of our lives should be. And sometimes when we’ve grown up in a Christian environment, we repent. It’s maybe not as obvious as somebody else who’s grown up outside of that.

And so I really appreciate what you’ve just said and what your book portrays what it truly means to be a Christian. We’ve been so inundated with false doctrines of what we kind of call the prosperity gospel that we think salvation is for our good and we don’t see repentance and faith in Christ, and we don’t see that we need to be willing to give our lives for Christ. Well, similarly, Sean, I grew up in a very different background than you. I was a pastor’s kid. I went to Christian school the whole thing, yet I was still just as dead in my trespasses and sins as anyone else. My dad, his background was one of more abusing things, addiction to substances, violence, and then he repented of his sins and believed on Jesus Christ. It’s the same grace that saved me as saved my dad or saved you. Can you just explain the title of your book is Rebel to Your Will. Can you explain how all of us, even the seemingly best person listening today, how all of us are all rebels to God’s will and in need of His grace?

Sean DeMars:

So as you might imagine over the years when I’ve shared my very cinematic testimony in churches, I’ve had numerable people come up to me and say, oh, your testimony is so dramatic and my testimony is so boring. And I have just a simple response that I give every time someone says that. We all have the same testimony. Ephesians two, we were all dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked following the prince of the power there, the course of this world, we were all beholden to the flesh. We were all dead in Adam. As soon as we committed our first sin, we agreed with Adam in his rebellion against the maker. And therefore, we all needed the same grace. We needed God to come and take our dead heart and replace it with a new living heart. And when we get to heaven, we’re going to see really clearly just how incredibly God’s grace has come to bear on all of our lives. And I really think people are starting to get that. I think that the more you grow in Jesus as a Christian, and the more you see the ongoing effects of sin, the more you start to realize, yeah, really though before we got saved, this guy did a little more sin or a, his sin was a little more intense than mine. The fact is we’re all sinners and we’ll see that pretty clearly in heaven, I think.

Isaac Crockett:

Sean, that’s great. You just preached a two minute powerful sermon there. That is awesome. Any final words as we finish up this program in our last couple of minutes here?

Sean DeMars:

Yeah, you said that most people who listen to this show are Christians. I certainly assume that you’re telling the truth, and I hope that that’s true, but I would just be remiss if we didn’t walk away clearly sharing the gospel one more time, which is that we are dead in our sin without Christ Jesus coming to save us. And what an incredible thing it is for us to be able to say that He did come. He lived the perfect life. We can never live. He died the death that we can never die. He suffered the wrath of God so that all who repent and believe in him don’t have to. And so this gospel message is freely available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a male or female, young or old, white or black, rich or poor, ignorant or educated. This gospel is available to anyone and there’s no cost to admission other than death to your flesh. So I just want to call on anyone and everyone listening to this today to examine themselves to see if they are in Christ Jesus, and if they’re not to term from their sins and to trust in him and receive the greatest gift to be returned back home to the Father.

Isaac Crockett:

Well, there you have it. There’s the gospel again in a nutshell. Thank you, Sean. The book that we’ve been talking about today, Rebel to Your Will by Sean DeMars, available now, wherever you buy books. Just Google his name, Sean DeMars. Go to our Facebook site and see the video or his book. But Sean, thank you for being so open and thank you for pointing us in all things back to Christ, our gracious heavenly Father. It is in the name of Jesus Christ. We come before you now giving you praise and glory for all that we have heard. I pray that you would guide us, that you would direct us, that your Holy Spirit would work the words of Jesus Christ into our lives and the word of God into our lives even today. And for anyone listening today who is not in Christ, who has not repented and put their faith in Jesus Christ, I pray that now that today is the day that they would do that. For those of us who do know Christ, may we praise you for your grace and worship you for the glory and give you glory for who you are. It’s in the precious and powerful name of Jesus Christ, our savior. We pray these things. Amen. Well, thank you so much for listening. Please pray for all of us here at the American Pastors Network and stand in the gap today media. And until next time, stand in the gap for truth wherever you are.