Episode 59: Robert Creech: From a Turkey House Prayer to God’s Unimaginable Plan

Jacob Paul: Welcome to the truth and love podcast with your host, Kimberly Faith. The truth and love podcast seeks to present God’s timeless truth through the lens of his remarkable love.

Kimberly Faith: Robert, it’s nice to have you on the podcast.

Robert Creech: Oh, well, my pleasure to be here.

Kimberly Faith: So I’d like to just start by kind of having you introduce, you know, where you grew up, where you’re from, and who you were before you met Jesus.

Robert Creech: Well, I grew up in West Texas. I was born in a town called Pecos, Texas, which is way out in the middle of nowhere in the desert, but I grew up in Midland because my dad worked for an oil company. Well, my parents were really moral people, wonderful people in many ways, and they were members of a Protestant denomination, which I was taken to church every Sunday and I went through the catechism training and all of these things. As a young person, I had a great desire to really know who God was and what our purpose in life was and all the big questions, you know, of why are we here, what’s after death, what’s it all about?

Kimberly Faith: How young were you when you started thinking about Christ?

Robert Creech: Well, I remember as a teenager thinking about that. And after the catechism class, particularly, because it was so boring, I had a terrible struggle through it. But I was looking forward to the bishop coming down and doing the, what do you call it, confirmation process. I was really looking forward to that, thinking, man, that’s gonna be something. Now I’m gonna get some answers, and I’m gonna find out something.

This will be a real experience. But I was very disappointed. I remember the Sunday afternoon after that ceremony had occurred, and I was back there, I think I was 13 or 14 years old. I was back there at the house, taking my little suit off, and thinking, Brother, that wasn’t anything at all. Nothing happened.

That was my kind of disillusionment with the whole process. I didn’t understand, they said Jesus was the savior, I didn’t say savior of what? No, there was no explanation given. I was looking for answers and didn’t get any was basically what my situation was. So as soon as I could, I left home and never darkened the door again of a church.

I thought, that’s Christianity, there’s nothing to it, there’s no answers to it. I was just taught that, well, I had the idea in my mind, just be a good person and that’ll be good enough. Don’t go by the rules and things like that. But I’d already been a pretty terrible teenager, drinking and smoking and lying to my parents about where I’d been going. So I knew that I was not a model citizen or anything.

Kimberly Faith: I wouldn’t say that any teenager who thinks they’re a model citizen, except for maybe my little sister, Tanya, She was pretty model. It’s probably under a disillusionment.

Robert Creech: Yeah, I know I was. Well, I remember one time I sneaked out of my bedroom window and the police came by and they noticed the window was open and they caught me down the road somewhere and brought me back to the house. That was really embarrassing. But, anyway, things like that. I I was pretty bad.

Pretty the worst thing I did was lie to my parents about everything. They thought I was great, of course, if they were a child. And I did make good grades and so forth. But but nonetheless, I was not a not a moral person at all. And I knew that and I was taught that morality is the key to pleasing God, basically.

Mhmm. That’s what I

Kimberly Faith: Pretty common. It’s a pretty

Robert Creech: common issue. Just picked that up. I didn’t really wasn’t specifically taught, I suppose.

Kimberly Faith: You know, it’s interesting you say that because, you know, Romans one talks about that, how God has placed the knowledge of himself in us.

Robert Creech: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: And not just through creation, but because he places that knowledge. And if God is righteous, then of course we have the knowledge that our sin somehow violates him and that

Robert Creech: Yeah, Well, I had a sense of right and wrong and knew I was wrong. Well, I’m pretty bad in many ways. Knew I was doing wrong things, but kept doing them anyway. That was the bad part. And I didn’t find any answers in Christianity, so I thought was Christianity.

I didn’t know there was no Bible study or anything like that, never read the Bible. Had passing acquaintance with it in the prayer book, little quotes out of the Bible, but explanations of the Bible or sermons that explained doctrine or things like that. So anyway, when I got away from home, I started exploring other religions. I wanted to find out. Was somewhat driven to know the big answers, the answers to the big questions, should say.

And so I got involved, I studied Islam, Hinduism.

Kimberly Faith: I did not know this about you.

Robert Creech: Yeah, I got involved in a yoga ashram for a while.

Kimberly Faith: Nice.

Robert Creech: Yeah. Anyway, Valerie and I, I met Valerie when I was only 19. Was And where did you Had meet not quite turned 17. She had come out to Midland 1 in the summer. Her father had died.

Yeah, it was very sad, she was 17. Her mother had died when she was only eight years old. Didn’t know that. She was an orphan and she was really traumatized by her dad’s death. But anyway, she came out there because the executor of her dad’s estate and his good friend had invited her to come get away from Houston where she lived and come out and spend some time with his daughter who was her friend.

She had lived in Midland before when she was younger, till she was 12 years old. But anyway, she came out there, so I met her, a friend of mine was Dayton, the executor’s daughter. Oh, okay. He set me up with Valerie. So anyway, after I met her, she went back to Houston and I was going to college at the University of Texas at that particular time.

Which one? Austin. Is it Austin? In Austin, yeah. Okay.

And I didn’t really study that year. That was my sophomore year in college, but that’s when I dropped out and became a college dropout. I was just interested experience. I just wanted to be there for the drugs, really. And I wasn’t a hedonistic drug taker, but I was a exploratory drug taker.

Wanted to find the answers. I was never driven by the answers.

Kimberly Faith: I’ve never heard that distinction before, but I really appreciate that and probably will Yeah, steal

Robert Creech: there’s a difference for sure. Wasn’t really into hedonism, though I was immoral in many ways, but I really was driven by a desire to know those big answers.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Robert Creech: Back in the days, I graduated high school in 1968, so that was the time, very tumultuous time socially in The US with rock and roll and Bob Dylan. The drugs were available, marijuana, and then also the psychedelic drugs, which interested me more than anything, really, because I thought

Kimberly Faith: because you were looking for this

Robert Creech: I can explore the ether or whatever. Right, right. Anyway, that was disappointing also, everything was. Even the Kundalini Yoga Ashram. Everything was a dead end street.

That was the way I got to thinking about it. Every avenue that I explored just ended up very unsatisfying. I didn’t feel like I connected with any of it, and it was all just a lot of hard work to try to get some type of spirituality, which I didn’t understand. It all involved my superhuman efforts with no guarantees of success, and so I was real frustrated. But after Valerie and I married, and we were really young, she had just turned 18, I was 20, we decided we were going to do something different, just go around.

And we just bummed around for a couple of years and worked at odd jobs and here and there, went to Mexico several times. I’d learned to speak Spanish in my youth because of living out there in West Texas. I got inspired by that.

Kimberly Faith: Okay, I did not know this. I did not know that you had some background in the Spanish language before you Oh, were yeah. Yeah, did not know that.

Robert Creech: Well, the town I was born, Pecos, was 70% Hispanic. Oh, okay. And so I was able to relate to the practicality of being able to communicate with most of the people around.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right,

Robert Creech: makes And I think that’s the reason maybe most people who study Spanish in school and never really learn the language because they can’t see any reason to do it. You have to be motivated. Strongly motivated to make the intense effort required to learn a language. But I was motivated, and I was the exception, obviously. But I studied it.

The Texas public schools had a great Spanish program. I studied junior high and high school, six years. Wow. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Didn’t know public schools even offered that many years of language.

Robert Creech: Well, in Texas. And then when I went to college, got a bunch of advanced placement credit and took a year of Spanish in well, I took two years, but one year I didn’t go, you know, to the classes. But the yeah. I was placed up there into well, studying Spanish literature with this Cuban professor there.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. And it’s so

Robert Creech: interesting. Southwestern University.

Kimberly Faith: I had no idea that that was part of your backstory before you came to know Christ, which makes so much sense.

Robert Creech: Well, it really does.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, that God was even preparing you before you knew him.

Robert Creech: Well, exactly. Of course, he does those things and I was completely unaware of what was going on. Thought I was doing my thing. But anyway, when Valerie and I, after we married and bummed around for a while, we decided we wanted to settle down somewhere and we wanted to get away from modern society and get back to the land, and so we were back to the land hippies. Wow.

I’m

Kimberly Faith: not familiar with that story.

Robert Creech: Well, there’s different kinds of hippies. There was the political hippies, the hedonistic hippies, the back to the land hippies, and all different types. So we were the back to the land type. Not interested in politics or anything like Well we ended up in Northwest Arkansas because Valerie had a small inheritance that when her dad had died, she’d left. He’d left to Valerie and her sisters.

We had $11,000 left and we thought, rather than just blow that, let’s buy some land with it. So we found a place, well, where are going to buy land? We started looking at these catalogs that existed back in those days, 1970. We found land for $50 an acre in Northwest Arkansas. Wow.

So we spent the whole $11,000 bought two twenty acres of land for $11,000 Oh

Kimberly Faith: my goodness.

Robert Creech: People hear that nowadays and they think, What? You can’t Where buy one acre was in that? That was on the line between Madison and Newton County, way out in the sticks, going in at Red Star, seven miles on the dirt road down in the creek is an old abandoned homestead that the old mountaineers that had moved there originally had only lived there one generation and they had starved out in the depression and moved on. All the remains of it were there and it was so interesting, really. Learned a lot about the Arkansas Hill people, know, who were there, dispectively called the hillbillies, boy, I came to admire them greatly.

Our nearest neighbors were two miles away and they were a family that had been there from the beginning, and they were like third or fourth generation. Their ancestors had come as pioneers to that area. Oh wow. They taught us everything. They didn’t at least mention our weirdness or anything and just took us in and treated us like kids.

We spent a lot of time up there, learned all the old ways, learned a lot of history, began to really appreciate those things. The drugs fell away. We were completely poor. We had zero money. We’d spent everything we had.

I built a little shack to spend the first winter in.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, nice.

Robert Creech: It was really bad, just made out of sawmill slabs because I got a job at the sawmill, which happened to be just a two mile walk from our place back in the other direction. Then I caught the ride out there to the sawmill on the end of the mountain.

Kimberly Faith: So you didn’t have a vehicle?

Robert Creech: Oh, did. We had an old pickup. Yeah, and a ‘sixty seven Chevrolet pickup.

Kimberly Faith: Nice.

Robert Creech: Two wheel drive, which was hard to get around in that particular area, like I say, we were very poor. We lived out there for five years. And in that five years, of course, there was no electricity, running water, telephone, none of that because there were no telephones back in those days except the kind you would go connected to a wire somewhere. Right. Like a phone booth.

Yeah, a phone booth of somebody’s house. So that was the reality back in those ancient days. The modern kids don’t understand so well, but anyway.

Kimberly Faith: There’s a lot to be said for not having that distraction, right?

Robert Creech: Well, were undistracted. Back to my purpose of wanting to find the great mysteries of life, we lived in the perfect environment. There was no distraction. I could hear cars on the county road two miles away. It was so quiet.

And my senses came to life. This was an interesting thing. In the city, one represses their senses because of over stimulation, but out there I began to open up. I smell and hear long distances, and even my vision improved, sought out things, saw more details. It was really an interesting experience.

Kimberly Faith: That’s an interesting observation. Yeah. You we wonder why when we go to the mountains for a week and are away from the distraction, why we feel so refreshed.

Robert Creech: Yeah. That’s that’s a big part of it. Yeah. Well, that that was the perfect environment, like I say. Well, I became aware of one thing out there, that my problem was not my environment, it was me.

This was a big realization.

Kimberly Faith: That’s powerful.

Robert Creech: Yeah, it I realized, you know, I’m living in the perfect place, but I’m carrying a lot of baggage with me. I’m still unsatisfied, not really content, even though I have a good wife, and here I live in this paradise, basically. I’m young and feel good, don’t mind working hard, all of that. But nonetheless, there was a great discontent in my soul, which I didn’t understand, couldn’t articulate.

Kimberly Faith: But

Robert Creech: nonetheless, I had a sense of it.

Kimberly Faith: I think there are so many people in that well, we all are in that boat until we find Jesus.

Robert Creech: Oh, Absolutely.

Kimberly Faith: I mean, because that we were designed for relationship with God. And you articulate so well what everybody knows because God has planted that knowledge in us, in every human. Right. There’s nothing that can satisfy us without direct connection through salvation

Robert Creech: to the spirit of God. You hear people say, now that I’ve been a Christian for a long time, I hear I’ve heard the expression there’s a God shaped hole in everybody Mhmm. That only God can fill.

Kimberly Faith: That’s

Robert Creech: right. That was exactly what I experienced, but I couldn’t have articulated it in that way, and I didn’t understand what it was really. Yeah. And I knew it was somehow connected with spiritual things, but I didn’t know what spiritual things were. Right.

I had a very distorted view because of the Hinduism and then even while we were out there, Valerie and I studied with the Jehovah’s Witnesses for one whole year, they came and visited us out there. This real nice young couple came and shared their step by step, their whole doctrinal perspective and everything. At the end, they made their pitch to start coming to their meetings and join them. I said, No, I’m just not buying it. It just was another dead end street.

All of this was a great frustration.

Kimberly Faith: Right, right. Was that a works based

Robert Creech: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was very dissatisfying to think, well, I’ve just got to do this on my own. I felt completely incapable of doing it. I knew that I was a flawed person, that I was looking for answers, that I didn’t have answers. Right.

So how am I gonna save myself? I couldn’t see the way to do it.

Kimberly Faith: That is so interesting that you arrived at that conclusion at such a young age because I think so many of us get We we we hope in our works to the extent that we spiral. Do you know what I mean? And that there’s such a there’s such a delusion that has been presented by so many different religions that you can you can do this. You can reconcile yourself

Robert Creech: Well, that’s what they all say. Yeah. That’s that was the impression I got from every angle that I looked at. Mhmm. It all depended on my actions.

And yet everything every time I had tried to conform or basically go along with just feeling out these different avenues, Islam, Hinduism, Hinduism, Hinduism, Yogi, everything, Christianity, what I thought was Christianity, all of that, it was also frustrating because I just felt inadequate. I felt like I’m not accomplishing anything. If it depends on me, I’m gonna fail. It’s not gonna work.

Kimberly Faith: I’m just saying that realization in your twenties, right? You were in your twenties.

Robert Creech: By the time we lived out there five years, I was 27.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. So that is such a young age to realize that you’re inadequacies because most people in their twenties think they’re supernatural.

Robert Creech: No, yeah. No, well, I didn’t.

Kimberly Faith: And that’s really unremarkable that you figured that out or you came to that conclusion.

Robert Creech: Well, it was becoming more and more of a sense. I can’t say that it was an

Kimberly Faith: Intellectual conclusion.

Robert Creech: Intellectual or articulatable idea in my mind, but nonetheless, I had the sense of it very strongly. Well after a while, we started having kids and we began to think, well we need to move somewhere where these kids can go to school. That was just our thought. So we left there, we sold that place and we moved down to Pettigrew, Arkansas, which is on the highway. Uh-oh.

And we bought this place from a guy that I had done work for and he kind of liked us, took us under his wing a little bit and he wanted to move on. So an older fellow wanted to sell us this place. So I bought the farm down there, 103 acres, and started, I just had some cattle and began working for my neighbor across the road. He had a turkey farm and he also milked cows, so I worked for him in the summer. I worked as a logger in the woods just as a way to get by, just barely scraping by.

I mean, we barely made it. When we lived out there on Falcons Creek, we only made about $3,000 a year for those five years we lived out there.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow.

Robert Creech: Which seems impossible. Nearly all of that was spent on the vehicle. We grew our own food and everything. But anyway, we moved down to Pettigrew and I began to see, you know, I could do the turkey farming myself. I’d have to get a loan, go into debt and all that to do it, but that means I could stay out here and live.

So I did that and I started to build a turkey farm, built it, got it going, After we’d been there about three years, I’d just turned 30, and I enjoyed living there and working, the folks around in the community. Our neighbor across the road was a great guy. But I had that same nagging sense of I don’t know the answer and I want to know the answer. I remember when I turned right around my thirtieth birthday, I was looking in the mirror one morning and I said, Well, I just give up. I don’t think I’m ever going to find the answer.

So I’m just going to try to be a good person, do the best I can, hope for the best. I had the idea from my upbringing that, well, God will weigh me up in the end. If my good works outweigh my bad works, I’ll be all right. Wow. But that was so unsatisfying, I didn’t really believe it.

Kimberly Faith: That was your default.

Robert Creech: Yeah, exactly. I gave up and went back to my default, as you put it. That’s a good way to think about it. But it was not satisfying. And so resignation, I guess, is what that really was.

I resigned myself to that and thought, well, I’ve got a nice family and I’ve got work I enjoy, I’ll just be content to live my life like that. But that’s not satisfying.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Robert Creech: So interestingly enough, that’s when God really came into my life. There on a turkey farm, one of our old friends, a fellow named Wayne Gustafson, had moved to Fayetteville and he was a plumber. I’d hired him to come work on my place, help me with some plumbing stuff that I was doing for the farm. And he stayed with us for a few days out there at the house. Like I say, he’d been a friend for several years back in the intense hippie days.

We had gotten out of the hippie days, quit the drugs, cut my hair, all that stuff. Kept getting tangled up in the woods, you know? Absolutely. Wasn’t practical. Anyway, when Wayne came out there, he had moved to Fayetteville and there in Fayetteville he’d gotten under the influence of church, Mission Boulevard Baptist Church, and he’d gotten saved.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Robert Creech: When he came to our house, he was a newly saved, newly born again, and I mean a different guy, so intense. He’d always been an intense and emotional person as a musician, artistic type, know? And I was not that way at all, more of an introverted, real slow, but anyway, quiet type. He came out to the house and he was bursting with enthusiasm. He started talking about how Jesus is coming back and this and that’s gonna happen.

He talked about all these biblical prophetic events with absolute certainty and I was stunned by that. How can you be certain about anything like Wow. Uncertainty was my key word, you know that? The only thing I was was uncertain for sure. But he had this great certainty and I thought, it dawned on me, boy, I’d like to have certainty about something.

I really would. And he said, Well, the Bible is the Word of God. It’s authoritative. You can believe it. And I said, I didn’t say anything to him, but I thought in my mind, Man, I wish that was true.

I really wish I did have something I could literally count on, believe in, follow, with full confidence

Kimberly Faith: Besides yourself?

Robert Creech: That would be a guide for yeah. Yeah. Except for my own opinion, which I didn’t even have political opinion, so I thought, I don’t know if I’m right or wrong. I don’t have enough information.

Kimberly Faith: So interesting.

Robert Creech: So my uncertainty, like I say, was everything. And so I just held to the things that I knew, just my daily life. Very frustrating, though. So anyway, I had that thought about, wouldn’t it be great if the Bible really was true? Well, Wayne, while he was there, one day we went off to throw some trash off.

This is not what you’re supposed to do nowadays, and I read the Lodge, but that’s the way everybody did it around. There was a dump, a local dump, and we took a load of trash up there. I’ll never forget why after we’d unloaded it, Wayne was very awkward. I could tell he wanted to say something, but he was embarrassed kind of. There was a tense moment between us, and then he said, Robert, you’re a really great guy, but it’s a shame you’re going to hell.

I said, Who? I didn’t say anything. I was stunned, so stunned. So a real silence. He said, Yeah, you’re a sinner and you’re going to hell.

And so on the way back, not a word was said. Back to the house, I didn’t know how A new take

Kimberly Faith: Christian’s approach to salvation

Robert Creech: was Well, was real blunt.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah, was very blunt.

Robert Creech: To put it mildly. Yeah. It was so blunt that it was shocking to me and I thought, now wait a minute. First, I’m defensive. I’m not so bad.

I’m working here. I’m faithful to my wife. I’m taking care of my family.

Kimberly Faith: Right. You did the morality weigh in.

Robert Creech: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I thought, I didn’t kill anybody. There’s a lot of people worse than me and things like that. Sure, I like drinking and things like that, but so what? Not so bad.

But nonetheless, that’s when the Holy Spirit began to really actually use his testimony to convict me.

Kimberly Faith: Interesting.

Robert Creech: Because I began to think about it. And then immediately after that, while he was staying there, and he only stayed like maybe three days at the house, the most important thing he said, Jesus is the only way to God. And I had been convinced in my past, well there’s many ways, and Christianity’s maybe one of them, but I couldn’t see it. All these other ways, I thought maybe there are ways too, but they were unsatisfying. But when he made this blanket statement, Jesus is the only way to God, I thought, that couldn’t really be right, could it?

But that’s, like I say, the Holy Spirit had begun to convict me. And I began to feel that that was right perhaps.

Kimberly Faith: So that’s so interesting because I just wanna make two kind of comments here. One is that, you know, Wayne, who’s a wonderful guy, he was a newly born again Christian and he was sharing what happened to him in the only way he knew to do. He obviously loved you and cared about you.

Robert Creech: Right.

Kimberly Faith: But his direct approach, even though maybe that wasn’t the polished approach.

Robert Creech: No, no, not.

Kimberly Faith: It was very much used by the Holy Spirit because God takes even our fumbling ways and uses them for good.

Robert Creech: Yeah, exactly. And

Kimberly Faith: the fact that when he told you Jesus is the only way to be reconciled, the Bible says, when you hear the truth, the truth is the only thing that’s gonna set you free. And God’s Word does not return void. And he’s paraphrasing, of course, Jesus saying, I am the way, the truth, the life, no man comes to the Father, but by me.

Robert Creech: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: But how, when you heard the Word through just a very new vessel, how the Holy Spirit, you can identify the Holy Spirit actually went to work in a big way in your life.

Robert Creech: Well, was something in Wayne’s intensity that God used. I’ve analyzed that a lot thinking about it. I think it’s important for us to be genuinely sincere and intense in our connection to God in order to be effective witnesses.

Kimberly Faith: That’s actually why we call this podcast the truth in love, because the truth is great, it’s powerful, but without the love and the manifestation of

Robert Creech: the fruit of the spirit. Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: You gotta have both.

Robert Creech: You do have to have both. Yeah. Because watered down traditional humdrum Christianity does not have that effect.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

Robert Creech: And I’ve pondered on that a lot because the intensity with which Wayne spoke to me had a big effect and God used it. And even though he never made any doctrinal statements, he didn’t teach me any Bible studies or anything like that, I didn’t know anything about the Bible. Nothing.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Robert Creech: And he didn’t share much about it.

Kimberly Faith: He probably didn’t know.

Robert Creech: He didn’t know. No, he was just getting started. And you know, that’s what happens. People tend to come to Christ, get saved, when they don’t know anything about the Bible. Don’t come on the basis of knowledge.

Come on the basis of Holy Spirit conviction. That was absolutely what happened to me. Wayne, as a musician, had set up the Living Waters group to come out and play at the little community church and pettigrew, which I never attended. I’d never been to at one And he said, Oh, wish you and Valerie had come to that. We’re going to have a little music thing on a Saturday afternoon.

And so I said, Well, we went for courtesy to Wayne, didn’t want to tell him no. So we went over there that afternoon to the concert, I guess you’d call it, they didn’t bill it like that, a meeting of some kind. I said, I was feeling pretty defensive because I’m afraid I was going to get pressured into some

Kimberly Faith: Christian Wayne was your friend.

Robert Creech: And I just went for Wayne’s sake.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Robert Creech: And my intention was to, when I would go to a presentation at a resort presentation or something like that, I intend to say no. Yeah.

Kimberly Faith: Oh yeah, yeah.

Robert Creech: That makes a lot

Kimberly Faith: of sense, right. I’m gonna go enjoy the free room.

Robert Creech: Yes. Yeah, exactly. I had already determined that I wasn’t gonna buy anything. Right. But a strange thing happened when I went, a very unusual thing.

As we sat there in the congregation, there was a decent number of people from the community had come and the band was great.

Kimberly Faith: Living Waters.

Robert Creech: The Living Waters, I couldn’t believe it.

Kimberly Faith: Did you hear the Well, we did a podcast with Jeanie.

Robert Creech: Oh, heard it, yeah. We did one

Kimberly Faith: with the Living Waters, which was so precious because email just passed and

Robert Creech: Yeah, exactly.

Kimberly Faith: It was so precious to have him in a video on with there. So anyway, sorry.

Robert Creech: Well, they had a huge part to play in this. God really used them in a great way with me and he did an amazing thing for me that was very personal, which touched me and made him began to really work on me. Because right there in that meeting, I had learned this technique in the Kundalini Yoga thing of stilling the mind and trying to make your mind to being like a lake that’s completely calm. I never had achieved that in my mind. My mind was always generating thoughts, as most people do.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Robert Creech: And I never achieved thoughtlessness, which was one of the goals. But as I sat there, I observed my mind and it was completely thoughtless. Interesting. Now wait a minute. What is going on?

That woke me up. That really got my attention in a way that nothing else could have, and it was completely personal. I’d never shared that with anybody, even Valerie.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah.

Robert Creech: So I thought, now wait a minute. I was very relaxed. No thoughts were in my mind. The living waters began playing their music. And I tell you what, that one song in particular got to me called The Way of a Fool is one of their songs.

Anybody gets a chance to listen to that, it’s a really great piece of music and inspired by Jeannie Champagne wrote it, I’m sure. But anyway, it was and I and I and I I thought, wow. That song’s talking to me. That’s me. I’m an absolute fool, and I’m lost as a goose in a snowstorm.

I tell you, the Holy Spirit really used that. There was a couple of men there that gave very short testimonies, One of them was Ken Francis and the other one Johnny Tittle. They were very short, little brief testimony. There wasn’t any big preaching thing, there wasn’t any altar call or anything, so we left, I was relieved. But in the course of the meeting, after that, Jeannie Champagne approached Valerie and said, Hey, are you a Christian?

Valerie said, Well, I guess so. She thought she might have been because she had a liberal Protestant upbringing also. Uh-huh. Well, she definitely wasn’t. But anyway, so Jeannie said, well, would you like to have a Bible study in your home?

Valerie said, She didn’t want to, but she said, Yes. So Jeannie started to set it up for Tuesdays. So Jeannie came a couple of times and Valerie had a little group of her friends, a few ladies, it was very interesting. I was in and out of the house and I didn’t listen to it, of course, but since I worked right there at home, in and out. But one of those studies in April, 1980, I was 30 years old, the Lord got ahold of me, and that’s when I the day that I actually received Christ as my savior.

Kimberly Faith: Wow. Like you were listening to one of Jeannie’s Bible sentence?

Robert Creech: No, I just passed through the house and I stopped for not over five minutes. And she was talking about Isaiah 53. And she said, this is God introducing us to our savior. Remember some words that she Wow. And I thought about how he was the one who bore all of our sins.

And it was said, he and us, he bore our sins, he covered our transgressions, he died for us, He suffered our penalty, all of these things.

Kimberly Faith: So powerful.

Robert Creech: And so that came through to me and I began to feel this tremendous sense of conviction. I tried to get rid of it, said, What in the world is happening to me? I mean, was a powerful feeling and I know many people don’t have this type of experience, but I did, this was what happened to me. So I tried to work. I said, I’m going go out to the turkey house and work.

I’ve got baby turkeys at that time and I had to feed them by hand. A lot of work, you know? And so I thought, I’ll work.

Kimberly Faith: Distraction.

Robert Creech: Yeah, that’ll distract me and that’ll get rid of feeling, you know, I’ll just work it off. Well, it didn’t work. I couldn’t stay put. I couldn’t stay there. So I thought, I’ve got to do something.

This is a spiritual issue. So there I knew this preacher that lived up on the hill up above us, three or four miles away, so I said, I’ll run up there and talk to him. Maybe he’s got some answers. Well, I drove up there in my pickup frantically, nobody was home. Wow.

Now I realize that was providential. But as I came back, came back very distressed thinking, well, there’s nothing else to do but work. I’m at home, what else to do? I tried to work. I went into the turkey house again and started feeding those baby turkeys, I could not.

I was so distracted and the pressure, the literal pressure on my chest, it felt like.

Kimberly Faith: Wow.

Robert Creech: It was on me so strong. I knew what it was, I knew I needed to turn to Jesus. And I didn’t articulate anything really. I realized that that was what I needed to do. I needed to receive Christ as my Savior.

I couldn’t have put it in those words, but I knew that was what needed to happen.

Kimberly Faith: Was it like a surrender?

Robert Creech: To get right with Jesus, yeah. So I got down on my knees right there in the sawdust of the Turkey House and just I didn’t say any words that I know of, but my heart opened up and I received Christ as my savior.

Kimberly Faith: That’s so beautiful.

Robert Creech: It was a wonderful thing. I tell you, I was by myself while God was dealing with me. When I went outside the Turkey House, it was like the world was different.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, I love that.

Robert Creech: I was amazed and I thought, now this is, look at this place. And I said, this is the sky that God created. This is the tree that God created. I mean, my mind had changed just like that in an instant.

Kimberly Faith: Oh gosh, that just brings me to tears. Was thrilling, What I’ll tell you a thrilling explanation of being a new creature in Christ.

Robert Creech: I was literally a new creature instantly. And it wasn’t anything I did.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Robert Creech: All I did was turn to Jesus. He’s the answer. He’s the one that does the transformation process that I could never do myself.

Kimberly Faith: It’s a full heart surrender.

Robert Creech: Yeah, that’s That’s

Kimberly Faith: And I remember my own testimony of salvation, same thing. Was I’ve been trying I’d grown up in Mission Boulevard, learned the gospel, and I had always prayed, Lord, save me and I’ll be good.

Robert Creech: That was the long prayer.

Kimberly Faith: Then I don’t know what Pat Riney said that night, but I knew I had never surrendered. And I don’t even remember what I prayed except what I’m done. I surrender. It’s the same thing as like this burden falls off you and your eyes are open and you know.

Robert Creech: Yeah. You know. Well, there’s not a formula of words we have to say to That’s right. I mean, knows our heart.

Kimberly Faith: He knows our thoughts.

Robert Creech: And yeah, it’s like you say, well the Bible says, to as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to those that believed on his name. And that’s what happened. Receiving is opening up to take a gift, to take a thing, to get something that’s being given to you.

Kimberly Faith: And God had given you the faith and the repentance and

Robert Creech: Well, he’d worked on me and I knew I needed to I knew I was a mess. I was fully convinced of it, no longer deluding myself. Right. And then I knew that he was the answer. And so what am I going to do with it?

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. You made a decision.

Robert Creech: And actually, did have that thought while this was going on, the conviction phase. I remember one of the thoughts I said, I think this is the truth. What am I going to do about it? My whole life I’ve been saying I want to know the truth and follow the truth. Now here it is staring me in the face, and I don’t want to be a Baptist.

I don’t want to be just a Christian, one of these guys that’s going around talking about Jesus. I mean, image, know, is, but I said, but here’s the truth, what am I gonna do? And so anyway, it all came to a head that day. The Lord called me to a point of decision. What are you gonna do?

Well, I received Jesus as my savior. And boy, am I glad. That’s been forty five years.

Kimberly Faith: Well, bet there’s

Robert Creech: a It lot just gets better and better.

Kimberly Faith: I bet there’s a lot of people in Panama and Colombia and all the countries that you’ve been a missionary. How did that all happen?

Robert Creech: Well, what happened was immediately we began to Well, I began reading the Bible and the influence of the church continued through Jeannie’s Bible studies with Valerie and Valerie and her group of friends. But also another thing happened, the church saw that there was a group of people who were studying the Bible and I was the first one to actually make an acknowledged profession, but it wasn’t long until other people did too. And so it just was something that was going on. And so the church took notice and they began sending out different men for Bible studies. So of course we attended.

I was an enthusiast now. I wanted to know more and more. I began reading the Bible. The Bible opened up to me and I tried to read it in the past thinking about it, but I could never understand it. But now it was just like reading, I could just see it.

Holy Spirit illuminated that for me.

Kimberly Faith: Natural man cannot receive the things of God. Exactly.

Robert Creech: You had the mind of They’re spiritually discerned.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

Robert Creech: And now I had a spirit, a living spirit. Right. Because what gets born again is our spirit. And that’s the communication mechanism with God. So suddenly God and I were in communication.

Boy, it was great. I was learning stuff. Tell you, and reading the Bible was just so fascinating and I’d never known what was in it before. Read copiously. But anyway, what happened was the church began to send men out and after a while, one man in particular, Brother Tom Harden, began to be our regular Bible study leader.

And it wasn’t too long until he felt like the Lord was leading him to move out there with us and get a mission started and that the Lord was wanting to start a church out there and that is what happened. One of the great examples for me of genuine Christianity was when Tom Harden quit his job in Fayetteville and came out to our area to take a minimum wage job at the sawmill, the only job available in our area, and to do it for us so that He could teach us and be around us on a regular basis. Was my example of what discipleship is. Discipleship isn’t just a bunch of Bible studies you go to and but classes and things like it’s actually personally involving yourself in the life of other people and bringing them along. Yeah.

And so I saw that in a very vivid way. And that was really turned out to be fundamental for me in the path that the Lord had for me because it wasn’t too long after that, the first year really that I was saved, I felt strongly that the Lord would call me to be a preacher, you know. So I didn’t know all the terminology and I wasn’t raised in a Baptist church or anything. And I didn’t know that an option was to resist God or something like that. Fight the calling and all that.

So I was in the perspective of, Man, I want to do everything God wants me to do. That’s So I immediately agreed, surrendered, as they say, but it wasn’t like it was hard or anything. Well, okay, Lord, if this is what you want me to do, I’ll do

Kimberly Faith: it. So

Robert Creech: I began receiving personal instruction from Tom as a result of that. And he could see that he felt confirmed that, yeah, the Lord’s moving in you for this. So we spent a lot of time together, I got trained. When he felt time was to move on to another mission, by that time, four years had passed and they felt like the mission had established itself. People had been baptized.

Had been meeting in We first we started meeting in our house, then we met in a little community building there in Pettigrew and rented it as a congregation for a while. Then the Lord gave us a piece of land. We built a building of our own. It was amazing how that all worked out. I could talk for an hour about that probably, but anyway.

The mission was organized in 10/05/1984, so I’d been saved four and a half years. And I was ordained, and the church called the new church now established called me to be the pastor. So I started pastoring it. Brother Tom moved on to another mission down in South Arkansas.

Kimberly Faith: How long after that was it the Lord called you to Panama?

Robert Creech: Well, I pastored the church for six and a half years. During the course of that time, we supported missionaries and did the things churches do. One of the missionaries that we supported, Milton Martin, was a missionary in Mexico and he invited me to go to Mexico with him. I told him I would and I had attended, I thought, I really want, I’ll back out at the last minute. But I turned out that I went.

It was Christmas time, it was an interesting thing. I went and boy, did the Lord get ahold of me down there. I remembered Spanish again after not having spoken it for fifteen years.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow.

Robert Creech: Because of living up there in in Northwest Arkansas at that time, there weren’t any Hispanics around. Mhmm. And I just shuffled that to the back, and I didn’t even thought about it. But, boy, it began to come back to life. And, course, I understood things that were going on down there.

I understood what people were talking about, and I could see that here was something that was just like the book of Acts. This man had gone down here, preached the gospel, people had gotten saved, churches had started, and they were multiplying on their own. Wow, what’s going on? There was over 100 congregations that had been in the time that he’d been down there. It had a tremendous impact on me and the Lord began to just stir my heart.

I began to, my interest in Spanish was revived. I got a Spanish Bible and started reading the Bible in Spanish, which I’d never done before.

Kimberly Faith: You know, they say that when you really know a language, you start thinking in that language.

Robert Creech: Oh yeah, oh I started dreaming in Spanish, it started bubbling up out of my soul and I realized, wow, how deep a language is a part of a person. That part began to live again, which was real interesting to me in a Christian context. I’d never been to Mexico as a Christian before and what a different experience it was than to go as a heathen just looking for pleasing myself, like Valerie and I had done in the past. Anyway, the Lord really began to stir my heart and I began to sense that I had great interest and I led the church as the pastor to get involved in missions in Latin America. And so as that interest grew and the church began to realize, oh man, this is getting What’s going on?

Kimberly Faith: He’s out of control.

Robert Creech: Well, wasn’t

Kimberly Faith: I’m kidding.

Robert Creech: Yeah, let’s see, was a couple of years there. I was about 38, I think, when the sense was really began to arise in me. By the time I was 40 years old, realized, well, God’s calling me there. He wants me to go as a missionary. And I thought, I can’t just leave this little country church out here.

Right. I’m gonna have to do something, but I began to pray and told the Lord, Well, if you’ll send another man to pastor in, then I’ll leave at that time and I’ll go as a missionary. So I began, I declared that to the church. The church said, Yeah, we know. We were really expecting it.

The family went and talked to them first, of course. They said, Well, if you think that’s right, we’re with you.

Kimberly Faith: How many kids did you have at that point?

Robert Creech: Well, at that point we had five children.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Robert Creech: It turned out there was one more to come, but we weren’t really aware of that. Wasn’t too long before he showed up, our final child. Anyway, I began to visit churches and to announce that this was going on and sure enough, the Lord sent a fellow to pastor. So I began to do the full time church visitation, called deputation, to present the ministry to churches and see if they’re interested in supporting. I love the way we as Independent Baptists do it because it’s just strictly voluntary and the Lord has a great part in deciding who goes and what happens and all of that.

Kimberly Faith: Very much, you’re very much, as churches that support missionaries, you’re very much vested in knowing, like praying and being connected to that missionary.

Robert Creech: Well, to even take on a missionary, you have to have a sense that the Lord’s leading you, that this guy’s really got a valid ministry going on and that God wants it supported.

Kimberly Faith: How after you were called to Latin America did you actually end up in Panama?

Robert Creech: Well, I visited churches for a year and a half and I said I had such a strong sense of urgency that I had to go. By this time I was 42 years old. So I actually got to Panama on October 5, the same day that I was ordained, interestingly. I saw that as well, the way it worked out, it wasn’t planned really, but 10/05/1992, we arrived in Panama. Was 42 years old at that time.

We had six kids. John was our youngest, a babe in arms. But there we were, we were quite the spectacle in the airport, I’m sure. In those days, every person who bought a ticket got two seventy pound suitcases.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, nice.

Robert Creech: So we sold everything we had in The States and what we had was what was in those suitcases.

Kimberly Faith: Oh, wow.

Robert Creech: When we showed up in Panama. On the advice of some pastors, they told Valerie, take some of the household items that you are familiar with. You’ll be glad you have them when you get down there in a strange environment and all that. Anyway, that’s when we got down there. I had a real strong, I’d been fortunate to have been mentored by Milton Martin in the Mission area.

I’d received a really thorough and excellent doctrinal training in Mission Boulevard Church from it in the process of being organized as a mission. So I had good doctrinal training and then I had this particular mission mentorship from Milton Martin, which was very valuable. And I had a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish. I had a little motto that I told churches, our goal is to tell all, teach many, and train some, a little triplet there of things that defined our basic approach.

Kimberly Faith: Gotcha.

Robert Creech: And so the idea was to do what Jesus did to make mass evangelism of the country. The goal was to tell the gospel to every single person in Panama. Where did you start?

Kimberly Faith: What part of Panama?

Robert Creech: Well, moved to the capital to start with just to get oriented really in the country and get acculturated, I guess, if that’s a word.

Kimberly Faith: Mean, to the we have urban dictionaries, acculturated sounds like a great addition.

Robert Creech: Maybe, adapted to the culture, adapted to the culture, which involved, for me, really getting intense about Spanish, which was pretty different in Panama than it was in Mexico, even though Spanish is Spanish to some extent. A little

Kimberly Faith: different dialect maybe, is that the way

Robert Creech: it Well, there’s a lot of different words. But anyway, I’d been reading the Bible in Spanish, but when I got to Panama, I determined from this day forth, I’m gonna do all my devotional time, Bible reading and prayer is gonna be in Spanish. It was important to do that because to put out in Spanish things that would be edifying and glorifying to God, needed to have it on the inside to start with. I’ve come to realize, now that I can look back on thirty years of having been in Panama, more than that now actually, the best thing, the wisest thing that any missionary can do is just to imitate what Jesus did in his earthly ministry and the Apostle Paul given to us as our biblical model for mission ministry. Basically the pattern is this, preach the gospel to every person and then deal with the people who respond and then train men for the ministry as God calls them to minister.

Kimberly Faith: So simple.

Robert Creech: It’s so simple. And there it is. You can see it crystal clear in the ministry of Jesus. Jesus went all over Israel preaching. There were the 12 disciples who followed him and those were men that he trained for ministry.

Then the crowds followed him as well. The Apostle Paul had a longer time to show the same pattern, but he did the same thing. He’d go to a new place, preach the gospel to everybody. That’s the key, preaching the gospel, not family financial security or

Kimberly Faith: Right, which is kind of part

Robert Creech: of Christian family life or whatever, but

Kimberly Faith: Right, that was part of discipleship maybe, but not preaching the gospel.

Robert Creech: Oh yeah, yeah.

Kimberly Faith: How did that

Robert Creech: Well, great commission puts it forth too. Go and preach the gospel to every creature. It says

Kimberly Faith: go make disciples first.

Robert Creech: Go and make disciples. Right. Well, yes, make disciples is the key right there. And then baptizing them and then teaching them So all the there’s an order there. First you have to be saved, then you need to be brought into a congregational fellowship by baptism and church membership, and then that’s where real teaching is supposed to occur.

So that’s the pattern we wanted to try to implement there in Panama. So

Kimberly Faith: give us an idea, just an overview of how that flourished.

Robert Creech: Well, started out by, there has to be a mechanism for mass evangelism. And one thing that I just picked up straight from Milton Martin was to use a correspondence school. We would go to places, go to a village, get permission to show a Life of Christ film, which used the Jesus film, put out by Campus Crusade, made by them. That was really a great movie, Life of Christ. There’s the gospel right there in the life of Christ.

And then offer correspondence courses. We passed out tracts that offered the correspondence course. We had a response card. If people were interested in taking it, if they felt stirred by the gospel presentation, they had a way to respond. We got lots of responses.

Then we would follow-up those responses, deal with people.

Kimberly Faith: So would you guys go from village to village and do that?

Robert Creech: Would have, once a month we had to have an evangelistic campaign go out in the country for about a week.

Kimberly Faith: Okay.

Robert Creech: And after, at first it was just me and some guys from a church that I’d made friends with in Panama City. After a while, there were people that were coming and staying with us, young men who wanted to know more. We had set up the church there where we were in Gatun as a place where they could live and be around all the time, had daily studies disciples. With And they would go with me on these trips, you know?

Kimberly Faith: You were teaching.

Robert Creech: Just like Jesus and his disciples. Yeah, that’s because that’s what And then I realized something very important. Discipleship, to be truly effective needs to occur, to be really biblical, needs to occur in an evangelistic context, not just sitting in a class.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Robert Creech: That’s not discipleship. Discipleship is going out with somebody and preaching the gospel to people and seeing what happens. And then the questions that arise in that become very relevant and the answers

Kimberly Faith: It’s very organic.

Robert Creech: Are seized upon. Yes,

Kimberly Faith: it It’s very organic. It’s kinda like when you were teaching your kids how to change a tire, you didn’t have them sit in the class. You wouldn’t have them change a tire.

Robert Creech: Yeah, exactly. You know? Well, if you look at the Bible, look at the New Testament. There’s no hierarchical ecclesiastical structure presented.

Kimberly Faith: Right, it’s in the trenches with the people you’re discipling.

Robert Creech: You know, I’m sure if Jesus had wanted to do that, He would have, but He didn’t. So as we study his example, we can see the right way to go about it. So we put that process to work in Panama and it’s just still at work.

Kimberly Faith: So tell us, I know that, I’m sure I don’t even know the answer to this, but today, how many countries and churches has this process produced after thirty plus years?

Robert Creech: Well, it’s got a life of its own now and it’s going on.

Kimberly Faith: Which is the goal?

Robert Creech: I’ve stepped back basically, because I’m 75 years old now, it’s time to kick back a little bit. Plus, it’s important to let men that God has called into ministry have their opportunity to really develop and do what God wants them to do, you know, without being under the shadow of some authority. Americans in Latin America also have some, sometimes Latin Americans defer to Americans. Mhmm.

Kimberly Faith: Sure. Out of respect.

Robert Creech: If they like them, especially.

Kimberly Faith: Well, right.

Robert Creech: And so so I I wanted to eliminate that aspect. But the fact is we we got some churches started. We organized six churches in Panama that have since got their own pastors. They have missions of their own now and works of their own.

Kimberly Faith: In Panama?

Robert Creech: Yeah. And two of those churches have other churches they have officially organized out of there. And there’s a bunch of missions. Plus during the course of things, I went to other countries. Opportunities opened up in Cuba for a while.

Went there for about ten years and evangelized. Only no works of a permanent nature were established by me. I helped my good friend Oscar Chavez in Nicaragua doing various activities there and preaching in the seminar conferences, I should say, that he had once a year for a number of years. The Lord called a young man out of our ministry, a Colombian fellow who had come to Panama with his wife, just married, and he called them to go back as missionaries to Colombia, and so I spent time helping him and been there in Colombia a bunch too with him. Brother William Aya.

The Lord gave us an unusual opportunity in Mexico with a man who’d become a member of Mission Boulevard and he longed to see a church like Mission Boulevard in his town in Mexico, so Valerie and I took six months and we went there and got a mission started. Could, because of commitments in Panama, couldn’t stay there. But the Mike Lee family from Mission Boulevard took that over and that’s an organized church now in Mexico. So anyway, the Lord just spreads things out. Yeah.

He just,

Kimberly Faith: know Your story just reminds me of how, you know, God literally takes any ordinary person who’s willing to surrender and does extraordinary eternal things. And when we do it after the pattern that God set out in his word, what Jesus set forth in his example and Paul and different

Robert Creech: different Right. Right.

Kimberly Faith: We don’t have to stay around to make sure it’s still going.

Robert Creech: Oh, no, no.

Kimberly Faith: It’s not about us. It’s never been about us. It’s always about Jesus, the principle of discipleship. We disciple people and then they go and follow in the same pattern.

Robert Creech: Exactly.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. It’s kind of a relief, really.

Robert Creech: Oh, it is for sure. No, because we’re not equipped to carry that kind of pressure and burden, but God can handle it.

Kimberly Faith: I think about all the people who planted seeds in your life too. I just think this is important because I think we don’t necessarily understand how every decision we make is so critical. You know, when Jeannie Champagne suggested to Valerie, let’s do a Bible study.

Robert Creech: Right.

Kimberly Faith: And then you, you know, she’s teaching and you happened to pause five minutes and listen. When Wayne shows up because you have a plumbing problem to, you know, and your curiosity has peaked, who would have, how could they have imagined that over the span of the next forty years that people in Panama would

Robert Creech: be getting

Kimberly Faith: saved be in eternity with them because they made a decision. I just think we as Christians, when we’re full of the Spirit and we are captivated by God, that we realize every decision we make is so critical.

Robert Creech: Well, it really is. You know, and it’s simple what we need to do. It’s not complicated. We don’t know the future. We don’t have great intellectual capabilities.

When we look at ourselves and put ourselves up beside God, we’re nothing really. I mean, we’re very weak and incapable. But there’s only one thing that we have to do. We just have to do what’s right. We just have to do what God said to do.

Love, it boils down to one Love. Love God and love people. If you just do those things, the Lord takes charge of things and works out his purposes through you.

Kimberly Faith: Yes. It reminds me of one of the songs that Jeannie wrote and it says, I am nothing, Jesus reduced me to love. That’s one of the lyrics

Robert Creech: of Okay. Well, I’m not familiar with that one.

Kimberly Faith: I think that’s one of her songs. Yes.

Robert Creech: Oh, that’s a good one. Good line there.

Kimberly Faith: Yeah. And I think that really love I had a lady, I was having dinner with a lady whose husband just died the other night. And she asked me, she said, Kim, do you think that it’s possible for us to love without God? And I said, well, there’s there are different forms of love, but I don’t think it’s possible for us to love with God’s love, which is complete selflessness without God.

Robert Creech: No. I don’t think so.

Kimberly Faith: It’s it’s you can’t give away what you don’t have.

Robert Creech: That’s exactly right. One thing that’s really been important to me in ministry to understand too, it’s these words that Jesus said to his disciples. He said, So likewise ye, when you shall have done all those things which are commanded, you say, we’re unprofitable servants. We have done that which was our duty to do. And that’s really right, we don’t really have anything to offer God, but he condescends to let us have part in what he’s doing.

Kimberly Faith: Right.

Robert Creech: And so if we’ll just do that with simplicity and sincerity and lovingly and just love, really that’s what it all boils down to, do right, do what he says, just obey then he’ll make things go right. He’ll make things happen in the proper way. That’s ultimately success right there is

Kimberly Faith: Success and satisfaction

Robert Creech: It’s satisfying and calming to the soul. There’s a clean conscience. Everything is good. The blessing of God maketh rich, you know, the Bible says in Proverbs, and he adds no sorrow with it.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

Robert Creech: And it’s really all about him.

Kimberly Faith: It is all about him.

Robert Creech: And it’s just about us being our little selves here and going about our doing what little things we can do, and God adds to it and just makes it meaningful.

Kimberly Faith: He certainly does, and I’m always reminded of Paul’s prayer in the in Ephesians that the church would have, would experience more than they could ask for or imagine.

Robert Creech: Oh, yeah. Right.

Kimberly Faith: Exactly. I think that that’s life with Christ, you know? So thank you for sharing

Robert Creech: your story.

Kimberly Faith: Thank you.

Robert Creech: It’s been

Kimberly Faith: my Yeah. If you’re listening to this podcast and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, it’s not a mystery. Is Jesus died to save you.

Robert Creech: He

Kimberly Faith: paid the ultimate price so you could live. And he is waiting for you to surrender and and and give it all to him. Give it all.

Robert Creech: Well, we need him.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right.

Robert Creech: That’s right. That’s big part of the gospel message.

Kimberly Faith: That’s right. We need

Robert Creech: him to be alive, to have life. That’s right. He is life. He’s the way, the truth and the life.

Kimberly Faith: No man comes to the Father but by him.

Robert Creech: Right him. But when you come to the Father by him, and you get new life.

Kimberly Faith: You get the best life. The greatest life. If today’s episode stirred your heart, we want to invite you to go even deeper. At gofaithstrong.com, you’ll find a growing library of faith based resources designed to encourage, equip, and strengthen your walk with God every single day. Whether you’re searching for meaningful devotionals, real life testimonies, Christ centered blog posts, or soul stirring music, it’s all there, created to meet you where you are and lead you closer to where God is calling you to be.

We believe that walking in faith doesn’t just happen on Sundays. It’s a daily pursuit. That’s why everything we do at Go Faith Strong is focused on helping you live boldly for Jesus Christ. Our podcast is just one piece of the journey. There’s so much more waiting for you, resources to inspire your prayer life, deepen your understanding of the scripture, and help you share the gospel with others.

So visit us at gofaithstrong.com and explore, read, listen, worship, and be encouraged. Your life matters. Visit us at gofaithstrong.com. Hallelujah. He rescued me.