Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast with Pastor Bob Thibodeau.

Pastor Bob conducts personal interviews with Christian influencers from around the globe, helping Christian authors, recording artists, CEOs, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, and yes, pastors and ministry leaders to get the word out about what they are doing to impact the world with the gospel.

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Now here is your host with today's interview, Pastor Bob Thibodeau.

Hello everyone, everywhere.

Pastor Bob Thibodeau here.

Welcome to the Kingdom Crossroads podcast today.

We're so blessed you're joining us.

You know, when Jesus came into his ministry, you know, after the baptism by John in the Jordan river, he separated himself for 40 days.

You can read all about in Mark, chapter one, as well as Luke four.

I won't take time to do that for you here.

But Jesus went out into the wilderness to gain access, really back to the garden, right?

Remember, Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden where all the blessings were, and they were cast out into the wilderness where they would have to fend for themselves.

Jesus voluntarily went out into the wilderness in order to gain entry for him and for us back into paradise with God.

Hey, don't shut me down.

I'm preaching good already.

Praise the Lord.

For many, many men in this day and time, we have a need to understand just how much power we have not in and of ourselves, but in and through Christ Jesus.

Amen.

We have a need to understand ourselves and take ourselves into the wilderness and face down the areas in our life where the devil has succeeded in tempting us.

Not Jesus, but us.

Yes, us.

You, me, your pastor, but especially you.

Because you are a husband, a father, a leader, and the devil wants nothing more than to keep you in bondage and never see you the way God sees you.

A born again child of the Most High God.

Amen.

And that's where our guest today, Timothy Ragle, comes into play.

Timothy is the founder of IntoTheWildernessBlog.com a blog dedicated to helping men overcome sexual addiction and transform their lives by renewing their faith, re energizing their families and restoring their masculinity.

He's a licensed chaplain and works with men through Bible study, preaching and coaching to overcome pornography addiction and become better men.

He's also a licensed chaplain as he works with men through these Bible studies.

And folks, I tell you what, I've been a chaplain before.

It's not an easy job.

Amen.

I'll just leave it at that.

Praise the Lord.

He's also the author of the book Men of Grit into the Wilderness.

This book is a 40 day challenge to men everywhere to face down your temptations, renew your faith, restore your masculinity and recharge your family.

Amen.

Praise God.

I can't wait to hear all that Timothy has to share with us.

With that being said, help me.

Welcome to the program Timothy Rigel.

Tim, it is a blessing to have you join us today, brother.

Absolutely, sir.

Thank you for having me.

Amen.

Now, the first question I always start with is this.

Other than that brief information I just shared, can you tell us in your own words, who is Timothy Reich?

Right.

Well, you did a great job describing, describing what I do.

And the simplest version that I've ever come up with is like, I'm a man who God brought through the darkness and brought him through to the light and now has laid the mission on my heart to turn around and help other men through that same darkness.

Amen.

Amen.

And that's, I said, I've been a chaplain.

Yeah, I was chaplain with our, I'm retired police officer and I was a chaplain for our police department.

Yeah.

And I said, I, I know some of the challenges that chaplains face.

And sure, it's, it's a unique ministry and it is, you know, I, I grew up in a pastor's home.

I'm one of those PKs you kind of have to worry about a little bit.

But, and, but it's a different ministry.

And growing up as a pastor's kid, I never thought in a million years I'd be doing any type of ministry.

I wanted to run as far away from it as I possibly could, you know, like a lot of pastors, kids do.

And, and actually my, my main career is as a funeral director.

I'm actually a mortician by day.

And, but, you know, God, I went through some dark times in my life.

I struggled with some addictions.

Praise the Lord.

He brought me through that, helped me to heal my marriage and restore my family and turn my life around and start living for Christ.

And now he's like, I'm not done with you.

He's like, now, now this is your mission field.

So I've taken that on and praise the Lord.

Been able to help many men over the years.

Amen.

Amen.

I've got a quick comment on the mortician field.

My father, he wanted me, he said, sat me down one day as I was probably 14, 15, he said, you know, what's your plans after high school?

To get through high school, number one, you know, type thing.

He said.

Well, he said you should go on one of three fields.

Be a doctor, be a lawyer, or be a mortician.

That way you never run out of business.

You get them when they're coming, get them when they're here, and get them when they're gone.

Yeah, right, for sure.

And instead I want an army.

Yeah, well, you said that.

I just remember that conversation I had with the dad sitting on the couch.

But I read your bio and you struggled with porn addiction for a good while.

And as most American men have, if they be honest, they have to admit whether they want to or not.

Porn, adultery, promiscuity is rampant in our society.

I know firsthand as well, you know, I mean, from about 12 or 15 years ago, for me, I mean, this is something that definitely needs to be addressed.

How did you identify this area as your calling in life and ministry?

Well, it was never my plan to do it.

You know, like you said, when you were sitting down and trying to figure out what you want to do when you grow up.

This wasn't on the list.

I can guarantee that, you know, mortician maybe was, but this wasn't.

It just really came out of my own experience.

You know, I struggled with, with porn from a young age, from early teen years, which is when, when a lot of guys start to struggle with it.

And I'm, you know, I'll be 38 this weekend.

So I kind of came of age at the cusp of the Internet porn age.

You know, we're shifting from DVDs and all that sort of stuff into the Internet thing.

So I was kind of at the, at the cusp of that and really got addicted to it as a teenager and continued as I got older.

You know, it was, I was instantly hooked, you know, and maybe some of that was from coming up in a Christian home and growing up in a church.

You know, the big three, you know, in the purity culture and everything, the big three were don't drink, don't smoke, don't have sex.

Well, when you're a hormonal 14 year old boy, what do you think the three things you want to do are?

You know, that's right.

And so, you know, it was just that rebellious streak in me and I discovered this is like, this is, this is awesome, this is great.

So it made me question a lot of things.

You know, I was always told this was bad, this was sinful, and this feels awesome.

It's exciting.

It's adventurous, it's thrilling.

And so I was addicted to that, to that forbidden ness of it.

And, you know, I, As a naive teenager, I thought it was innocently enough, you know, whatever, what, what, you know, horny teenage boy doesn't, you know.

Right.

But it just.

It continued to get worse as I got older, you know, it escalates, and that's what it does.

And so it got worse as I got into my later teens.

I played in bands for a long time.

I played guitar and several other instruments.

And so I lived the whole, you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll style for a few years.

Yeah.

And then I got married and started having kids in my early 20s.

And, you know, I thought, okay, well, that's, you know, you know, this won't be a problem anymore.

Well, that was naive.

And so it continued to get worse, and it escalated not from just porn, but into chat rooms and webcams and all those type of things.

And eventually, unfortunately, made the jump into physical.

Physical things where I was having, you know, random kind of hookups and texting people and meeting up with people and all these different type of things.

And that continued for the first 10 years of my marriage and caused horrific damage to my marriage.

And I, you know, I get caught sometimes and then kind of say the right things and kind of BS my way out of it as much as I could do well for a while, but eventually would go back to it, you know, and.

And I did all the right things, the supposed right things.

Right.

You know, I.

I read all the books on it.

You know, I went to Bible studies, I did counseling, I met with my pastor.

You know, I did all these sort of things and none of them helped.

It just kept continued spiraling and.

Until my wife and I actually separated for over a year and almost got divorced.

But what made the change was the last time that I got caught.

I met with a pastor friend of mine who was a really strong mentor to.

And the difference that he made in my life was that he, rightfully convicted, called me out to conviction and repentance of my sin, but did so with a love that I'd never had before.

Whereas before, it was just kind of that, you know, you know, this is sin.

Bam.

You know, which, yes, it should.

We should call out sin, you know, but he didn't really.

He called me to repentance, but didn't.

Nobody before had ever really showed me the path to repentance and the path to redemption.

So he helped me understand that, yes, this is sin, but there's a reason why this is happening.

Paul Talks in Romans 7 about the sin that lives within him.

He's like, I know what the right thing to do is, but I don't do it.

I don't want to do this bad thing, but yet I do it.

Help me understand, you know, it's not just that I was a.

It wasn't a willpower issue.

It wasn't a discipline issue.

Yes, there's those parts involved with it, but there was something deeper.

It wasn't that I was just this pervert who couldn't control himself.

Yeah, I had to.

Help me understand that, hey, there's something inside you that's causing this.

There's some pain there.

There's a wound there that you're escaping or a void you're trying to fill.

And once I was able to kind of heal those wounds from the inside out, that's when I found the lasting recovery in healing.

And then through over the years, I thought my, you know, that was it.

Like, okay, I solved this problem, fixed my marriage.

We're good.

And then God was like, no.

He started putting people into my life that needed help.

And one thing led to another, and I started writing online.

I started.

Then I started coaching.

I wrote my first book.

And so he's just really laid that mission on my heart over the last almost seven years to really have this ministry to help men.

Amen.

Well, tell us about your personal 40 day challenge that you did.

Sure.

So this came out of my friendship with my co author, Jerry Adams.

So I had written my first book on Mike's recovery from porn addiction and my journey through all that.

And he had written a book kind of explaining his journey from becoming kind of a man of.

Of weakness and a poor leader in that.

And we both kind of had separate ministries.

And one thing we both realized was that what was needed was an action plan for men.

Men will read a lot of things and they'll agree with a lot of things, but if they don't take action in their lives, none of it matters.

Yeah, that's true.

So we recognize that in both of our ministries.

And so one night I was down at his house.

We were sitting around a bonfire, just chatting, and he's like, you know, I have this idea for this book.

And I said, you know, I had the same idea.

And we started talking back and forth, and it was one of those things that only God could have orchestrated because there were just so many things that we both had the exact same thought.

And we're right on the same page.

With, and we're like, you know what?

Let's do this journey together.

So it was always going to be 40 days.

We always had this mindset.

It was 40 days.

You know, you mentioned Jesus in the wilderness in Luke 4 and Matthew 4.

But there's a number, number of different areas in the Bible where it talks about the number 40.

You know, obviously the flood, Moses on Sinai, the 40 years in the wilderness, Elijah, you know, climbing God's mountain.

So all these different aspects of 40, and in each of those times, they were all different scenarios, obviously.

But God used those periods of 40 days to prepare people, to test people, to encourage them and support them and help them to grow and be prepared for something.

You know, Jesus went through that 40 days.

He was tempted by the devil.

He had to overcome 40 days in the wilderness without food, fighting wild animals and all these different things, and then being tempted by the devil all along the way and prepared him for his earthly ministry.

And so we see this as our wilderness where we have to go into our own wilderness.

We have to challenge ourselves, make ourselves uncomfortable, we have to face down our demons, we have to resist temptation, and we have to transform into strong, godly men who are ready to do God's work in the world.

And so that's really where the 40 day challenge idea came from.

It's like, okay, let's have this action plan where guys can go into the wilderness for 40 days through the things they need to work through and come out ready to serve God.

Well, in your book, how do you walk your readers through their 40 day challenge?

Sure.

So each day there is a biblical lesson.

So there's scripture patches to read.

We have a brief devotional on that.

And at the end of each day, there's a challenge on how to apply that passage of scripture to your life.

So there's consistent daily reading of scripture.

That's the most important thing that we could do.

And then the second most important thing is how do you apply that scripture to your life?

And so we have direct challenges to say, hey, you're going to do this today, this is your goal, by the end of the day, is to complete this challenge.

Some are very simple.

Some are quick and easy.

Others take some deep introspection and some difficult days and some emotional days and some heavy days.

We spent over two years writing this book.

Most of that was a lot of biblical research.

And so we wanted to come up with a picture of what a strong godly man, husband, father, leader looks like.

And so through that, we came up with this list of what we call the principles of a man of grit.

So we look to the scripture and see what does God say, what does the Bible say is a strong godly man.

And so through that, we came up with these eight principles.

And so each one of the days, of the 40 days lines up with one of those eight principles.

And I can go through them briefly for you.

Number one is honors God, honor God and all that we do.

Number two is he's mission minded.

He has a mission, he has a purpose.

He has following God's plan for his life.

Number three, if he's married, he has a thriving marriage.

He's a strong husband who leads, who fosters connection with his wife, who loves her like Christ loves the church.

Number four is if they're a father, it's an engaged father to engage and express love and most importantly, set an example for his children.

Number five is to fellowship regularly.

This is something we're hugely lacking in the world today.

And even more so probably in the church is a strong brotherly fellowship between Christian men.

A lot of it's true even in the church, a lot of men's groups are very shallow.

Right.

And men need that place to connect and to grow in accountability.

Number six is physical strength is health is something that has really been kind of ignored in a lot of Christian circles.

And so we need to care for our bodies.

We need to exercise, we need to eat healthy.

We need to.

Our body is a temple.

We need to treat it like a temple.

You know, so often that we talk about body as a temple.

We talk about that with drinking or smoking.

Well, it's the same thing with poor eating and poor exercise habits.

Yep.

Number seven is pure in heart, which is purity from sexual sin, from lust, from porn addiction, infidelities, and those things.

And the last one is to be bold, confident, and courageous.

You know, the Lord told Joshua, be strong and courageous.

And so we're out there.

We're bold like Christ was bold.

We're fearless like Christ was fearless.

And we're.

We're facing taking on the world with courage and fearing the Lord rather than fearing the judgment of men.

Amen.

What kind of testimonies have you received from those that have gone through your book?

How has that impact lives so far?

Sure, we've had a lot of great feedback.

We did some.

The book just came out about a month ago, actually.

A month ago today, actually, now that I'm looking at my calendar.

So, yeah, we've gotten great feedback from men.

They're saying, hey, this is saying everything.

That I kind of knew deep down in my heart, like these masculine qualities, these.

These leadership qualities of men.

There's kind of like, I always knew this deep inside of me.

I didn't know how to express it.

And we're fighting an uphill battle.

You know, society doesn't want strong men.

They want weak men.

They want.

Yeah.

They want complacent men.

Yep.

And so.

But men know deep down inside they're meant to lead, they're meant to be strong.

They're meant to set the example.

And so this is giving them the steps to do that.

So a lot of guys just feel overwhelmed.

Like, yes, I know I should be.

All these things, I don't know where in the world to start.

And so what.

What this book has provided is a.

This is a place to start.

You know, it's not going to solve every problem in your life in 40 days, but it's going to give you the tools to start building your life and to be a strong man of God.

And that's a lot of the feedback we've gotten from men, is that it really, really challenged them and made them face themselves in ways that they hadn't before.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, you know, anytime someone starts to fight the devil, especially on his turf, so to speak, I mean, they're going to encounter difficulties.

Can you share?

One of the basically worst moments has been for you since you started doing this sort of work.

I can name a lot of them.

So it's.

It's amazing to me when men start living their life for Christ and turning away from darkness and living right and starting to live righteously.

How the enemy attacks them.

I tell the guys that I coach with porn and sex addiction directly.

I said, don't be surprised.

This gets harder before it gets better.

Yeah, the enemy is going to throw curveballs at you.

He's going to throw something right in front of you that you haven't faced in years just to try and trip you up.

Because he doesn't want you to stand strong and stand firm in the faith.

He wants you to topple over.

So I've had a lot of men who have done that just in the writing of this book.

I've had, since we started writing this book, I've had this mysterious ear issue where it messes with my hearing.

It's been going on for two years since we started writing the book.

About a year ago, Jerry, my co author, was in a terrific car accident and broke his neck, was nearly killed, was within millimeters of being breaking his neck and Being killed and it's taken months of recovery.

This book would have been out six months ago if it wasn't for that.

The day that we set the date for the release of the book, my mother went into the hospital with kidney failure.

The day that we announced the book publicly, my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The day we released the book, a month ago today, my uncle died unexpectedly and Suddenly.

And then two weeks into it, I lost my job, my 9 to 5 job, my day job.

So we've been fighting this battle for two years, and along every way, the enemy has thrown obstacles at us to try and slow us down.

And it just makes us the more determined to do it.

You know, it just shows us that we're on the right path, that God's doing something through this.

It's not us.

You know, I'd have thrown in the towel a long time ago, but, you know, it's his strength and his perseverance that he's given us.

And so we're just trusting in that.

And come what may, we're going to trust in the Lord and rely on his strength and, and resist these temptations and resist these, you know, hindrances that the devil throws in our way.

Yeah, yeah.

Because he's not going out without a fight.

I mean, this is a war.

It's absolutely.

And, you know, you can say, let's go take this hill, but the enemy's entrenched on that hill and he's not going to give it up without a fight.

Amen.

The good news is we've got aerial cover, we've got artillery barrages, and we got the ground troops to move in and take it.

I mean, they're, you know, we're not alone in this battle.

And what, what would you like our listeners to remember from this interview today?

I'd like them to know that two things.

Number one is you're not alone.

A lot of men are going through a lot of hard things.

You know, I work with men every day that are struggling with.

With addictions, all types of addictions, not just porn and sexual addiction.

Their marriages are crumbling, their families are falling apart.

They're the risk losing everything.

Men are going through so many other issues besides addictions.

Men are struggling with self esteem, they're struggling with mental health issues.

They're struggling with doubt, maybe even spiritual doubt, and doubting their faith.

And they see all the horrible things going on in the world.

And there's just so many men that are just kind of dying on the inside.

Yeah.

And I want those men to know whatever you're struggling with, you're not alone.

Amen.

That there are other men that love you, that support you, that want to encourage you, that want to fight this battle alongside of you.

So don't suffer in silence.

Find other men that you can reach out to and connect with.

Whether it be at your church, whether it be online, whether it be through someone who does what I do, as far as one on one coaching or your pastor or wherever.

But you can't fight this battle alone.

You know, Ecclesiastes talks about two men being together and how much they are stronger together.

So you're not alone.

Connect with other men and find help.

And the second thing is that there is always hope.

Hope may seem.

Hope is hoping when everything seems hopeless, right?

And we have a Lord, we have a God, we have a Savior who is full of hope and gives us that hope.

So we're never too far broken, we're never too far damaged, we've never committed too many sins.

We're not unforgivable.

So many men, and myself included felt that way.

Like I'm damaged goods, you know, God can't possibly forgive me for all this crap I've done, but he does.

Yeah, he already did.

He already paid the price for that.

So believe in the hope of Jesus Christ.

There is healing in that.

There is strength in that.

There is redemption and repentance in that.

And so know that you're not alone.

And know that there is always hope.

Amen.

How can someone obtain a copy of your book Men of Grit into the Wilderness?

I take it as listed on Amazon, right?

Yeah, it's on the mega ship.

Amazon.

That's probably the best place to get it.

There's a Kindle version of it as well that you can work through too.

You could find out more information on me.

You can find it on my website too, which is into the wildernessblog.com or Jerry's website, which is menagreek.com those are the best places to find more about the book and find us on social media and all those things as well.

All right, all right.

I'll put links all this in the show notes below.

Tim, this has been so interesting and I know that you're accomplishing some major victories for our Lord.

I mean, taking back ground from the enemy and setting the captives free.

Praise God.

Amen.

Amen.

And I appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule to come join us today, sharing all about your great book Mena Grit into the Wilderness.

Just come back on anytime you want it's.

A great conversation.

That's all the time we have for today for Timothy Riegel and myself.

This is Pastor Bob Romani.

Drop down the show notes, click those links right there and be blessed in all that you do.

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