Jarrod: 0:00

I couldn't just hit the off button once I turned it on, so where that rave would go on for a night or a weekend, you know, for me the bender would keep going for weeks after.

Ron Meyers: 0:11

Where were your parents with all this going on? They didn't recognize something was wrong with.

Jarrod: 0:16

So it was again in the 90s and early 2000s. It was more free range parenting. They were starting a business and at the time they were pretty consumed with that business. You know, they were around, no doubt they were there, but me and my brother were slick, we were manipulators. And so my brother was so slick that by the time they started realizing my addiction was popping up, they really tried to clamp down and control. And but the more that they would try to control, my rebellious spirit would flare up and it would rebel out even worse. So the more they would try to get a grip on the situation, the worse it would be.

Ron Meyers: 0:52

Wow Well, what was the breaking point?

Jarrod: 0:55

By the time I was 17, I got my first four felonies. Um, that was not the breaking point, but the for it started it the. Um, my attorney attorney told me you can either go to RID program at Parchment or you can go to rehab. You know, 18 years old, I picked up another felony, a sale charge for three and a half grams of marijuana. And so that's when the judge said you can go to RID program or you go to Parchment. So I went to rehab, secular rehab, for the first time in my life. I didn't want to change, but I went to a 30-day rehab and a seed was planted in me that I could never go back and get high unashamed again after that. So from 18 to 22, I got out.

Jarrod: 1:36

You know, I started using intravenously and next thing, you know, me and my brother get linked up in Hattiesburg with this criminal organization, I'll say. And these guys were some really bad people, some importers of a lot of drugs and they were giving them to us on the front for next to nothing. So it was a recipe for disaster for somebody with an addiction like mine the amount of money and drugs and damage I did to my brain and damage I caused in other people's lives, and this four-year window was just incredible. So by the time I was 22 years old, I'd had enough, I was done selling drugs. I only wanted really to destroy myself and I was really done doing that. I was really tired, sick and tired of being sick and tired, that old cliche. So I called my mom and I said, mom, I need help, help me find a place. And this was genuine. I said, mom, I need help, help me find a place. And this was genuine. I really wanted out at 22 years old.

Jarrod: 2:26

And she found this place in California through Dr Dobson's focus on the family. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so my mom was the spiritual leader in my house. Not that my dad wasn't a great dad and man too, but my mom was the one, the true spiritual leader in my house, and so she implanted the word of God in me at a very young age. It just didn't take root till later on. I ran from God for a long, long time, knew of God, but didn't truly know him, knew about him.

Jarrod: 2:53

So I went to this place called a Sunrise Ranch in Riverside and I got to my first 30 days and I knew I was just scratching the surface on the work that needed to be done. So I signed up for another seven months of their sober living program. Well, I had F8 three semesters of college. Well, this sober living program offered to take you to college every day and pick you up, bring you and drop you off and pick you back up, and so I chose to do that part of their program. It's called TEACH was the acronym and so I completed my first semester of college and I felt like, wow, I could actually do something, you know. And but I was working the 12 steps. Now I was sold out. I was sponsored 180 meetings, 90 days. I was working the program and that was it. You know I had it and you know I had seven months in treatment and then another three months of sobriety and I met my wife in rehab out there in California.

Jarrod: 3:40

She's from Canada and we met out there and we got apartments Once we finished treatment. She had an apartment right above mine. I moved in with a roommate and so, and we had three months of sobriety and then we started hanging around with some of the folks who were in treatment with that relapse and we just we went right back to our addiction and so I introduced her to intravenous drug use and toted all the shame that came with that. You know she was there for Ritalin and alcohol and combining those two, which was a serious addiction for her, but I brought her to deeper and darker places than she had ever been. Of course, my addiction got worse, as it always gets progressively worse, and so we ended up moving back there, back to Mississippi, after about two years of running amok and we took a break in a relationship for about a year. Now I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off, cooking crystal meth. I got to back up.

Jarrod: 4:37

Now this is what happened and this was a game changer for me and 22 years old, I'm living in California, we finished rehab and I'm living. I'm at my wife's apartment and I got this meth and it scared me so bad it didn't have all the negative side effects and the negative side effects would keep me away from it for periods of time. So I got this stuff and I put it up one night and I quit and I got something to eat and I slept, which was incredible to do with that drug in the first place. I woke up the next morning and I heard this voice and I said flush it, flush it. Well, I had like an eight ball left and I didn't even think about it. It wasn't even a contemplation being had. I just went and grabbed a bag of dope and I just flushed it and went and sat on the couch. And if I would have known what was fixing to happen, I would have flushed that dope years before. But this was my time.

Jarrod: 5:31

I sat on the couch and just waves of raw emotion and euphoria just started pulsating through my body, just like over and over, and tears just started streaming down my face and I didn't even know why I was crying. And this was about 10 minutes of this. It was the best feeling I've ever felt in my life and I had been to some very artificial euphoric places before. But this was real, it was genuine. And I looked over at my wife and she was. I said I don't know what's happening. She said I don't. I don't know what's going on either. I said but it feels right, it feels cleansing, it feels like purifying.

Jarrod: 5:59

And so I went and stood in the kitchen and I was leaning up against the counter and it was at that moment it dawned on me that I was in the presence of God and I felt these arms come and hug me, wrap around me and just the tears started coming down even harder, like my visions. It was messy, like my visions all blurred up and and I look down and I'm staring at that tile on the floor and my tears come together and drip down and as my vision's clearing up, I'm staring at Jesus and his face was ambiguous, but it was clear as day in my heart that it was Jesus revealing himself to me and that I was in his presence. And so I pick up the phone and I call my mom and I said Mom, you won't believe what just happened. And she said Son, you're 22 years old. Most people won't have that in their lifetime. She said what are you going to do with it? And you think I would have just got it all together and sold it out to the Lord.

Jarrod: 6:50

No, I tried to run from the Lord for another two and a half years in my addiction, another six years in sobriety. I tried to run for another eight and a half years. Like Jonah, you can't run from the Lord. He's everywhere. You're not going to get away from him and he's going to hawk us down. He's not going to force himself, but he'll woo us, he'll pursue us and he'll make it very awkward for us to keep running from him and so very uncomfortable. And so at this time I got this calling put on my heart of rehab. That's all I knew, and I didn't know that the two were correlated. I thought I was running the show. Still, you have to have a 20-year-old, still not even lukewarm with my faith. Had God revealed himself to me, think that I would have sold out? No, not this stubborn, rebellious child. So I moved back to Mississippi and I get into manufacturing methamphetamine and my addiction. You know the end result. I wasn't even selling it at the time, I was just making it for myself. Really.

Ron Meyers: 7:54

Well, I just had to pause for a minute. You see, in a puddle of tears, something that was Jesus. You felt Jesus, you called your mom to me would stop me, but there was something that was still pulling you to the dark side.

Jarrod: 8:07

Yeah, yeah, wow. And then he was after me at a very young age. I could never really deny Jesus, nor the devil, because how prevalent he was. I accidentally, about eight or nine years old, messed with a Ouija board with my neighbor and I opened up some portals to hell. And I know that now God revealed that to me in my walk with him that that's really when things got out of hand.

Ron Meyers: 8:29

So what was the age where you finally said the party's over Jesus, let's do life?

Jarrod: 8:35

All right. So 24 years old is when I got sober and then I was in incarceration for manufacturing methamphetamine. That's where it happened for me, a shift in mentality. Now I didn't sell my heart out to the Lord for another six years after that. I wanted it. I started working out. I started doing Bible study in jail still lukewarm, but I was doing Bible study. I started writing. I didn't know it was beginning in these Addiction 101 classes I teach today life skills, coping skills, and then couple that with the word of God. So I started doing those things and I kept doing those things when I got out but I knew only a matter of time before I was going to go back out and get high again. I knew it. So we decided to move to Canada and that's where I started pursuing this calling that God had put on my heart years before. And so well, not initially For the first three years.

Jarrod: 9:23

I got into hockey, boxing, and I was working out five, six days a week. I was this endorphin. I needed endorphins and massive amounts of them, and so I was pretty much addicted to hockey and boxing and working out, but it wasn't destroying my life and my family, so I was gung-ho with that for three years. And I got three years into my sobriety and I said, okay, you're physically tough, you're physically strong, but you're still emotionally and spiritually weak where it matters and you need to do something about that calling that God put on you. And so I said, okay, well, I'm going to go back to school. I'm going to go to school for addiction counseling and finish this degree out. So I got my uh, a trios college. I went to finish my addiction counseling degree and then I interned with Salvation Army at a homeless shelter in Oakville, ontario, and I fell in love with the work, still lukewarm, got to imagine this is hard to imagine that I was still lukewarm through this, but I knew that it was a calling. I knew it was more than just a nine to five, even though they ended up hiring me on and paying me. So I ended up going to work for them for two and a half three years and then we moved back to. We decided to move to Tampa Florida and I got a job in Tampa Florida as an addiction counselor at a methadone and suboxone clinic. Now, keep in mind I never agreed with that philosophy of recovery at all, but I wanted to work with addicts. I wanted to counsel addicts, so it was the first opportunity I could work in the States with addiction, so I jumped on it.

Jarrod: 10:50

The FBI fingerprinted all of the employees and decided to let me go. My felony record was expunged. I had 12 or 13 felonies racked up over the years. I was on a run from US Marshals at one point for five months. They didn't like seeing all those felonies on my FBI record, even though I was very forthright about my past with them. I mean, they fired me and it kind of crushed me and devastated me. I was like I really didn't agree with this philosophy. And now they fired me.

Jarrod: 11:15

You know, no, I didn't stay defeated though. I got up and I said, ok, I'm going to go further. My education with psychology. You see, I was still thinking this route and so I'm glad the Lord was leading me this route for a lot of good reasons that I know now. So I studied, I tried to do all the self-help gurus and the psychological avenues for healing to heal my brain. The world told me that my brain needed healing and I finally found out, when I sold out to the Lord, that it was my heart that needed healing and that my brain would follow my heart. And so all the worldly Band-Aids I was sold my whole life. They never worked and I had to find out the long, hard route. I finally surrendered. I finally waved the white flag.

Ron Meyers: 11:55

What age was this? I was 30. You were 30 years old. 30 years old. You know, when I met you last week, fit man, look good, never, never thinking a story like that. But you know, it goes to show you that there are people out there walking around that just look like they should be on TV, but there's hurts in them. And today you are a counselor. Tell the listeners what you're doing today You're helping people become free.

Jarrod: 12:22

Yeah. So all that was? You know, genesis 50, 20 is one of my favorite scriptures. I say favorite a lot when I talk about the word of God, but I have a lot of favorites in there. And you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to do what is now being done the saving of many lives. You see, god had a plan and why he allowed all that. So he rolled out some things for me.

Jarrod: 12:43

I moved back from Tampa with my wife that was a miracle of God in itself that we could agree to move back here to Mississippi and I started escape addiction. I started doing outpatient counseling and so that started out very slow and very much had the enemy in my ear the whole time telling me to quit and through people often telling me every reason why I should not be doing that. If I would have listened, we wouldn't be here talking today. So escape addiction led me to 2020, started to formulate the Freedom Lighthouse nonprofit. So I was charging very low prices for outpatient counseling.

Jarrod: 13:19

But the Freedom Lighthouse the Lord gave me a different vision. We were going to take guys in for free and it was going to be once we got them. A second phase is what the Lord led me to do, and I believe in inpatient. That's a necessary step for many. But I'm more concerned about what the Lord led me to a second phase and sober living, transitional living. I'm more concerned about what they're going to do when they have some freedoms and some money in their pocket and the ability to make a poor choice. What are they going to do then? Because we're going to separate. We're not going to do it. The Lord's going to separate the wheat from the tares there in second phase. And so we started setting up the nonprofit of the Freedom Lighthouse and we took our first official residence in in 21. And so that's been quite the journey and it's led to all kinds of connections and just bringing God glory all over and just meeting so many amazing people like yourself.

Jarrod: 14:08

So where is Freedom Lighthouse? Freedom Lighthouse is in Waveland Mississippi, six month to a year long program and most need the year I'm not very rarely-.

Ron Meyers: 14:15

And you say you do this for free.

Jarrod: 14:17

Well, I don't get paid a thing.

Ron Meyers: 14:19

No, I mean for the clients out there.

Jarrod: 14:22

The clients get to come in for free. Well, I don't get paid. No, I mean for the clients out there. The clients get to come in for free, but once they pass that grace period and get acclimated and they're ready to start working, then they'll pitch in the pot, but that's just to keep rent and the lights on and the bills paid. I don't make a dime as the director, nor do I ever want to. He's given me other ways to make money with a clear conscience. I don't believe in monetizing the word of God.

Ron Meyers: 14:45

So how has business been in the last few years?

Jarrod: 14:48

So it's been awesome. We've had some amazing results. So I'm going to tell you the guys that stayed and finished the year, they're all doing amazing and of course, we've had a lot. You know, we've had some that haven't stayed and finished the year.

Ron Meyers: 15:01

So it's never too late for anybody listening for a whole new beginning, is it?

Jarrod: 15:07

No 17-year addiction, the last eight intravenous. I've been to some dark and desperate places. If the Lord could polish me up into something halfway decent, he can do it for anybody.

Ron Meyers: 15:16

So right now you have the microphone, Can you give someone hope that may be listening? That is in an addiction stage of life?

Jarrod: 15:23

Yeah, yeah, I'll just add the one latest thing Just last October, the Lord birthed the church in Bayside community. It's one of the poorest communities, if not the poorest community in Hancock County. Through us, through his body and what we were doing with the Freedom Lighthouse, he birthed a new church body for what I call a church house or Sunday service. Right, we are the church body and so and he made me the pastor of that I didn't do any of this, how it all came together, I could not claim it, I did not do it, I did not think about it, orchestrate it, it just all came together.

Jarrod: 15:54

So let me tell you, if the Lord can take somebody like me, just bottom of the barrel junkie, I was a bottom feeder, I was one of the most selfish individuals you'll ever meet, one of the most stubborn, just brawlers, fighters, just nasty individual, very lustful, very much a womanizer, misogynist, I mean whatever negative label the enemy can put on somebody. I owned it and owned it proudly. And so if he could take somebody like me and humble me to the point and that was what the addiction was about bringing me to my knees, you see, the addiction brought me to my knees the humility, but it was the struggles in my marriage and the pain in my cousin's death that had me truly surrender. And now I have to stay surrendered every day. That's not a one and done. Born again is not something you just do one time and you get dunked in that water and you're clean.

Jarrod: 16:47

As a matter of fact, 1 Peter 4 says baptism not the removal of filth from the flesh, but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God, and so we have to pledge that every day. We have to die to ourself every day and pick up our cross and follow after him. I know where my will got me. It got me destruction, chaos, misery and death. Now I should have been dead numerous times. I didn't get in all those stories today, but I was dead inside. I was a dead man walking and the Lord Christ came by one day and he said it's time to get up out of that grave you built for yourself. It's time to live. I want to give you life.

Ron Meyers: 17:21

Well, how do people get in touch with you? Or Freedom Lighthouse.

Jarrod: 17:25

Oh, that's easy. They can email me or they can go to the website freedom-lighthousecom.

Ron Meyers: 17:31

Freedom-lighthousecom. We're just about out of time. I would like you to have a nuclear prayer for our listeners out there listening right now.

Jarrod: 17:41

All right. Well, we invite the Holy Spirit in for that, because he's the one that prays through us. All right, thank you, ron. Lord, heavenly Father, we just come to your throne boldly to just praise you this morning and thank you for all that you're doing in our lives. I thank you for my brother Ron, and you giving him this platform, lord, and giving him these gifts to use to promote your kingdom, lord, and that he is sold out to his relationship with you, that he can spend the rest of his days lifting you up and glorifying you, magnifying your works, lord. So I ask you to continue to be the wind behind his sails and ours and everybody in the kingdom, lord, that you just continue bringing your church body together.

Jarrod: 18:19

We don't care about denominations, lord, we care about you and living in relationship with you, lord.

Jarrod: 18:24

That you can just keep freeing people from all forms of captivity that's, addiction, religious bondage, lord, and legalism and that you can bring them into relation with you and that intimacy, lord, that close connection, and fill them up with your Holy Spirit.

Jarrod: 18:40

Lord, I believe that you are pouring your spirit out on all flesh, lord, raising up an army right now, and that you have chosen people like me the least likely suspects, the black sheep, the round pegs in the square holes. Lord, you have chosen people like us to make examples out of us, so that people can see your miracle power flowing through our lives. I ask for your will to be done and for every listener out there today, lord, that you just bless them. You come and meet them with your Holy Spirit in your presence right now, lord, and just shower them so that they can just have the most amazing day, lord, and they can keep having that and living for you from here on out. We love you, jesus, and we thank you so much for loving us that we could love you and one another, and we lift all this up in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.