The David Knight Show - Broken Lives, Restored by Christ

Dec. 6, 2025 - The David Knight Show

31:03

Broken Lives, Restored by Christ — Not Government

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	All right, welcome back.
	And joining us now is Matt Trahelle.
	He's a pastor out of Wisconsin, I believe it is.
	Is that right, Matt?
	I think that's right.
	And I really appreciate what Matt has done.
	And he's done a great job in terms of making the point.
	He's got a book, a very well-selling book, and it's a very quick read, and it's really packed with information.
	Not that it's difficult to understand.
	It's not dense in that sense, but it is dense in terms of the richness that it conveys in a very small book that's easy to read.
	And he talks about it from a Christian perspective and even from a historical perspective.
	Even pagan Romans understood what we no longer understand in this country.
	And that is that there are higher moral laws.
	And we've had this discussion recently about should you follow illegal orders?
	I don't know why that's a controversy, but the fact that it is a controversy shows just how much we need this book from Matt.
	It's called The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate.
	How do we control that?
	We have the people at the top that have gone bad.
	And you can find that at defytyrants.com.
	Is that the website, Matt?
	I'm just going from memory here.
	I should have it in front of me.
	Okay.
	Defy Tyrants.com.
	And so I would highly recommend that you get that book and read it.
	It's a small paperback.
	It's a great handout to law enforcement and other people.
	And that's the way Matt has used it.
	But I've had him on several times.
	And Ryan, with For Love of the Road, sent us an email and said, you know, I've seen Matt on many times.
	And then I looked him up, looked up his background.
	And he said, I think it might be interesting if he gave us his testimony.
	And so, Matt, you said you're willing to do that.
	Let us know how did you become a pastor?
	What was life like for you before you became a pastor?
	Yeah, let me begin by saying I have a website where I wrote out my testimony, what Christ did in my life.
	I was 17 years old, nearly 18 when it all transpired.
	But I go into my life early on, and the website is howjesuschangedmylife.com.
	And I got that website prized six years ago.
	You would have thought that URL would have already been taken, but it wasn't.
	And so I got it for $2.99, how JesusChangedMyLife.com.
	And also, Pacific Garden Mission has a show called Unshackled.
	It's on in over 50 countries around the world.
	And they also did a radio dramatization of my conversion to Christ.
	Wow.
	And I also have the testimony of my mom.
	I did a short sermon about my mom.
	She was the first one in our family to come to Christ.
	And that's also at that website, howjesuschangedmyLife.com.
	So I grew up in the city of Detroit, Michigan.
	I was born in 1960.
	And while I was living there, a transformation was taking place in the neighborhood.
	Busing started in 1973, I think it was.
	There was all kinds of racial tension within the city.
	And where I grew up, I was a minority.
	So very different.
	I live in a country that the macriculture, I'm in the majority, but where I lived, I was in the minority.
	And so what ended up happening was, as a young man, I got involved in drugs.
	And I never saw the reason to buy drugs when you could sell them and make a lot more money.
	At the age of 15, I began to deal drugs and then had all of the free drugs you wanted on top of that.
	And then I got involved more with the bad crowd, you know, stealing cars, robbing people, fighting other gangs, burning down buildings.
	These were all things that were part of my life.
	My dad had left when I was 11 years old on Christmas Eve.
	He left my mom, and that had a huge transformation in life at our house.
	And so I can't emphasize strongly enough how important it is for men to be in the home, for there to be fathers in the home.
	It has a huge impact.
	All the studies that have been done, David, show the negative impact upon sons and daughters when the man is no longer in the home.
	And unfortunately, by the time your average American turns 18 in America, more than half of them aren't living with their biological mother and their biological father.
	That's how broken down family is in America.
	Imprisonment, drug use, crime, all this type of stuff becomes far more prevalent in young men when there isn't a father in the home.
	And as I said, every statistic proves that.
	It was true in my life.
	And so I was living that life, and all of a sudden my mom threw me out of the house when I was 14 for dealing dope.
	And I went to live with my dad.
	He still lived in Detroit also and didn't have anywhere else to go.
	And he let me stay there for six months.
	And then after six months, he threw me out of his house.
	So I wasn't doing good there.
	And so I decided, I'm going to go back and see if my mom will take me in.
	And I remember we hadn't seen each other during that six months while I lived with my dad.
	And I remember standing outside her home.
	And I was just a punk, you know.
	And I was thinking, man, I got to go in here and put up with her mouth and all this.
	And I didn't really want to knock on the door, but I didn't have anywhere else to go.
	I'm 15 now.
	And so I finally walked up and I knocked on the door and my mom opened it.
	And she actually smiled when she saw me and was so surprised.
	She said, Matt, come on in.
	I got to tell you what happened to me.
	And I was like, wow, okay.
	So I came in, I sat down on the couch, and she started sharing with me how Jesus has come into her life, forgiven of all her sins, how she's flushed all her pills down the toilet.
	And she's a new creature in Christ.
	And I sat there and looked at my mom, and I was like, I knew something.
	This was not the same woman I knew six months earlier.
	Something dramatic had definitely taken place in her life.
	Understand, my mom was always on psych drugs after the divorce, you know, four years earlier.
	It was such a huge impact on her, David, that she had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a psych ward for four months.
	Our grandparents actually came over and took care of us at the house while she was in the hospital.
	And she tried all kinds of things after that to find peace, to find happiness.
	She tried silva mind control.
	She tried men, you know, tried everything that the world tells you to find fulfillment in and peace and those types of things.
	And never.
	And so she was on these psych dregs to control her mood swings.
	Well, lo and behold, after I had left, she found out that my godmother, I was raised Catholic.
	My godmother, who was an alcoholic and had ruined her life, was put into a mental hospital.
	Three women came in, prayed over her, and God restored her mind, and she submitted her life to Christ and was radically transformed.
	So, this news is all going around in the family that Vale, that was the name of my godmother, has radically changed her life, and she isn't drinking anymore, and she's out of the mental hospital.
	So, my mom calls her up and wants to meet with her because my mom's life is all messed up.
	So, whatever happened to you, I want that to happen to me.
	And my mom told me as I sat there on the couch that Val came over and they met at the dining room table.
	She asked her point blank, she said, How did you change?
	Who's your counselor?
	Because my mom was always going to this counselor, then another counselor, and another counselor.
	And my godmother didn't want to tell my mom that it was Jesus who changed her life because she had been telling everybody that since she got out of the mental hospital, and they were all like, Okay, you know, or well, that's good for you, you needed that, you know, and things like that.
	So, she didn't want to tell my mom because of the negative response and kind of mocking response she had gotten from various people.
	But my mom kept begging her and saying, Who's your counselor?
	Come on, seriously, who's your counselor?
	And finally, she just looked at my mom and said, There is no counselor in human form, Annie.
	Jesus Christ has radically transformed my life, and he's healed me, he's forgiven me of my sins, radically transformed my life.
	And my mom said she sat there and she was just like, I looked at her and I said, You're joking.
	My godmother said, I'm not joking.
	And so she took my mom.
	I don't know if you remember back then, David, there was a huge revival taking place.
	A lot of Roman Catholics were being converted to Christ.
	And there was the Catholic charismatic movement.
	She took my mom to that, and my mom was totally turned off by it.
	But she went back a second time, and she was completely transformed by the power of God and had become a new Christian, flushed all her pills down the toilet, and was beginning this walk with the Lord.
	So she was the first one in our family to come to Christ.
	And when I sat there and I listened to all this from her, and she let me come back in her home, lo and behold, she gave me a book to read.
	She said, I want you to read this book.
	It's called The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson, who, of course, was the man who started Teen Challenge, which is an international organization meant to help young people who were caught up in gangs and drugs.
	And he was a country preacher from Pennsylvania.
	God called him to New York City and he went and preached amongst the gangs.
	Nikki Cruz was his first convert.
	Huge transformation.
	So I started reading this book, right?
	The cross and the switchblade.
	First 40, 50 pages, a lot of gang stuff.
	Okay, that holds my interest.
	Then more of this Jesus stuff kept coming in, and I was just like, nah, so I threw the book aside after 40, 50 pages.
	So now another two and a half years go by.
	Matt Chuela keeps living in rebellion to God.
	My life keeps going down like this.
	And I could tell you a hundred stories, and I have some of them in that Website where I share my story, how JesusChangedMyLife.com.
	But lo and behold, I ended up getting arrested for arson.
	And I got put into the county jail because they decided, even though I was a minor, 17 years old, they were going to try me as an adult because of the seriousness of the crime.
	And so I went in and over the weekend, I got stuck in a holding cell with two black guys.
	One was 40-something.
	He was in there for child molesting.
	The other guy was 19.
	He was in there for armed robbery.
	I was 17.
	All three of us knew a little bit about God.
	The old guy was raised in a Christian home.
	The young guy, his dad, was actually a deacon in a Baptist church.
	And of course, my mom had come to know Christ.
	If I could ever replay those videos, like when we get to heaven, David, I'd love to see three dumb pagans talking about God.
	And I don't know where they were at, but I had a serious interest.
	I saw my life was in utter ruin.
	And so lo and behold, I spent those two days with them talking about, we all talked about God almost the whole time.
	Kind of reminds me, Matt.
	Yeah, we were talking about it.
	It kind of reminds me of the story about, you know, a blind man and you sit in next to an elephant and he's like feeling around and trying to describe what this thing is that he's never seen before.
	Yeah.
	It's got this really little trunk.
	But yeah, that's kind of what it was like, I guess.
	So the elephant in the room, right?
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	The elephant in the room was Christ.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	So I was going through withdrawal.
	I was all messed up on drugs.
	And we happened to be right where they had service.
	We couldn't go to it.
	There was a guy in a suit who came by, and the one guy asked him for something to read.
	Of course, he brought us all Bibles.
	When I read the Bible, David, I didn't feel any pain or suffering from the withdrawal I was going through.
	When I set the Bible down after a half hour, I'd start feeling all the illness and sickness again.
	And so finally, on Monday, I get taken to the cell block.
	There's nine guys to each cell.
	And I walk in, and this guy walks up to me and he says, We have two rules in this cell: there's no fights.
	And if you start a fight, number two, if you start a fight, we all jump on you.
	And I looked around the room, and I was the smallest guy there.
	And I looked at him and I said, I like these rules.
	And he showed me where my bunk was.
	So I went and climbed up on it.
	And there's a cement wall with a shelf, a metal shelf on it.
	And there's one book sitting on it.
	And it was The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson.
	So here, two and a half years have gone by.
	And I picked that book up.
	I spent the next three days finishing the book, reading it.
	I had just put it down two minutes earlier, and my probation officer comes in.
	She takes me out in this side room to meet with me.
	She goes, Yeah, this is the sentence you're looking at.
	And we're going to try to get you into a live-in drug rehab program for a year to begin with.
	You off all these drugs.
	And she goes, The program that we're looking to get you into is called Teen Challenge.
	So I had just put the book down.
	There was a story about how this organization started.
	And now here's this lady, my probation officer, saying, We're going to try to get you into Teen Challenge.
	And that's exactly what happened.
	I ended up in Teen Challenge.
	The courts put me there.
	I was sentenced to three years.
	I had to spend the first year in a drug rehab program.
	Move over here because the sun's moving.
	And so I went to church the first Sunday after I was taken there and was an Assembly of God church called Brightmore Tabernacle on the west side of Detroit.
	So when I walked in, there's probably a thousand people there.
	And people are walking up to me saying how glad they are to see me.
	And I could tell they actually were glad to see me.
	It wasn't like they were glad to see me just because I had a joint to smoke or something like that.
	No, they were glad to see me because I was there.
	So then we walk into the sanctuary and everyone's talking, which for me was odd because being raised Catholic, it's like, shh, pin drop.
	Nobody ever says anything and it's quiet.
	And I was looking around thinking, these people all act like they're getting ready to see a movie or something.
	They're all talking.
	And then a lady came out and she sat down at the piano and started playing.
	And people began to worship the Lord.
	And they weren't mumbling under their breath like I was used to when I was a kid at the Catholics.
	They were actually worshiping him with their heart.
	You could tell they really believe in him.
	They love him.
	And it was astounding.
	And during the first worship song, as they're worshiping, all of a sudden I began to feel odd inside David.
	And I thought like I was going to cry.
	I didn't want anyone to see that.
	So I sat down in my pew and I put my face into my hands.
	And for the first time in my life, I sat there and I felt really bad for all the sins I had committed, all the bad things I had done.
	And what it was was the Holy Spirit convicting me of my sin.
	Showing me that I was a sinner in need of a Savior, namely Jesus Christ.
	And so while I'm being convicted of my sin, at the exact same time, I'm tasting his love and his holiness.
	And I'm astounded.
	God actually loves me.
	I didn't even love myself.
	I didn't even think my mother loved me.
	God loves me.
	I remember that being the overriding thing.
	I sat in that pew with my face in my hands for an hour and a half and wept the entire time.
	I remember I looked up one time and people were just staring at me like, are you okay?
	And at the end, they had an altar call and they invited people to come up if they wanted to give their life to Christ.
	I didn't even go up.
	I already knew he had changed me, radically transformed me by the power of his Holy Spirit.
	And so I decided at that time forward that I would live for him.
	And that's what's happened.
	And that was a long time ago.
	I'm 65 now.
	That was when I was 17.
	Wow.
	So, yeah, Christ radically transformed my life.
	Wow.
	That is a powerful testimony.
	You know, Matt, I've said for the longest time, you know, and when we see what's going on down in Venezuela, it's being justified with the war on drugs.
	And I've said for the longest time, you know, I have real issues with the government being involved in prohibition because, you know, it didn't work when they did it with alcohol, and alcohol was very harmful.
	I've said many times I would have supported that had I been back then because it was so harmful.
	It's like, yeah, let's try it.
	And they did it legally.
	They actually amended the Constitution so they had the authority to do that.
	Very different situation with the war on drugs.
	It was just, and I think they called it, I honestly think they called it the war on drugs because they didn't want to use the term prohibition because it had been such a failure in terms of corruption of government and due process and creating gangs and all the rest of this stuff.
	And I've said for the longest time, and I've interviewed people who are law enforcement against prohibition, and they said, this is not something you're going to solve with force, with law enforcement.
	And I've said, this is a spiritual issue.
	And I tell you, your testimony really underscores the fact that the drug war is really a spiritual war.
	And it's not something that you're going to fix with the police and the military.
	The answer to that is our society turning to Christ.
	It's what happened to you.
	And so that's really what we need to focus on.
	And we try to take these shortcuts.
	And we look at this and we say, well, we've got this big, powerful military and we've got this big, powerful police force.
	And so we've got this hammer.
	Where's a nail that we can use against this?
	And so that's how we get into these situations.
	When the reality is that that's not the solution at all.
	All it does is give us other problems that we didn't have before.
	And it does nothing to fix.
	Here we are, 54 years into the war on drugs.
	And it's only gotten worse.
	We've got more intense forms of these drugs as well.
	But that's an amazing testimony about the failure of our society and the power of Christ to really fix these things.
	Yes.
	That's amazing.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Something along the lines of what you're talking about to just affirm what you're saying is so true is that in the 1970s, about the time I was in Teen Challenge, Detroit Teen Challenge, the Teen Challenge was actually brought under scrutiny by the federal government for fraudulent claims.
	Understand.
	Really?
	David.
	Oh, yeah.
	This is when the government is running, you know, the CIA is running drugs and all this and stuff.
	So they come after Teen Challenge.
	Wow.
	They go after Teen Challenge.
	And the average cure rate for a cure is a year after you're out of the program, you're still drug-free.
	For secular programs, the average cure rate is 3 to 4%.
	96 to 97% of men and women who go into those programs are off drugs for six months a year, whatever the length of the program is, within a year are back on drugs.
	Teen Challenge was claiming to have an 84% cure rate based on that same standard, 84%.
	So the federal government decides, oh, this is terrible.
	This has to be fraud.
	And they had a commission that took over.
	And so the commission was to investigate the fraud of Teen Challenge.
	The woman who headed up the commission was a black woman.
	I forget what state she was from.
	And she wrote a book after they were done with their investigation, which went on for about a year.
	And so the way they investigated was they actually met with these people who supposedly were changed.
	That was part of their investigation to determine whether they had an 84% cure rate.
	So after it was over, the federal commission determined that Teen Challenge actually was lying.
	They did not have an 84% cure rate.
	They had an 87%.
	And the woman who headed up the commission wrote a book called The Jesus Factor.
	And her whole book, and she ended up being one to Christ from reviewing all these men who were, you know, lives were ruined by drugs and now knew Jesus.
	She wrote a book called The Jesus Factor saying that is the overwhelming, that is why they have an 87% cure rate.
	Wow.
	So what you're saying is exactly true.
	The importance of us reaching out to people and sharing the gospel with people, pointing them to the Lord, talking to them about the things of God, because his word addresses every area of life.
	That's right.
	you can bring them into just about any discussion well it really comes back to yeah and it really comes Look at all the different problems that we've got.
	You know, the homes that are split up, which is, you know, the beginning of your problems there.
	And drugs, we have violence and we have shootings and all the rest of the stuff.
	What is the answer to all this?
	Why is this all happening?
	Because we've had these things before.
	We've had access, probably even more so, to guns in the past.
	We had access to guns in schools.
	What is the difference?
	I really think it is.
	The Jesus factor.
	That's really the issue.
	We've turned away from Christ.
	Our society is rotten at the foundation.
	And that's why everything is collapsing on us.
	And that is the solution.
	You know, you're talking about when you were talking about your relative, and you said your mom asked your relative, who's your counselor?
	And it made me think of the Messiah this time by your, you know?
	Yep.
	Wonderful counselor.
	Amen.
	Amen.
	Out of Isaiah.
	Yep.
	Same thing.
	Yep.
	So, you know, I talk a lot about civil government matters because most churchmen don't.
	I wrote that book that you had mentioned earlier.
	But I tell everybody everywhere I speak and where I go, there's two things we need to do.
	We need to address our government from the Word of God.
	They need to be instructed in God's thinking regarding civil realm matters.
	Yes.
	And at the same time, we need to talk about Christ and point men to him.
	And so I have this little card that I always give out everywhere I go.
	It says, alone, arrested, in jail.
	I was living a life of emptiness, misery, robbery, arson, drugs, and hate.
	There had to be more to life than what I saw with my eyes, but what was it?
	So it's kind of like to draw them in.
	And on the other side, it says, my name is Matt.
	This is my story.
	And they have a little QR code with the website, how JesusChangedMyLife.com.
	And I get correspondence, David, from both unbelievers and believers who find the cards when I leave them around.
	And you never know how God's going to use that in people's life.
	And that's something we need to do.
	It's not an either-or.
	It's not, oh, we either tell people about Jesus or we get involved in civil government things.
	God's word speaks to every area of life.
	That's right.
	And so we need to talk about both things.
	That's right.
	That's right.
	Amen.
	That's the thing, you know, when you have an amazing testimony like yours.
	I remember there was a young woman in church once.
	People were talking about their testimony.
	She said, I just grew up in church.
	I don't have anything to say.
	And she said, but then I realized one day that I realized one day that God had saved me from all those things.
	He saved me from them before I got into them.
	That's it, too.
	Amen.
	That's been the case.
	That's been the case in America before.
	God saved us before we got into those things.
	But now we're in a situation as a culture where God can save us out of those things.
	And so that's why your testimony is so important.
	It really is.
	Again, the book is Lesser Magistrate.
	And you can find it to fly tyrants.
	Excuse me, I'm sorry.
	Things have gotten really druff with me after I've had my stroke.
	I have so much trouble controlling my emotions.
	We're going to take a quick break.
	Thank you for having me on, David.
	Thank you.
	Appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	DefyTirants.com.
	We'll be right back.
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	to THE David Knight SHOW.
	I wish I had a Christmas Night album.
	You can get the Christmas Night album at the DavidNight Show.com for just $13.99.
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	What'd you wish, George?
	Well, not just one wish, a whole hat flog.
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	Then I'm going to listen to Christmas classics like, are you going to throw it up?
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	What do you want?
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	Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it.
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	In what?

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