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This week Mike is not feeling well so Lisa Salinger shares three lessons and many experiences from a seven-week missionary trip she took to Togo, West Africa. If you would like to watch the entire YouTube video she referenced, It is here.

Mike will be back next week so don't forget to visit us on Tuesday night for the live recording. Please tell all your friends about us and feel free to follow us on Twitter or send us an email with any questions. Also feel free to leave a comment here and be sure to check us out weekly or better yet, add us to your favorite podcast software.

May 17, 2013 by Mike Calvo | Comments (1) | Mission | Testimony | Africa

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Sometimes, God's light shines most brightly in our darkest trials. Join us as Jamie Pauls shares just such a time. You won't want to miss this fascinating story of God's grace! Please tell all your friends about us and feel free to follow us on Twitter or send us an email with any questions. Also feel free to leave a comment here and be sure to check us out weekly or better yet, add us to your favorite podcast software.

May 09, 2013 by Mike Calvo | Comments (1) | trials | music | testimony

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“Why would you go to such trouble to plan your Suffering with such excruciating detail? It doesn’t make sense, begging Your pardon, of course. Isn’t it enough that You will cleanse them of their sins? Why must you plan out Your own torture to the most insignificant details?”

This story will change your life. It certainly changed all of us on the podcast. Many thanks to Lisa Salinger for sharing her testimony! We truly serve an amazing God that knows how to meet us at the most intimate place of need in our lives. To Him Be The Glory!! Please tell all your friends about us and feel free to follow us on Twitter or send us an email with any questions. Also feel free to leave a comment here and be sure to check us out weekly or better yet, add us to your favorite podcast software!

March 13, 2013 by Mike Calvo | Comments (0) | Podcast | Testimony | Blind

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While a more detailed version of my testimony is available on this site, this one keeps it short and to the point. I do tend to be wordy sometimes so, if you want the short version of what the Lord has done in my life, check this one out. Also featured in this talk is an example using my Guide Dog Hurley.
Enjoy and please remember to post comments and share on your social networks as the Lord leads.

The meeting is located at 415 N. Main Street, Kissimmee, FL 34744. every Friday night at 6:30 p.m. on the 2nd floor in rooms #206/#208.
May the Lord Bless You!

First Christian Church Celebrate Recovery page
This is the link to the Kissimmee meeting.
National Celebrate Recovery Website
A Christ-centered recovery programLives are changing! Over 700,000 people have gone through the Celebrate Recovery program in more than 17,000 churches worldwide. Celebrate Recovery is a program designed to help those struggling with hurts, hang-ups, and

January 26, 2013 by Mike Calvo | Comments (0) | Recovery | Celebrate | Recovery | Testimony | Jesus | Hurley | Guide | Dog | hurts | habits | hangups

A Friend with Weed is a Friend Indeed?

We Christians love setting the world straight on what Jesus would or would not approve. I don’t think it hurts to remind others of the word of God, but sometimes I wonder if we’re doing this effectively or if it’s even our place to judge. If we are going to render condemnation, we should at least aim for the right target.

I’ve suffered from sleep deprivation for many years now. I’ve seen a handful of doctors and have tried just as many prescriptions. The medicine either never worked or worked in such a way as to leave me groggy, disconnected, and who wants to be addicted to that state of mind? So, I stumbled upon an old habit that, just like Goldilocks, hit the spot just right, or so I thought.

Accepting Jesus into my life chased away many demons more than 15 years ago. It was enough for me to let Him take the wheel and let Him do as He saw fit with my life. One evening, however, I was hanging out with an old friend, and in one of those casual innocent moments, he suggested we go out back and ssmoke a dooby, you know, just for old times’ sake. I’ve never been prone to peer pressure, but I didn’t make much of it and went along. That night I slept like a baby. Wow! What a great thing! It’s natural! And it’s not addictive? After a while I even felt that God was making it okay by providing me options to have it prescribed by a doctor. Wow what a blessing! NOT!!!

The devil’s trickery is like a pendulum. In one swing I felt good. I felt justified in my use of the herb to help me get some rest. Where’s the harm in using a little, quietly, before bedtime if I’m not harming anyone else? But when the ball swung the other way, I would feel like a loser. I felt weak and ineffective against this latest attack on my spiritual walk! In these moments of guilt, I knew better than to believe that evening had been a casual encounter. But, I continued. After a while I found myself justifying and even stretching the boundaries of truth by saying that it was prescribed so “it was okay if I used for something besides what I originally returned to it for.” After all “god understands. Right?”

Sin is a funny thing. It’s like the boiling a frog syndrome. Drop a frog into a hot pot of water, and it’ll instinctively hop out, but drop a frog into the same pot with warm water and steadily increase the heat, and the frog will be boiled to death because the warm water lulled it into a false sense of security. For me, what began as the medical response to a neurophysiological issue returned me back to a World where it became a constant crutch. Weed was not just the answer to sleepless nights. It became the key to relieving stress, blowing off steam, and in time it took its place as just one more habit at social functions. By the time I truly became conscious of what had happened, I was already in deeper than I’d ever anticipated.

Marijuana users, like so many other segments of society, are painted in distorted stereotypes. There are a lot of people who conjure up images of the slow talking idiot who just barely has a hang on reality. I’m not saying these people don’t exist, but I was an example of a high functioning pothead who went about the business of running a company, raising a family, and yes even teaching the Bible as if nothing was deteriorating my soul and keeping me spiritually dull. There are Christians who would scoff at my deeds. Am I somehow supposed to be commended for being able to lead a normal life despite my drug issues? Of course not. What I did was wrong. I’ve accepted full responsibility, but the same misconceptions that shape our views about the so-called victims of the evil are the same misconceptions that twist our perception of what the evil really is.

After being on both sides of the fence, I am saddened at our collective wars on social evils. In other words, sin. Take your pick. The war on drugs, the war on pornography and so many other culture wars being waged in today’s landscape are aiming at the wrong target. People who hate guns probably hate the reality that guns don’t kill people, people do, and do you know what? People are equally responsible for all the other afflictions that are tearing the moral fabric of our society. It’s not as if my vaporizer would jump out of my desk and flip into my palm of its own accord. The idea that I could lay blame at the feet of an inanimate object is so astonishing as to be ridiculous. I can just imagine myself on judgment day pointing to a joint and proclaiming my innocence because it, the joint, had made me smoke it.

To be fair, we live in a fickle society. After all, we live in a world where the girl down the street can get an abortion in the morning and more or less walk out a free woman, but the guy next-door might go to jail if he were caught with a $10 bag of pot. Where do we draw the line? We can’t, because morality cannot be legislated. If we want to do something as a Christian community to confront the problem, let’s see the problem for what it is.

The problem is our sin and our attitude about that sin. More specifically, it is our weak and unrenewed mind that surrenders to the battle between flesh and spirit. It’s a heart condition that compels us to justify worldly behavior with worldly explanations, and it is something from which the only escape is full deliverance by committing every aspect of our lives into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, I know there are people who will sneer at my “playing the Jesus card.” They will even say that I am trampling the Blood and putting Christ to open shame by admitting where I have fallen short publicly. Sorry you religious types but, isn’t that what HE died for? As I wrote this piece and shared with friends that I was going to publish my sin for the entire World to read on the Internet, you can’t believe how some of them even suggested that I should keep it quiet because after all I am a public figure and the fact that I am a sinner that fell in to temptation might close doors for me. Well, my Bible tells me that I am forgiven for all sins past present and future. It also says that I am saved by grace and not by my own works. By the way this is the case for any person that accepts Jesus Christ as savior. I am so far from perfect but instead of trying to be perfect I would rather try to be surrendered an submitted. I think it pleases God more for me to admit, that even though I have been walking with HIM for over 15 years, I still need HIM to guide my steps evry minute of every day. Jesus said it best: “without me you can do nothing.” Boy was He right! You see, I needed to learn the lesson that anything that separates me from God, yes is a sin, but more than that it keeps me from hearing his voice in my spirit, allowing HIM to love others through me, and understanding HIS purpose and direction in this new life that HE has given me. A life that, had I continued on the path I was on before Christ, would have ended up not only in physical death but spiritual death as well. Today I do things that I would have never ever dreamed of accomplishing before HE gave me this life. A life where HIS vision has directed my steps to lead our community of the blind out of digital and spiritual darkness. Where I can inspire others with my personal testimony of what HE has done for me. A life with a wonderful family and friends that love me and so much more! The fact that HE knew I was a sinner and forgave me anyway never ceases to amaze me, humble me, and make me feel so loved like never before. I can’t describe in words the emotions I have experienced in the last few weeks as I have been able to reevaluate HIS purpose in my life without the dullness of spirit and overall lethargy that the drugs created in me. You see dear reader, religion says “I will or won’t do this or that and maybe HE will love me!” relationship says “I won’t do this because HE loved me first and still does in spite of my falling away.” In my own humanity I can’t even begin to comprehend such a love. So, I understand when people that haven’t experienced the true love of Christ, personally, seek first to condemn me for my behavior and can’t comprehend of a love so vast!

So many people out there say that we Christians just use Jesus as a crutch to solve all our issues. Well, I’ll tell ya, I hope Christians become as hooked on the Word of God and as blindly addicted to their Bible as junkies are hooked to their drugs. Take it from a seasoned but no longer using pothead; Jesus is the one high that never let me down. I will gladly lean on His grace to help me get through my battles, because in my weakness, He is at His strongest.

Part of my reason for confessing the errors of my ways is to be an example to my fellow brothers and sisters who struggle with their own fleshly desires. The scriptures call upon us to confess our sins to one another as part of our repentance, but not as some kind of fulfilling of a ten-step process to get back in God’s good graces. In fact, I don’t believe I ever fell out of His grace. I don’t believe that God slapped HIS head in frustration and said to HIMSELF, “wow! I didn’t expect him to do that!” I certainly don’t believe that my actions were His will for me, but, I know that what the devil wanted to use to harm me, God will use both to bless others and me. We learn from our mistakes, but it is difficult to confess these mistakes in an environment that comes down hard on transgressors.

Is smoking weed a sin? I don’t think God meant for his plants to be rolled up or put in a pipe to be used in the recreational ways we have created to provide a brief escape from reality. That said, who are we to say what God allows for any of our brothers and sisters with terminal illnesses? I have determined for myself that drugs are an area where I need to be extra vigilant, but I would not look down my nose at my fellow man who is still struggling to discover what the vision is God has placed in their heart. The Bible says that the good work HE has begun in us HE will bring to completion in HIS time. So, you see folks it’s all about HIM. Is that hard for you to swallow? That you have so little to do with your own salvation? IF that bothers you then you might just be a little religious.

Is marijuana an evil tool of the enemy? If you buy into the concept of pharmakeia, and I do, that is a subject for an entirely different article. Remember people anything that denies God HIS place first in your life is an idle and is a tool of the devil. While I agree that drugs have a spiritual component, much more than farmakia is at work here. I mean, if we are going to blame pharmakeia and ancient religious rituals for all of our behaviors, you might suggest that the use of forks, spoons and bowls are evil because they were once used in spiritual rituals. Yet, if we follow that logic, we may as well lobby to change the names of the days and months and ban Christmas and Easter because of their dubious origins. We should exercise unconditional love on our fellow man, but let’s not misplace blame here. There is a problem with drugs not because the herbs are grown but rather because the herbs are grown and abused and sold to consumers eager to use them. Man has a problem and it’s called sin. I know that our current society doesn’t like to hear that every single person on the face of this Earth is a sinner. Even so called Christians would rather blame the devil for their inability to confess their behavior to one another and then submit it to the Lord so HE can deliver you from it.

I don’t know what will become of my sleep deprivation now that the so-called remedy has been removed. I trust God will direct me as to how to deal with my current obstacle, but I wanted to share this portion of my testimony to encourage others to have an honest dialogue with the Lord about what ever is challenging you in your walk. Fill in the blank. After all, the root of all sin is not a blunt. It’s us putting anything’s ability to fix a problem including our own rationalizations first instead of God in our lives. In short our issue is idolatry. Whatever the cause of your discomfort, take responsibility for it and take the first step toward making things right. I, and hopefully many others, will respect you no matter where you are and pray alongside you that you may have His spirit to guide you.

Great article about Marijuana and pharmakeia
Should Christians Smoke Medical Marijuana?
From Christianity Today (June 2011):

April 06, 2012 by Mike Calvo | Comments (3) | personal | testimony | religion | weed | marijuana | pharmakeiasin | flesh | morality