Sid Roth

SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. It’s hard for me to believe. I look at my guest, Steven Brooks, I’ve met your wife, I’ve met your daughter. You have a worldwide ministry, signs and wonders, you prophecy, the prophecies come to pass. You’ve prophesied over me and it’s come to pass. So I know you hear from God. But it’s hard to believe, Steven, that 20 years ago, it’s hard for me to believe when I look at Steven now, 20 years ago he was single, he lost his job, and you couldn’t go to your parents. Why?

STEVEN: Well Sid, it was a tough situation all around. I had just recently received the baptism in the Holy Spirit at that time of my life. I began to speak in tongues. I was introduced to a church that believed in these types of things. I was totally unaware of it before. So it was all brand new to me. And I went back and I told the old denomination that I came out of that miracles are still happening. God still is doing miracles today. These things are real. And when I joined the church they gave me the right hand of fellowship, but when I told them that they gave me the left foot of fellowship. I was on the way out. My family didn’t understand me. They had been raised in this certain denomination all their life that did not believe in miracles. And so when these things happened to me a lot of my family and close friends did not understand what I was going through. So when I was in a time of great need they did not want to help me. They thought it was some type of judgment upon my life.

SID: And so you got two months behind in rent and he does the honorable thing. He says, “I’m not gonna get into debt any more.” He doesn’t have a job. He looks for a job. You can’t get a job and so he gets in his car, he’s driving out of town and he sees a cardboard box. Why would you grab that cardboard box? What did it look, by the way?

STEVEN: Well it was a large cardboard box, Sid, not your normal cardboard box. It looked like somebody had taken a refrigerator out of it, unpacked it and just threw the box aside. And something told me that I was going to need that. So I stopped my car, popped the trunk and folded that big box up and shoved it in the back of the trunk, because I didn’t know where I was gonna live at, and I drove about 12 miles out of the town and found a place off to the side of the road that I just pulled off to the side, and literally took that box out of the trunk of my car, set it up, and I thought I’ll only be here a few days. It probably won’t be too long. And I begin to live out of that box.

SID: Did you ever in your wildest imagination think that you would live in a cardboard box?

STEVEN: No. The whole time this was going on I kept thinking, why is this happening to me? I was crying for help. I actually went by a church that I was belonging to at that time and I asked them for help and I explained my situation, and they basically replied and said, “You’re going through some type of Job experience. You need to just go ahead and go through it.” And I didn’t understand really it was the enemy trying to destroy my life. And so every time I tried to get help it seemed like it just reinforced the difficult situation I was already in.

SID: Okay. And your car stopped working, so you couldn’t go in your car at night and warm up with the heater. You didn’t have money for gas. How cold did it get?

STEVEN: It got real cold. You know, Sid, when I parked that car I thought I’ll be leaving in a few days. I’ll get out of this mess, but the start stopped working. And before I knew it, it rolled into the winter times and the temperatures began to drop. And one night it got down to 18 degrees, which is considerably below freezing, and that was one of the toughest nights I had.

SID: Now I’m reminded of the time that you said, “Lord, it can’t get any worse.” And then what happened?

STEVEN: Well I was laying in that cardboard box and I was hungry. I had not eaten in four days and things were just difficult. There was stress and pressure. But I said, “Lord,” one night while I was laying in the cardboard box trying to keep from freezing, I said, “Lord, it just cannot get any worse than this.” And when I said that, Sid, I literally felt something wet begin to fall on my face and it started to sprinkle. It started raining. And I said, “Lord, it did get worse.” And so I hit the rock bottom that night.

SID: Well there was something that happened, though. He had a post office box and he got an unexpected check for $400. Had you been eating much?

STEVEN: No, hardly eating anything.

SID: Where did you get food?

STEVEN: Well it was depending on what was available in the trashcans. I found out that some of the local pizza companies, if they didn’t sell all their pizzas at night, they would just throw them away. So if there was something in the dumpsters I ate. If there was not then it was another night of prayer and fasting.

SID: So what did you do with that $400 that came down unexpectedly?

STEVEN: Well it was a shock. It did come unexpectedly. But I remember that I had that friend that I had never paid the back rent on. So I went back and I said, “Listen, I know your dad is the landlord. I want to give you that money so you can take it to him.” And I gave him the money.

SID: Why did you do that? I mean, it’s the right thing to do. But here it’s 18 degrees, it’s raining on you. The cardboard is soggy. Your car isn’t working. You’re eating out of trash cans. $400, Steven. How could you do that?

STEVEN: Well I really wanted to go to the grocery store, but I knew enough having been brought up in a Christian home that there are certain things you need to do in life that were the right things to do. So I took that check and I cashed it at one of these check cashing places, and I took the money over to my friend. He took it to his father, and his father was absolutely shocked that somebody would do that. I just wanted to honor the Lord.

SID: You did have a few dollars cash that you kept. How much?

STEVEN: I kept four $1 bills that I had never spent.

SID: Okay. Get this. He remembers a Bible study that he went to a couple of times. So he goes to that Bible study and they take up an offering. This is a guy that only eats out of trash cans and does a lot of prayer and fasting because he doesn’t have any food, and he puts the $4 in the offering. How could you do that, Steven?

STEVEN: Well there was a guest minister that night. He said, “I’m going to travel down to South America. I want to take medical supplies. I want to receive an offering.” So they begin to pass the offering basket around the room. And I’m sitting there in that room, Sid, and literally a conversation began to go on each side of my shoulder. It felt like an angel was sitting here and an evil spirit was sitting over here. And I heard God just so strongly talked to me and said, “Give your last $4.” And I thought, “Lord, I’m gonna starve.” And I heard a voice on this side say, “If you give that you will starve.” And I thought just for a moment, and the whole time the basket is getting closer to me. And I thought, you know, I’m already starving. I might as well just give it and obey the Lord. And right when I decided to do it, I pulled the money out when the basket showed up. I just threw those four ones into the offering plate, and it went around and vanished, and the meeting was over.

SID: And so you went back to your box and your no food, horrible weather.

STEVEN: Yes.

SID: You think it’s gonna get any worse? Wait ‘til you wait what happens next week. Be right back after this word.