Sid Roth

SID: Hello. Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. I have been so looking forward to this particular interview because I’m convinced that this is the missing link that has been blocking you walking in the supernatural of every promise that God has. And I want you to be normal. Now my guest, Jim Richards, has spent 35 years studying health and studying the Bible. He has three earned doctorate degrees and he has developed a way of praying to make you so free that you can believe God with all of your heart, and that is the reason why God is not answering a lot of your prayers. You’re not believing God with all of your heart. There’s some blockage, if you will. We’re going to get rid of that blockage, Jim Richards. Now Jim, I look at you and it’s hard to believe the background that you came from. Your father was violent. Your stepfather then became violent and you had, I hope you don’t get upset with me saying this, you had a crazy grandmother that you lived with. How did you even survive? Tell me the most violent thing that happened to you.

JIM: You know, the most violent thing that my father did was when we were children tried to burn us all alive while he was in a drunken rage. The most violent thing my stepfather ever did was broke into the bedroom and stabbed me in my sleep really intending to murder me, and I managed to narrowly escape with my life.

SID: You have to believe today that if it wasn’t for God you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.

JIM: Oh yeah. And not only that, if it were not for applying these principles that we share, I would be bitter, angry, enraged, full of all kinds of complications in life. But it’s really, I am free from all that. I am free from the power of all of that by applying these principles.

SID: Okay. You’re in a band and the drummer’s cousin is one of your dealers for drugs.

JIM: Right.

SID: But he tells you a story that is amazing. Tell me about it.

JIM: Right. He was actually enraged because our drug supplier in Atlanta had gotten saved.

SID: I could imagine that would be a reason.

JIM: And that was a party time. That’s how we made money. So he’s telling me, he’s cussing, he’s ranting and raving. He says, “Ernie’s got the blanking religion. He’s blanking talking about Jesus.” So he’s ranting and raving, and cussing. But what was really interesting is through this process it was the first time in my life that I ever actually heard the Gospel. Now I had gone to church. I used to go to churches, knock on the office door. I’d go because they had hair out to here and I’d be barefoot and no shirt on, eyes red. I was crazy and it would scare them, and I understand that.

SID: You took after your crazy grandmother.

JIM: That’s right. But I would go in and just say, “Listen, my name is Jim Richards. I’m a drug dealer, I’m a musician, I’m dying. I got to find God.” And never had one single minister ever tell me how to get saved. I had them tell me I was going to Hell and on the other end of the spectrum I had them say, don’t worry, nobody is going to Hell.

SID: So this musician that’s upset because his drug dealer has now become a Christian tells you about it, and in mocking, that’s what he was doing, in mocking it, you end up getting the information you needed.

JIM: You know, the key thing he said that captured my heart, he said, “Ernie told me if you weren’t blank, blank, for God, he’s blank, blank against God.” Man, when I got out of that car, for the first time in my life I knew there is no neutral ground. And if I’m not for God I’m against Him, and I never knew I was against God. And I’ll tell you, I prayed. I was 21 years old. I was born with a congenital kidney disease. By this time I had been on drugs since I was in my mid-teens because I was a runaway at 14. I had sores all over me. My hair was falling out. Every morning I woke up with blood coming out my nose on my pillow. I was having seizures. I mean, you just go down the list of all these medical problems that I had.

SID: From your beatings you had those.

JIM: Beatings, substance. I had overdosed on drugs a few times and nearly died from that. I’m telling you, I just prayed. I didn’t even know what to say. But I said, “God, here’s the deal.” That’s exactly what I said. I said, “Here’s the deal. I don’t understand this, but this has got something to do with Jesus dying for me and I don’t know what means, but,” I said, “here’s the deal. If you’ll have me I will give you my life.” I said, “But there’s two things. Number one, I’m not going to believe anything anybody says about you unless I see it in a Bible for myself. So I need a Bible.” Because I had heard all kinds of crazy things about God. And I said, “Number two, I am not going to play church. This has got to be the real deal. I don’t mind giving you my life, but I’m not going to play any games.” And you know, I had a revelation of the love of God. And all I know is I entered into what seemed like eternity. I had a revelation of the love of God, and what was really only seconds seemed like months. I was a different man and that was it. I was off drugs.

SID: Okay. You get set free. But now you’re 28 and you’re dying of kidney disease. What did you do about it?

JIM: I’m serving God. I’m walking along. Everything is doing great. I’m succeeding at life, succeeding at ministry. I’m 28 years old. I get up one morning with pain in my side. They take me to the hospital and they rush me from one hospital to another hospital for emergency surgery. And the radiologist told a nurse that was in the church I was pasturing, and said, “We have never seen anybody with kidneys this bad that was still alive.” My kidneys had actually reduced down to a third of the size of normal. I had tumors. I had a renal system, both kidneys, several tumors, several cysts. And so I began this process that took four and a half years to walk out of. I’d love to say I just prayed one prayer. See, here’s the thing. Every aspect of what I shared gets down to this. We’ve got to persuade our heart to believe the truth, because until we believe the truth in our heart it’s just information. And you know, when you got pain in your body or when you got bills that you can’t pay then you got all of this evidence out here that says the promises of God are not yours. And contrary to popular belief, the Bible says, you’re going to believe what you have the evidence to believe because it says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen.”

SID: When we come back Jim has found there are trapped feelings. Actually science is finally, because of his studies for medicine in the Bible, science is finally catching up with the Bible. There are trapped emotions, trapped feelings. Some may even be generational. But when you can get rid of them you can begin to believe God with all of your heart. What is trapped in your body? Don’t go away. We’re going to find out.