Welcome to the Lansdale Life Church podcast.
If you're seeking a closer relationship with Jesus Christ, this podcast is for you.
Thank you for joining us today.
We're going to be blessed today.
Sean O'Donnell is going to speak with us here.
Sean has an amazing story of really God's faithfulness to him.
Sean was in various kinds of addiction for many years,
but God's brought him out of that.
Sean has an awesome heart, a heart for just helping disciple people.
Maybe they've gone through similar situations to him in very practical ways.
I think you're going to really find it very interesting what he's going to share.
People need hands-on skills as well, and Sean is good at developing that,
so we'll hear about his ministries.
He's the founder of Facing Addiction Ministries and D-Town Vocational Program,
and a lot of other programs as well.
He's the father of six kids and attends Covenant Fellowship or Covenant Church.
All right, so let's give a hand for Sean.
I met Sean about three years ago.
I don't know if he remembers it, but we were at a picnic, same picnic,
and I was talking with him, and I was just amazed at his story,
and came back and told Pastor Chris,
hey, here's a guy who has some really practical ideas for helping people
that are having various addiction problems, so looking forward to hearing from you.
All right.
I appreciate that, Doug.
I'm probably going to read a lot of this.
I don't feel like I'm a good speaker, although I have to do it often.
I'm more hands-on.
I want to disciple people, care for people,
but I know it's encouraging for us to hear about how we're working
and how God's using us and what's possible.
With that said, I'd just like to pray.
Father, I thank you, Lord, for all these men.
I ask you to speak through me.
Give us something we can use practically in our lives
to honor you and to help others.
I pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Yep, my name's Sean O'Donnell.
Doug kind of covered my first little section here.
I'm the founder of Facing Addiction Ministries.
We help start addiction meetings in churches,
local churches in Bucks County.
I also have a home remodeling company,
Doylestown Carpentry, and through that business,
we have a program called Doylestown Vocational Training Program.
We hire two to three individuals per quarter,
and we disciple them while training them in a skill.
I just wanted to start with my personal testimony.
Give some backdrop to what God's done
and the changes he can do in people's lives.
For about 20 years, I didn't go a single day without drugs.
I never believed I would be without drugs until 2016.
I thought that was just going to be my life.
I remember standing in line at the methadone clinic
eight years ago thinking this is my life.
I'll be coming here forever.
So standing here today seven years sober,
completely off of everything,
is nothing short of a miracle from God.
I'm thankful for the chance to share my testimony
and I pray it glorifies God.
I'll start at the beginning.
When I was two, my father left.
My mother was left to raise me as a single parent.
We were on food stamps and living in the city.
My mother battled addiction throughout most of my childhood.
She was physically and mentally abusive,
yet my mother was also a deacon at our church.
That really confused me as a kid,
that we were part of a church
and my mother had a role as a deacon.
Yet no one saw the abuse.
No one called her out on her drug addiction
or tried to help us.
So that's just to give you some backdrop
to why I wasn't a Christian through most of my life.
I grew up hearing things like,
you're the reason your dad left while being physically abused.
I absorbed my mother's rage and pain.
When I wasn't at home,
I faced violence in my neighborhood,
getting in fights, being jumped,
and even having my bike stolen at gunpoint at eight years old.
By the age of 10, I had so much pain inside
that I tried to end my life.
I was placed in a psychiatric hospital.
That was the first of 13 mental hospitals I was in
by the time I was 15 years old.
By 15, I had given up hope life would ever improve.
I ran away and lived on my own.
I lived in parks, sheds, and on couches of friends
I barely knew.
I jumped into relationships with women.
I was looking for something to fill me up,
to fill that void inside of me.
I never knew back then, but it was a God-sized void.
No drugs, no alcohol.
No women were going to fill that.
Sex, porn, and drugs was things I got into very early.
And so I started to use it to self-medicate,
to deal with the insecurities and depression.
And as drugs became a big part of my life,
I knew it was a problem.
But alleviation from the reality of who I was becoming
was more important to me.
It helped me to be blind to what I was doing,
blind to my sin.
By the time I was 18, I started selling drugs,
stealing, and robbing.
My sense of right and wrong had become more distorted.
At this time, I was a womanizer.
I would always have a few women as options
that I was talking to.
And that was normal to me.
Looking back, I see how much pain and hurt I caused.
Even now, I know some of the women I used
and treated poorly.
I know my actions of cheating, demeaning,
and sexually mistreating them
has contributed to dysfunction in their relationships,
marriages, and families to this day.
We perpetuate the sins of this world
and we minimize its effect.
But those acts of taking advantage of women by misleading,
having a one-night stand, or watching porn,
that creates revenue for the porn industry,
which entices women and coerces them
to be victimly exploited.
Our sin in these areas as leaders, protectors, and men
distorts Gods and men of God,
distorts and diminishes the power and authority
we are supposed to walk in as blood-bought men of God.
At 19 years old, I was given my first prescription of Percocets,
and that was the start of a lifelong addiction.
That was when it was solidified.
I had a steady supply of drugs every month
by just going to get a prescription.
I moved from Percocets to Oxycontin to fentanyl patches.
These are all different degrees of pain medications,
stronger and stronger.
I was in and out of jail.
I spent many nights on the streets.
I was depressed and hopeless.
I survived by lying, cheating, and stealing.
During that time, I was involved in drive-by shootings,
robberies, attempted murders, bank robbery, assaults, and overdoses.
The life I had run from at 15 was now my reality as an adult.
At the age of 20, I had my first child.
I was a part of her life on and off from 2020, or from 2000 to 2008.
I was trying hard not to walk away like my dad did,
but I could see the damage with me in and out of her life.
I couldn't stop using drugs,
so I ended up deciding to leave her at eight years old,
just like my dad did.
I didn't become part of her life again
until I found Christ seven years ago,
and that is a restored relationship that I'm so thankful for.
I didn't think was possible.
In 2008, I overdosed twice in the same year.
The first time I was found unresponsive in a trailer,
an officer cleared my throat and performed CPR, saving my life.
The second time I was found unresponsive in an apartment,
and it was one month later.
Both times, I was in a coma for over a week.
I had a pick line stitched into my neck.
That's where they put an IV directly in your neck,
because you'll need emergency medications.
They only do that with people who are going to be out for a while.
You wouldn't have that if you're conscious.
It was very serious, and I shouldn't have survived.
I'll never forget waking up in the hospital.
They told me that they pulled 60 fragments of Xanax out of my lungs.
It was something I realized I probably committed suicide.
I just don't remember how it happened or what happened,
but you don't take that many pills
without intent to die.
From 2008 to 2016, I was in and out of jail,
continue the same cycle.
I was in dozens of toxic relationships,
mostly for my doing.
I was always on drugs and living on social security disability.
I was using street drugs and going to methadone clinics.
It was a slow burn version of hell.
It was just very slow burn.
Not obvious, but obvious enough.
2016 to 2017, at the age of 36, my second daughter was born.
That should have been enough to get me clean, but it wasn't.
I was still stuck on methadone.
I was still using heroin and fentanyl.
I was adding testosterone to the mix to get energy back.
But it only made me more impulsive and angry.
It only made me more demanding of my girlfriend for sex.
It only increased my porn addiction.
So I coerced and mentally beat down
to get my sexual desires filled by my girlfriend.
At that time, it was the mother of my child.
To put things into perspective, this is in 2017.
2016 to 2017, I would tie a string to my belt
and I would tie it to my seven-month-old daughter
while she's sleeping so that I could do heroin
and dip out and know if she got too far away
or know if she would roll off to bed.
So that's the type of person I was just eight years ago.
That was normal to me.
That was okay.
This is one of the countless ways I was living in sin.
In 2017, the mother of my child went for a restraining order
and I was only able to see my little girl twice a week
at the Georgetown Library with supervised visits.
This lasted for about seven months.
During that time, I was broken.
I didn't want to live anymore.
I felt suicidal.
I reached out to one of our mutual friends,
hoping to get information.
Not to talk to this guy or anything,
but just to get information about my family
because I couldn't see them.
And he didn't give me any information.
He invited me to a picnic.
I ended up going to the picnic in hopes of getting information.
And when I got there was a Christian in picnic
and still didn't get any information.
But they actually talked to me.
They cared, prayed for me.
And I remember still to this day,
they put their hands on me in a circle
and prayed for me at the end of the picnic.
And I just kept thinking in my head
that I'm going to hit them
and that they should get off of me.
But I didn't show that
because I knew it was genuine.
It was real.
So I let them do it.
But I completely rejected it in my head and in my heart.
When I went home that week,
I was still suicidal.
I was still hearing phantom cries of my daughter upstairs
even though she wasn't there.
But the memory of her hearing her cry was there
and it was torturing me.
And so when they invited me to church on Sunday,
I had nothing to do.
And I went.
I went high, broken, still living in all my sin.
And they wanted to sit up front.
I made them sit in the back.
This is not sit up front.
They were putting their hands up during worship.
And I was making fun of them in my mind
thinking it's ridiculous.
These people are crazy.
And so I vowed I'd never go again.
I left again.
They kept inviting me.
I think a week or two weeks later,
I went again because I was still dealing with depression
at home and hearing my daughter.
And I went.
I let them take me up closer to the front.
And during worship, I just felt the wholeness of God
fill my being.
It happened on its own.
Nobody prompted it.
Nobody structured it, planned it.
But that void for like one minute was completely filled.
The void that I was trying to get in porn,
sex, drugs, alcohol,
all the wounds that I was trying to fill
were completely filled for one minute.
And from that point on, I knew God was real.
So what do I do with that?
I'm living in sin.
I know God's real.
I know he can fill all those voids and make you whole again.
But it was still a process after that.
One time I called the church.
They had those little cards
like fill this out with a problem.
So I called the church.
It was on that card.
And I explained my situation.
And the person, I think, felt overwhelmed
by what I was saying.
And they said, I'm gonna have someone else call you back.
And then someone else called me back within a minute.
And after talking for about 20 minutes,
we said the sinner's prayer together on the phone.
And I'll never forget, I was leaning over my dryer
in my apartment crying and saying the prayer.
I mean, like full-on crying, you know,
like you got the quivers going and all that.
I was seeing all the pain and hurt
I had caused and was done to me.
I was crying so hard my nose started to bleed.
The red drops kept landing on the white dryer one by one.
And I remember looking down full of tears,
seeing them hit the white, the red blood hitting the white.
And I finally stood up and took a breath
after leaning over the dryer after I said the prayer.
And I felt his spirit fill me with grace
like he did in worship.
And as I exhaled with the shivering breath,
I let go of the weight.
I just felt, I remember feeling it just go,
the weight with one breath out.
And he came in with one breath in.
And he took it so I could do the work
of restoration led by him.
And I'm still working on that restoration
of my past relationships and refinement
of the man I am today.
But I was fully restored to my relationship with Jesus.
So all things have been possible.
That year in 2017, I gave my life to Jesus Christ.
He moved in miraculous ways,
helping me to overcome pornography addiction,
drug addiction, and so many unhealthy habits.
I spent so much time in prayer and scripture.
I would go to the lake in the morning and at night
and seek him.
There was a restraining order.
So I really didn't have anything else to do.
I'd go to multiple churches and just find him
and seek him.
And he structured that on purpose.
I had nowhere to go but him.
He transformed this heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
He wrote his commandments on my heart and renewed my mind.
I now have six kids.
My wife and I have our own home
and I am able to be a husband,
a father, a provider, and a protector.
I never knew how rewarding, challenging,
and beautiful it is to devote your life selflessly
to your family.
And all those attributes you get,
they start to get solidified in your heart
by God's work through your obedience.
And you become stable to not just do those things in your home
but to do them outside of your home and disciple others.
It is a beautiful and difficult plan of sanctification
and growth but I wouldn't trade it for anything.
In 2017, I was still having a hard time
not seeing my daughter.
Even after all of this,
I would still hear my daughter upstairs
randomly trying to watch a show,
trying to watch a podcast, trying to read the Bible.
I would hear her crying upstairs.
And it was still trying to pull that old spirit
of depression out of me.
Depression of lonely,
the feeling of the spirit of loneliness
out of me.
It was trying to draw those old things back.
And I shared this at a men's Bible study
and along with being prayed for,
they told me to start a Bible study in my house
to have those spirits be done
and have new memories, good memories in my home.
And we started that meeting at my house.
It was like two or three people
who didn't know what we were doing.
One of the pastors showed up one time.
One of the elders showed up.
They tried to show support,
help guide us how to have a Bible study.
It ended up turning into a small group
where it was a small Bible study dinner
and it kept growing.
It went from two to three people
to five people to 10 people,
multiple churches,
different people from my neighborhood.
And when it started to push like 30, 40 people,
I approached Covenant Church,
the church I was at and I said,
we need a place to meet.
We can't do it here.
And we prayed about it
and we started the Facing Addiction Ministries
first meeting,
addiction-related meeting in a church.
And our first meeting was 60 people.
We started calling it Facing Addiction Ministries.
This meeting still meets every Thursday
for over seven years
and I haven't ran it once in five plus years.
So that's amazing.
We don't have to be involved
if God's involved.
It's a blessing.
By the end of 2017,
I found it Facing Addiction Ministries,
501c3.
This nonprofit ministry grew
from the needs of the addiction meeting.
I was leading in Covenant
every Thursday night.
We were in need of funding
for step recovery books,
Uber rides,
and recovery treatment scholarships.
So everything that happened
happened organically.
Like the meeting came about on its own,
the needs grew.
So then we needed some way
that people could give
and help us provide for the needs.
And it's just been a beautiful journey.
FAM is dedicated
to equipping churches
to serve their communities
with addiction-focused support.
We work with a number of companies
to provide work training
while mentoring and discipling.
We start and develop leaders.
We help develop leaders
for recovery meetings
and ministries within local churches.
We don't go run the meetings
or ministries.
We want to bring people
from the community
to be developed
as a leader for that community.
As of now,
there are six meetings
in Bucks County.
The churches fully support the meetings
and help with the needs
that arise from the participants.
Our volunteers provide rides
to treatment,
recovery meetings,
church,
work,
and if volunteers aren't available,
we use Uber cards.
And we know what's up.
We don't give them an Uber card.
We order the ride
from point A to point B,
make sure it's going to a church,
a meeting,
a doctor's office,
work.
And we offer one-on-one
mentorship and training.
And we train church volunteers
to do that as well.
We offer recovery house
and treatment scholarships.
We help with groceries for work
with local food pantries.
We work with local food pantries as well.
And if we ever order someone food,
we do the same thing.
We order the food,
send it to their door.
I used to actually,
six years ago, go shopping with them.
That, once it grew,
that wasn't possible anymore.
So thank goodness I can deliver food.
And we provide job training
and job placement.
Our first way that we help
in job placement
is we offer a work readiness assessment
in our office in Doylestown.
It's 199 North Broad Street
in Doylestown,
right across from the courthouse.
That was God's providence as well
because people can walk
from the probation department
or court and be near the transportation,
public transportation,
and come right over.
So that's been great.
We get referrals from churches,
safe families,
probation departments,
recovery houses,
and recovery meetings.
I usually have an opportunity
to share some of my story,
which allows the person to open up
and feel like they're not sitting
with someone that's sitting
in judgment of them,
but they can open up
and I can figure out how I can help
them best with the truth.
Over the last seven years,
we've helped 62 individuals
in the work mentorship program
with a 60% success rate,
meaning they haven't returned
to jail or long-term relapse,
but we also have lost people.
I've been to too many funerals.
I'd rather not ever lose
somebody I care about
and working within a deep way,
but we are in a fallen world
and these things happen.
And I pray for a day where
that won't be the case anymore
and I know that's coming.
And through the meetings,
we've calculated that we've helped about
or reached about a thousand people
that have heard about Christ
and heard about recovery and hope.
Through Dolestown Carpentry,
my business,
we provide paid hands-on training
in a trade with wraparound care
provided by Facing Addiction Ministries.
And we help men who've come
out of addiction or incarceration.
We have helped one woman.
It's rare, but that's in there
if we can and it fits.
The heart of the work
is building integrity,
hope, and purpose
through biblical values
and community care.
Everything we do
through our business,
our ministry, and our partnerships
is about helping people
stand on their own two feet
and experiencing the love of God.
That's been the goal.
It was done for me
and I'm trying to reproduce
what God's done in my life
for others.
This isn't an easy operation.
This is an intense process
of walking with people day to day
through good and bad.
How can we all walk?
So this is my question to everyone.
How can we all walk with people
in our day to day lives
through our businesses,
our jobs, our neighbor,
someone we see that's struggling.
Do you see the struggle
of your neighbor
or do you walk right by?
That's my question.
I mean, we all get busy
and we just keep doing
what we need to do.
And sometimes that has to be the case
and other times we need to pray
about where we can step in
and help.
The truth of the matter is
is many of us look through others
instead of seeing them.
And sometimes it's not even
about the action
of doing something.
It's about letting them know
they're seen
and that they're cared about.
When we are preoccupied
with our own concerns,
much of the world
is simply invisible to us.
Service is rooted in seeing
and seeing others as God does
as seeing the image of God
in others.
The rhythm of missional encounter
has to do with anticipating
and planning to share
the love of God with others
who we encounter in society.
Encounter could be an accident,
but missional encounter
has some thought
and intention behind it.
A missional encounter
might happen through conversations,
through a conversation,
through witnessing
or by praying for others.
But one of the most effective
missional encounters
is when we serve
those in great need
and alleviate hurt, harm
and suffering.
I want to ask
every man in this room
where you can evaluate
and give up some of your time
and energy to help someone.
I really want to challenge you guys
if God can use me
all these years.
I haven't even graduated high school
and he's equipped me
to do things for his will
and to be obedient to it.
And he's blessed it
and provided for me
every step of the way
in ways that don't make sense.
A business should not
be able to take on
a bunch of trainees
all the time
and then send them out
to have their own businesses
or do well somewhere else.
You would keep that asset
you trained in a business
for it to do well.
So he does bless
the hands of the things
that we're doing
for his will, for his kingdom.
And if we can't sacrifice
after Jesus sacrificed himself
for us, then we're lost.
I don't want to waste
the single breath
of his new life
on selfish exploits.
I want to be kingdom-minded.
I want to see his church
move in power
and work together
in united prayerful ways.
It can be as simple
as taking someone out
weekly for coffee
and going over scripture
or as complex
as creating a new position
in your business
just for training
someone who desperately
needs a chance.
You can't force the care.
Don't do it reluctantly.
Don't give reluctantly
because sincere
God-led action
is not fake
and the power of God
only moves
in an obedient heart.
So that's so important
to be moved,
to be called to do it,
not to force it.
Ultimately, we have to let go
of everything
to receive the gift of eternity.
So I encourage you
to stretch, give,
and invest in others.
In John 21,
verse 15 through 17,
when Peter failed
and denied Jesus three times,
the Lord came to him
for redemption through action.
That action was simple.
Do you love me?
Yes.
If you do, feed my sheep.
Shepherd my people.
Feed my lambs.
It's very clear
how redemption works
and how restoration works.
He wants us to be used
for his will
to help others.
Jesus is clear in Matthew,
chapter 25,
verse 31 through 46.
We will be judged.
And one crucial test
of a man who serves
the Lord is this.
Did you show love
and compassion
by serving the hungry,
the thirsty,
the sick,
the imprisoned,
and the needy?
Because in serving
the least of these,
we are serving him.
Those who neglected
such acts of mercy
will face eternal separation
while the righteous
will inherit eternal life.
And in John chapter 13,
verse 33 through 35,
we're left with a call to action.
He says,
little children,
I shall be with you no longer.
I shall be with you
a little while longer.
You will seek me.
And as I said
to the Jews
where I am going,
you cannot come.
So now I say to you
a new commandment.
I give to you
that you love one another.
I have love
as I have loved you
that you also love one another.
By this,
all will know
that you are my disciples
if you have love
for one another.
So he just reiterates
the same thing
in different ways
over and over.
In Matthew 28,
verse 18 through 20.
And Jesus came and spoke to them
saying all authority
has been given to me
in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore
and make disciples
of all nations,
baptizing them
in the name of the Father
and the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
Teaching them to observe
all things
I have commanded you.
And lo,
I am with you
even to the end of the age.
So he commanded us
to love others.
And then he says,
do what I've commanded you
in Matthew.
And I am with you
to the end of the age.
So he is with us
when we are loving
and caring for someone else.
When we see them
as an image bearer of God
instead of as somebody
that's in our way
of our schedule.
Before I finish this,
I'd like to remember
what God has modeled for us
in a big way.
In his perfect, faithful, loving way.
So in Romans chapter 5,
verse 5 through 11,
and hope does not put us to shame
because God's love
has been poured out
into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit
who has been given to us.
You see at just the right time
when we were still powerless,
Christ died for the unGodly.
Very important.
Very rarely in this world
will anyone die
for a righteous person,
though for a good person
someone might possibly
dare to die.
But God demonstrates
his own love for us in this.
While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
Since we have now been
justified by his blood,
how much more
shall we be saved
from God's wrath through him?
For while we were
God's enemies,
we were reconciled to him
through the death of his son.
How much more
having been reconciled
shall we be saved
through his life?
Not only in this so,
but we also boast in God
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have
now received reconciliation.
So the verse I selected
really focused on us
abiding in him,
doing his will,
helping his people,
seeing his people as him,
as him being with us.
And he promises
in those places
when you're doing
those things,
he is abiding in you,
and with you,
and empowering you.
And I know I want to be
as close to Jesus as possible.
I know the life I led
without him.
And so that's my,
I want to challenge
everyone in here.
This is his call.
He reiterates it
so many times.
It's not a me-centered faith.
It's an outward
expression of faith.
The other thing I'd like
to encourage everyone
with is getting prayer.
We can't,
we can't care for others
if we haven't received
care from God
and his people.
You're not going to
disciple well
if you haven't been discipled.
And being discipled
takes vulnerability.
Going to another man,
someone, a pastor,
a brother in Christ,
with open vulnerability
and honesty
to be cared for.
So today,
if you have anything
you need prayer for,
I would urge you
to find someone
to pray for you
and be open about it.
We all have stuff.
Every single person here
guarantees there's
something you need prayer for.
And so that vulnerable,
that humility,
that's where God fills
that space
and equips you
to do it for someone else later.
It was a little shorter
than I thought,
but did you want to do?
Yeah.
After. Okay.
So for the prayer time,
I'd like to,
yeah, I'm torn between the two,
to the two options.
So I feel like
it would be good
to pray for others
that we know
that are struggling
and how God can use us
to help them.
I also feel
it's really important
for us to actually
pray for one another,
like every person to your left
to be equipped to do that.
That's a lot,
but I think we have
enough time for it.
I'd like to do both.
Please don't use names
of the people
that you want to pray for.
You can just say
my neighbor,
my coworker,
him, her,
you know,
we don't want to throw
everybody's name out there.
But yeah,
if everyone can just go
around their table
and say someone
they would like to pray for
and pray for them
and do that first
and then go around
and pray for the man
to your left
that they be equipped
by the Holy Spirit
to care for those people.
I think that would be
a beautiful exercise.
I'll go to my table
and do that
and then I'll come back up
for a Q&A.
Thanks for joining us
at Lansdale Life Church
as we praise God
and discuss His Word.
Don't forget to join us
for Worship Lives Sunday mornings
at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube.
Be blessed
and have a great day!