Make a REAL Difference!

Drug use isn't that bad yet in America.  Crime rate is at an "OK" level for me.  A few more abortions aren't really going to matter.......Of course you don't believe this, but if the only thing someone could know about you is your spending habits...If I never met you but saw your bank statements, would I think that deep down in your heart of hearts, this is how you really felt.  One man said that the only way to truly know what people love and what they hate is to follow their money.  It's something to think about.

Today I write about something very important to me.  GIVING!  I have actually said from pulpits before, "If you do not donate to good Godly causes that are fighting against the things that you are complaining about...STOP COMPLAINING because you are a hypocrite!"  Strong words I know, but I meant it and I still do.

I wonder how many horrible things would not have happened to us if we had been giving to causes all along that combat those things that ended up happening to us.  Your spouse became an alcoholic and ran off.  Your son or granddaughter ended up on meth or heroine.  Sure, the random chance of anyone getting caught up in a terrible situation is always there but we cannot pretend like there is no cause and effect.

Being a Christian minister and counselor and specializing in addictions I can tell you a few things.  I see devastating things happening to white and black, rich and poor, city folks and country folks, church families and non-church families....but one thing that I have noticed.  All addicts are extremely selfish in nature and a majority of addicts come from selfish environments.  Selfishness is the key component that we look for and try to fix when dealing with almost all addictions.

When asked by many pastors, how to stop addictions in the next generation or how to raise a generation that are not prone to drugs and other addictions, I alway say the same thing.  Teach and preach very Biblically, very passionately and very consistently against the sin of selfishness.  The more selfless a group is, the less likely they are to have addictions.

To me there is a pure correlation here.  Every generation in America has had it better than the last.  Bigger homes, newer cars, more things, more pleasure, Etc. Etc.  And each level of self indulgence is more and more acceptable.  With this in mind, I beg of you to consider my theory.

Human children are amazing individuals.  From pre-birth to early teen they are leaning by all manner of stimuli at an unbelievable rate.  Motor skills, talking, walking, voice inflections, eating, mannerisms, mood, depth of language, fact, theory, prejudices and on and on.  In the beginning they are taught all most entirely by who they are around.  This factor stays constant for life but other factors are eventually introduced such as reading and rational thought.  Never the less, learning behaviors that form people and their personalities come from forming oneself after others.  Especially those that you admire and look up to.

All of this being said, each generation gets a little more selfish, in general, as each generation teaches them to.  One of the greatest social and personal ways to counter act this is to give of your time and money to people and efforts that can never give anything back but do make for a better society.  It is an absolute win-win.  You will be teaching your own youth to not be selfish.  They will, by natural means, aspire to be selfless like you AND if something bad happens to them, you, friends or family, Etc. You will have already been helping grow the strength of the very entities that will be able to do something about it.

There are so many excuses to not give but they just don't hold water to me.  Giving is right at any level.  If you make 200.00 a week or 2,000.00 a week.  A small percentage of your income, strategically planted into the right ministries will bless God and His people's efforts and increase your income (unless you are specifically giving for that reason), as well as grow your faith as you see how real God's promises are.  On top of all of this, there is nothing in the world like seeing a woman decide to not abort, watching a couple get their kids back or knowing about an ex-addict that has been clean for several month or even years.  Most especially, when you know that The Lord used you to be a part of the solution.

I would never wish this on anyone but I see it all too often.  When you spend all of your time working, making money or buying bigger and better toys or putting your children through advanced classes, high end sports camps, teaching them to swim, dance, play instruments, etc and give them the latest in attire, electronics and vehicles just to see it all destroyed with an addiction to prescription pills that you didn't find out about until too late or a night of passion with a member of the opposite sex that you didn't even realize took place.......I see it ALL THE TIME!

The amount of churches, programs and nonprofits that are trying to really help people and really make a difference are so few and so overwhelmed that if you have ever been in the desperate situation to have to try to get help for someone, you know just how few and far between real help can be.

I am asking all who read this letter to consider your lifestyle, consider the world around you and consider your children and grandchildren's futures.  Make a difference.  Give.  Donate.  Volunteer.  There are some really good causes out there and despite all of the bad that has been done over the decades with the abuse of non-profits, there are some really decent, helpful and GODLY organizations that you can give to.

If you want your money to go to a certain type of cause and do not know who to give it to.  Ask us.  We probably know of the right one.  If we don't, we will do the research for you.  The best type of giving is local and the best amount is not an amount.  What I mean by that is, the best way to give is consistently.  Any non-profit is glad to get any donation but the more consistent the giving is the less expensive things will ultimately cost for the organization.  Anytime that you can plan your finances you can save by budgeting.  If you have to wait until things are emergencies and then pay for them when you can, you will end up spending more.  Some people don't like this and some groups may not like me saying it but 10.00 a month for a year is often better that a one time donation of 100.00.

If you can volunteer, by all means please do.  The experience is often life changing.  But please, please consider that if everyone gave consistently.  5.00, 20.00, 50.00 a week, a month, a quarter, we could literally change the world!  I believe this with all my heart, because I have seen the effects over a couple of decades and in tens of thousands of lives.  I know people are extremely busy but two things you MUST DO to not be a part of the problem.  #1 Spend time with your family and #2 teach them by example to give and be a part of the solution.

If you would like to contact our Christian Non-Profit or learn more about us, please visit us at www.HolinessMissionsToAmerica.com

Your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett

Doctors, Please STOP THE MADDNESS!!!

Once again today, I am counseling and working with another client.  Many come to me with drug problems, marital problems, mental and or emotional problems or just struggling with sin, religion, life, etc. 

People keep asking me WHAT I am.  I am not sure what I am.  I know WHO I am.  I am a punk kid from the streets of the west coast, saved by grace.  I am a husband, father and grandfather.  I am a Licensed and Ordained Christian Minister.  A Pastor of several Pastors, a Missionary, an Evangelist and an Author.  I am a fairly extensively read and studied Counselor and most days for the last 20 years I have worked with alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless, abandoned, widowed, orphaned, divorced, incarcerated, trafficked, hurting and broken people.  I do it on my time, on my dime.

Because of all of this I am going to speak out AGAIN about the modern medical practices of the private physicians, clinics and hospital doctors in America.  I am not foolish enough to believe that ALL doctors are part of the problem.  Three of my personal friends are doctors and 2 of them agree with me 100% about this.  The other agrees mostly but disagrees on certain points.  Many doctors are not part of the problem but the practices that I am about to speak of have become the more predominant instead of the less predominant; Especially among the entry levels of practice. 

This man that I am currently working with, (one of several for the last few weeks), has a story with the medical field that is so incredibly common that if I used the exact circumstance they would fit 8 out of 10 of most of the people that I have been working with for the last couple of years. 

This is the story.  A person gets hurt, gets sick or becomes prey to their own bad choices and ends up not functioning well in society.  Their life begins to fall apart and so they go to some sort of an entry level physician.   The patient tells the doctor that they are not thinking straight, feeling good, can’t get out of bed, are abusing certain chemicals, lost their job or spouse or house, etc. etc. etc. 

Now, there are a thousand different reasons why these things could be happening.  The patient could be lazy, they could be drunk a lot, they could be cheating on their spouse, they could have a chemical imbalance, they could have a brain tumor, they could be possessed, they could be running from God and on and on and on.  So what does the doctor do?  The exact same thing almost every singe time.  Prescribe Cymbalta, Lexapro, Lithium, Xanax, Zoloft, Prozac, Wellbutrin.  And prescribe them in multiple forms and high doses.  Doctors now days have these prescriptions in quick draw holsters.  I actually went to challenge a local clinic about this and they threatened to call the police.  The doctor has a bunch of these prescriptions written up in advance and he would just fill in the patients name.  I told them to call the police because I was pretty sure that was against the law.  Anyway.  If you have a first name and a last name you are a candidate to take some of these meds as far as some of them are concerned.  Most of my clients are on these drugs AND they were never tested for anything.  WHAT?!?!  That’s right.  The doctors that prescribed them did not run one single test on their patients before giving them these drugs. 

This is wrong on soooo many levels that I hardly know where to start.  First of all, some of these chemicals are narcotic based and even the ones that are not are very addictive.  Why in the world would you give someone a very addictive controlled substance when you do not know what is wrong with them?  Now I know that the prescribers love to say that these drugs are not addictive.  If you read some of the “official websites” of many of these drugs they say things like, “Zoloft is a non-addictive chemical supplement for the brain.  It can be VERY DIFFICULT to come off of and extreme caution should be used to not hurt the patient in trying to wean them from a long term use of the drug as it creates a false need for the substance. “  EXCUSE ME?  The statement basically says that it is not addictive but you have to be very careful with it because it acts addictive and the patient will get addicted to it.  This might as well have been written by a Hillary Clinton press agent. 

The next problem that I see is this.  They rarely give you one low dose of one chemical and try it for a couple weeks and adjust it a little.  If that doesn’t seem to work then take you off of that one and try a low dose of a different one…..OH NO.  My client that I counseled with this morning was put on THREE of these chemicals at the same time within minutes of meeting a doctor for the first time.  When I researched the chemicals I found that two of them specifically advise to not be mixed with each other.  Yes, a doctor, at a clinic gave my client a dangerous mix of drugs after meeting him for just a few minutes and it took me less that one minute to find out that they weren’t supposed to be used together. 

Doctors are just people too.  What they think, what they believe, what they are going through in their own personal lives will affect them just like everybody else.  If a doctor does not believe in God, that will take certain possible causes to the problem out of his or her mind.  If they completely accept all Freudian thought, that will take certain causes off the table.  And so on. 

For example:  One of the most abused diagnosis that I am seeing over and over again is the diagnosis of Bi-polar.  Doctors love this diagnosis.  Why?  Because it cannot be proven for one thing.  There is no bi-polar test.  The diagnosis of bi-polar is ALWAYS a guess.  It may be a hypothesis (an EDUCATED guess), it may be more accurate in some cases, but it is still a guess.  Most doctors feel like they are accurately reading the symptoms.  Let me tell you my problem with making such a guess so often and so willy nilly.  There are hundreds of things that can be going on in a man or woman’s life that will have the exact same symptoms as bi-polar would and giving these drugs to those people will only make them a thousand times worse.  Many SINS have the exact same symptoms as bi-polar.  Bi-polar is the new fangled term for the old “disease” called Manic-Depression.   In other words, your moods would swing way too high and then way too low to be able to function correctly. 

If someone cheated on their spouse, that would cause the exact same symptoms as bi-polar.  The high of the physical rush of the sexual encounter would be way too high to deal with correctly and then immediately there would come a ‘dealing with the conscience” that would cause grief for doing something so terrible to the one you were supposed to love. 

If someone stole something it could cause the exact same symptoms as bi-polar.  The thrill of attaining that thing that you weren’t supposed to have and then the extreme fear and anxiety of wondering if you are going to get caught.  The diagnosing and dispensing of these extremely sensitive drugs do not take any of these kinds of things into account. 

I actually had a client just 2 years ago that went through this exact scenario.  The client was committing continual horrible sin.  They went to the doctor, was prescribed a horrific cocktail of dangerous mind altering drugs, received counseling at HMA, ended up admitting the sin and praying and getting forgiveness from God, spouse and children.  Ended up not needing the drugs.  Dropped off of 3 of them but had to go to a detox center and drug treatment program to get off of the 4^th one. 

I AM NOT SAYING THAT IF YOU HAVE THESE TYPES OF PROBLEMS THAT IT IS AUTOMATICALLY BECAUSE YOU ARE SINNING.  I am saying that there are too many other things that it could be for these folks to be passing this stuff out like candy. 

What if it is God trying your faith?  What if it is the Devil attacking your mind?  Drugs cannot fix either one of those.  Only prayer, faith and dedication to Christ can. 

Yet another problem I have about these drugs and the way they are prescribed.  Doctors and medical groups get “paid extra” for writing these prescriptions.  Does anybody really believe that if you get paid 1,000.00 for doing your job or 1,500.00 for doing your job plus recommending some product, that a lot of people won’t start recommending that product more?  Of all the idiotic things that congress HAS taken up, why haven’t they looked into that one? 

Perhaps everyone is jumping up and down about the drug epidemic in America because the medical field, (second only to The Federal Government in how many people it employs in America) is driving the addiction rate higher and higher by flooding the streets of America with addictive substances that lead to worse substances.  It has been said for almost 50 years in America that “marijuana is the gateway drug”.  Not anymore friend.  Prescription drugs are the gateway drugs.  I’m not even talking about pain killers either.  I’m talking supposed ant-depressants. 

Perhaps one way to slow the addiction rate in America is to stop the gigantic drug companies from supplementing the pay of our doctors for dispensing more addictive and controlled substances without proof of need.  I’ll give you a couple of personal examples about this.  My wife has taken hardly a pill in her life.  A handful of Tylenol maybe in the last 30 years.  But every time she has to go see a doctor about something, she comes out with a handful of prescriptions.  I saw a doctor just the other day and they asked me if I wanted a prescription for Hydrocodone.  A very abused and controlled substance.  I said, “No, I am not even in any pain.”  They wrote me one anyway.  INSANITY! 

A final note for now.  I have been working the streets of Tulsa for over a decade and dealing mostly with addicts and the ultra poor.  If you think for one second that these “anti-depressants” aren’t driving the addiction rate of society, you better think again.  Let’s just take one of these drugs for a final example.  Xanax.  It is so popular on the streets I have to ask the young homeless guys and gang members that I talk to regularly what the new terminology is for it.  Xanax is the chemical company name for the drug.  By every few days I hear it referred to on the street as “Bars”, “Ladders”, “Footballs”, “Benzo”, “Flight” and “Helicopters”.   While you are thinking about why there are so many “cool” and coded street names for a drug that supposedly never makes it to the street, think about this.  In generic form, one Xanax pill costs about 25 cents as a prescription.   But I can introduce you to a dozen young people that live in the shelters of Tulsa that pay between 4 and 10 dollars a piece for them every day.  If I’m doing the math correctly that would be a 4,000% markup.  WAKE UP!!!!!!!!!

I want to repeat that I do NOT believe that every doctor is bad or every sick person is a sinner and I am not trying to diagnose anyone or convince you to not take medicine.  But I am saying that enough is enough.  I am seeing people every week now that are all jacked up on so many dangerous drugs that are handed out at the expense of the tax payer, the family unit, the ministry, society as a whole and even at the jeopardy of the human soul at times.  God bless you and please pray for us at HMA. 

To learn more about us, visit HolinessMissionsToAmerica.com


Your humble servant,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett

  

10 Ways to Abuse the Position of "Pastor"

#1  Believe that you are called to minister to others to the point of neglecting your own family and friends

#2  Believe that because you were “anointed” you couldn’t be wrong

#3  Believe that when you are telling things about other people in a way that is random, hurtful, unprovable or not “qualified” Biblically…that it is NOT GOSSIP because it is “preacher talk”

#4  Seek first a foremost to build a your church rather than His Kingdom

#5  Believe that primary ministry has to do with wearing suits, going to your office, traveling, pulpit time (preaching, teaching, running a service), rather than visiting, witnessing, studying, praying and setting God;y examples in common place instances  

#6  Believe that your friends and heroes can’t be wrong or give them an automatic pass when they are

#7  Fear man and peer pressure more than God

#8  View ministry, at least partially, as an income

#9  Work to care for, build up and maintain such things as, buildings, properties, vehicles, preaching series’, books, fellowship and reputation OVER practical practice of scripture, how to teach such and more importantly how to apply such to your own personal walk, your family and your converts for Christ 

#10  Seeing SOULS as random and vague things to “long for”, preach about, theorize and philosophize about instead of all actual people that you come across every single day.  People with problems, people that you are supposed to love, win, teach, correct, minister to, care for and disciple.  People whose problems only God can fix

What!?!?

I am absolutely beside myself! Today, two of my long term heroes, Bill O'Reilly and Newt Gingrich, devastated their respective reputations in my eyes. 

They agreed that drug addicts are addicts NOT BY CHOICE, because no one would ever get up in the morning and decide to be like that. Well gentlemen, few people get up in the morning and DECIDE to kill someone either. But they often do. So according to your logic, they are sick and need treatment because it's not their fault. That is insane!

Newt's idea is to put addicts on lighter drugs to get them off of hard drugs. When specifically asked how to then get them off of the "lighter drugs", he had absolutely no response. Not a clue! 

When asked how to pay for it, they admitted that the government would...AKA, you and me. NO THANKS SPEAKER GINGRICH! You have spent enough of our money over the years.  I admit that some have psycho-analitical issues and certain chemical levels and personality types are more susceptible to addiction but for the sake of what is left of sanity, don't paint with such a broad brush. 

If you are going to take my hard earned dollars (I worked 14 hours TODAY) to convince drug addicts that they are sick and their addiction is NOT THEIR FAULT, you have either lost your mind or you are just trying to stay in the news and you let some white collar knuckleheads in the "educated class" do your research for you. 

I'm not just Joe blow spouting off here. I was an addict, I have counseled and treated addicts for 2 decades and I have written addiction awareness programs and booklets for schools, police departments and church groups. 

Your comments today were way out of touch and very dangerous. Both of you have had much greater thought processes and fact finding as well as solution finding abilities over the years than you are having on drugs. 

I appreciate your service, your books, your fight for truth and America and your moral longevity, but it is horrifying that men with such huge platforms would offer this type of thing as PURE FACT. 

I have made a life's work out of trying to find, help and reach these hurting people and in one 10 minute segment, you made an absolute mockery of the process.

Lastly, I have worked with thousands of addicts, and if you put the average meth or heroine addict in a room and give them your "drugs vs. obesity equivalency argument" THEY will laugh in your face. That should tell you something right there. Please, please, look deeper and reconsider. 

Sincere and extremely concerned,
Rev. D. Todd Sloggett