Funny Man Jeff Allen Gets Serious - Drugs, Alcohol, and Jesus

I I wrote a book about a year and a half ago I guess it was and I did mediate for the book and the reason I bring that up is because the publicist got me what they call a Christian media and then for church folk Christian radio and publication and then they also got me secular media for you know country wash stations or talk radio stations and stuff like that and when I look back upon the whole experience of interviews it was interesting to me what each particular side of the aisle focused upon but the Christian side would ask me the same pretty much the same questions all about family how long you been married what do you love most about your wife that was a question I asked a lot what do you love most about your wife and the secular side was more interested in how an atheist from a South Side of Chicago goes from living and in Chicago and working predominantly comedy clubs and casinos and nightclubs for 18 years around the country and then all of a sudden goes into work and churches and they couldn't get their head around that and so I'll answer that basically uh for me I crawled in 20 years ago I'll be by God's grace this September 20 years I'll have been a sober for 20 years and I crawled into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting basically I just wanted to stop drinking and they my father was interesting my father two years into that that walk of Alcoholics Anonymous my father took me aside one day who had read my dad wrestles what it were wrestled with alcohol his entire life at that point and it said to me what was the catalyst what was the catalyst that got you to quit because my dad knew enough about alcoholism to know that something profound had to happen in a man's life to get him to stop drinking and I had been arrested obviously 1982 I'm a felon did I mention that for me it was I beat my six month old son in a crib and I don't ever want to forget that night it was probably as far down as I want to sink into the depths of what I consider hell on earth I was all rum DUP drinking rum and I was cocaine DUP and I was sitting in my office doing more and more of each trying to figure out where all this misery was coming from in my life and I mean I was absolutely just downright miserable hateful and my conclusion was that all my troubles started when I got married all my trouble started when I got married and had children and if I can get rid of this this this unit in the other rooms there then then I could be left alone I could just send them money and and then I can go through what I want to do and all this guilt and shame and humiliation that seemed to permeate my entire being would leave me so here's how I came up with the conclusion on how I was going to do this and I am not exaggerating folks I figured if I drag my wife out of bed and I beat her she'd have no other choice but to divorce me because I didn't have the courage to ask for a divorce but if she asked for it then a couple years down the line if it was a mistake I could blame her and it made sense to me the more rum I drank and the more coke I did I all of a sudden it became very clear and I walk into my wife's bedroom at our bedroom and I'm stay / my wife now this this crack of consciousness comes to me this this little glimmer of there's something wrong with this I mean you can sit in an office and plan these things out and all of a sudden they make perfect sense to you and then when it comes to do the act I'm standing there in this consciousness comes and and and you wonder where that comes from but then my son started crying and I had a quiet my son because it was interrupting the whole plan and I went in there and I just went she'd be quiet and he wouldn't be quiet and then I ended up just pounding on him and then Tammy woke up and came in and to this day I look back on that and I think of the the scripture that says the sins of the father are passed to the sons that's done that boy took a beating for his mother and my wife took him into the bedroom she sat on the end of the bed and fed him that boy got beat because he was hungry and wanting a meal and I'm talking I'm talking to shame and humiliation when it when when I finally realized what I had done when I walked into the bedroom and saw him being fed this I heard a pastor one a few years back say this every man needs to get downwind from himself well that night God gave me a good dose of the kind of man I was and I saw myself a glimpse of what kind of husband I was and what kind of what kind of father I was and what kind of sit I mean I really stunk and I remember breaking down an dad telling him I like telling my wife if you don't take me to Alcoholics Anonymous I won't go and if I don't go I don't see us making this I didn't tell her what I was about to do before 10 minutes earlier so she takes me to Alcoholics Anonymous they tell me to pray and I said to what they said find something in this universe that's bigger than you the only thing that exceeded my arrogance was my ignorance that was not I couldn't think of anything bigger than me in the universe and I certainly wasn't getting on my knees to pray to this thing that I made up I said it fine as long as I don't drink I'll be fine and then one night my wife and I got into an argument and I'm not making this up over a piece of cheese about that big and it's funny now and I'm telling ya this is the kind of couple we were and she wanted me to eat this piece of cheese that was sitting in the fridge for god knows how long before I open up a new package and every man is room will understand I know Mike might chain a logic in this in this discussion I said you know baby if you want it you can eat it but you see I'm going to open a new one up because that's the one I want oh so it's good enough for me but it's not good enough for you and I go no here and I took it and I threw it into the trash and I go see it's not good enough for any be human consumption so now we can go eat and she took it out of the trash and she said I don't understand what you mean and it escalated to the point and I am not exaggerating I was standing on a kitchen chair looking down on my wife spitting out of my mouth just berating her about how stupid she is and when things calm down I walked into the bedroom to apologize for the 987 time and she said yeah I know you're sorry and I said no I came to tell you we need help and you can come or you could don't but I'm going to a therapist this is there's something wrong with this something happens to me and I don't know what but I'm going to find out I can't I can't we can't live this way so I go to a therapist and she says why are you here and I said because I feel like I'm going to hurt somebody and my family really bad and she said I believe you I go you should and we started with that and she gave me road less traveled a book and I started reading when you have a compulsive addictive personality and I discovered reading and I'm telling you I never read a book in my life until I was 31 years old and got sober it's amazing how much free time you had when you're not nursing hangovers and no it can only bowl so many frames and I read voraciously I read bur it to one point my therapist said you got to stop reading you're crammed with so much information in your head but I wanted to figure it out folks I just want to if you're a man every man here knows I'm talking about if you got something broken there's got to be a manual to fix it so if I can fix it then I can I can get on with this this other part of my life and in the meantime my career is just going down the tubes I would literally sit in stools and clubs and this is how I would perform I would I would perform like this in a club and I would do my little my little dog-and-pony thing and and wonder why clubs wouldn't want to hire me anymore I hated performing and my wife used to get so mad at me because the money was going down and we were ready to file bankruptcy which we eventually did and I didn't care you know I did not that was the if you're in a marriage today that's full of acrimony and full of bitterness wait till you get to apathy I think apathy is Satan's greatest tool to use on the American people I really on all people because when you get to the point where you just don't care God made us to care and I didn't care I didn't care you know whatever you want babe that was my response to everything I didn't want to fight I didn't want to do nothing anymore I just shut down and she would just try to shake me to life you know she would just go why can't you at least care about your job you know how many people would love to stand on a stage and make people laugh you're good at it why can't you at least care about that I'd go for what what's the point don't you get that I would look at my wife and I don't you ever wake up and want to know why you're here what the whole point of this is because I got some good some things for you babe because if it's about going out there and bringing money home so that you can buy things or I can buy things and then they wear out we buy more things and then they wear out we buy more things so basically what we're doing is gathering stuff up and bring it into the house and when it wears out we take it out we put it over there we gather more stuff because that's if that's light if that's if that's what it is I'm checking out because that's not a human existence that's a gerbil for God's sakes that's what gerbils do they go to the one ends in a cage and they bring sticks in a pile them up over here and they spin a wheel somewhere in the middle of it there has to be more to this life than that that's all I'm saying and I got to figure it out and I just please give me time and she's like eight years I've given you and it's just jack wake up this is it and I go it sucks there's got to be more so anyway this guy comes in my life one day we're and I found out about him and because of his wealth because he was so rich that he had access to just for golf courses you tell me God doesn't know us intimately and I wanted him for his golf courses God had other plans but I I had my own agenda so I had my agent hook us up and we go to play golf and we're out on the golf course and his men do in the cart they just sit in a chat and in between shots and we got to talking about wealth and money because I'm reading rayon which is all about capitalism is the purest ideal that you know a humanistic philosophy and I said so how do we accumulate wealth and he said you have to know the one that creates wealth in order to to to understand it you know and enjoy it and I've started to think about that and I go okay I understand honey but how do you create that and he started talking about some stuff and I went that's really good so were you reading that and he goes it's in the Bible and I went Bible alright few holes go by and we're talking again he said something else and I go where'd you read that and he goes it's in the Bible and I said stop it with the Bible Phil please and he says what's your boy what's your problem and I said who reads the Bible he said I read the Bible and I said come on Phil it's so archaic I mean really God's Word that mean you know do you believe in God he goes I wholeheartedly and I said thank you we got timing I'd love you to explain that to me I mean if nobody else seems to be able to I just wanted a but like I don't get it and I said he goes you know what do you believe and I said I'm an atheist I mean honestly I'm an atheist I just I don't and he said well then what's in the Bible that you don't think is true and I said I don't know I never read it and he said well then you're not an atheist you're a [ __ ] and any man in this room that suffers from a rage problem knows what happened to me man the hair in my neck stood up and the stomach shrunk up and I wanted to hit him but then I would have lost access to those nice golf courses and if it's possible for an atheist to have an ethical quandary I was in one so I said I'll saw and he said I'll give you the short answer and and again I'm paraphrasing but it basically was this if in order to discount an infinite God in an infinite universe you yourself have to have infinite knowledge of the entire universe so what you're denying exists is an omission being in order to deny that you yourself have to be omniscient it's a self-defeating argument when he said it to me I went what he said Jeff you're just not smart enough to be an atheist so why don't you shoot for agnosticism and and I said what is that he said you know this you don't know why don't you acknowledge that there's something in this universe as vast as it is that you don't know that maybe beyond or your human capacity to understand and I said you don't know either and he goes well see that's where I disagree with you and I said that's for my fate he says that's where my faith comes in he said I'd love to sign you up for Bible study tapes and he signs me up for these tapes and and I said well it cost me any money he goes nope and I said well then knock yourself out and he says can I send you a Bible and I said as long as it doesn't cost me anything you can send me whatever you want and sends me a Bible the Bible came in the mail a few days later whatever and I put it in a junk drawer in a tape started coming I put them up on the fridge and again folks I'm going to figure this out on my own and in the meantime my marriage imploded we filed a bankruptcy that imploded and my career was gone absolutely gone and Tammy comes to me at the end of the school year and she says I don't go in Ohio I can't take it Jeff she said I just need I need some time away from you and when I'm gone figure out what you're going to do with your life I was caught up on my 40th birthday and she says please just figure out what you're gonna do with your life and before she leaves she gathers up these Bible tapes and a year and a half's worth now folks a year and a half pile of them in manila envelopes none of them open and she drops them at my feet and she said you either listen to these things I'm pitching them in the trash in that little voice we all have a little voice inside of us said said just leave him I hadn't opened him up even really given a much thought for a year and a half they'd come into mail I throw them on the fridge or under the sink wherever they fit that's where I would thrown see God has a plan God has a plan and from hindsight I can see the plan I can't see it when I'm going in it year and a half's where the Bible tapes I needed a year and a half's worth because if I would open one up and I enjoyed it or got into it there wasn't another one there and I would have lost interest and one day I'm walking by those tapes and that voices open one up and I start to walk over and open one up and another voice says there's nothing in there for you and I start to walk away and another voices open it up and I'll have to walk back another voice says there's nothing in there and I'm telling it was a struggle to get one of those tapes open and you ask yourself where does that come from this struggle I have open tapes up my entire life for music it didn't matter if it's music I just open them up put them in a thing but this is there's a struggle where is that come from and I read it in the Bible about demonic realms and the Gela grounds and their stuff going on around here that we don't know about I went back to this moment in my life as a struggle as a struggle to get to God's Word because at one point my brain just screamed at me it's just biblical trash just biblical trash nothing for you and I don't know why but I just ripped one open and threw him on the floor I was it was almost like they were high just threw him on the floor two of them in there and I went great and was Ecclesiastes I'm glad you laughs years later I shared this story for the first time and some people came up to me after the afterwards and they said I can't believe God used Ecclesiastes to lead you to Christ and I go why they go all over such a cynical book I go well you didn't know me like he knew me I have to tell you from the first time I put that tape in that little tape player and put it out and I got to tell you folks we lost all our front room furniture and bankruptcy we had nothing in there but a boombox in our living room and a bookshelf and that was it because God knew if I had a couch I would have fell asleep before the halfway through the tape so I'm sitting on the floor and I put this thing in and I could even pronounce ecclesial Ozzy Kazi so I got to get the Bible out of the junk drawer which it hadn't left in a year and a half but was still there and I open it up to this Ecclesiastes and from the moment I heard meaningless which is the beginning of the NIV meaningless meaningless and then the other one is vanity it's all vanity everything on this earth I mean my brain went wow what is that meaningless that's in the Bible meaningless and there it was right in the first I think meaningless and when I got out of that first 45-minute sermon from that pastor was this this is it in a nutshell life without God has no meaning without meaning in your life there's no purpose and if you don't have purpose for your life suicide will ultimately be your answer Wow I'm not kidding you that's in the Bible and at one point I wanted to run on the lawn and I want to run out my front monocle has anybody read this then wow what a book what a book like I was the first guy to ever read the darn thing and when he talked about his Jesus not the one that I thought made people pious and holier than thou and self-righteous no he talked about a lamb who went to slaughter he talked about a lamb who got slaughtered and innocent and when I heard the story of Jesus I mean I really heard the story of Jesus and when God convicts your heart of your sin and you know what kind of man you are and you get downwind from the kind of father you are and the kind of husband you are and you hear about the love of grit and the grace of Jesus and nailed to that cross and they put him up there and they put the crown of thorns on him and they spit at him and I'd been in clubs folks where they threw beer bottles at me I've been in clubs where people humiliated me and I didn't want to forgive him I wanted to rip their hearts out I wanted to rip their throats out I know how I'd react and when he says forgive them for they know not what they do I came to save the world not condemn the world and there's no no list of sins that are unforgivable the no caveat he didn't sit on that cross and say everybody but Jeff now everybody but Jeff everybody no matter what you've done when he talked to the prostitute at the well the religious people I thought I knew wouldn't have anything to do with the prostitute this Jesus not only sat there and talked to her and told her about her life but he said I offer you a water a living water once you drink you'll never thirst again that's a spiritual water I like the prostitute said how do I get that and my buddy Phil who kept in touch with me who gave me those tapes I was in Dallas Texas one day and he said I when I met you I knew you were looking for something have you found it and I said all I could think to say is if Jesus Christ is not who he said he was then I'm a dead man Solomon was right if this Jesus this one that I heard about will give me purpose that I want this Jesus and he said can you admit you're a sinner and I went well let me think about that one first at that point my life folks it was easy Paul says the law came the law was there to convict us of our sin and when I look at those Ten Commandments I've violated every one of them when I stood on that chair and I looked down at my wife then I called her stupid I committed murder when I lust and I look at things that I shouldn't look at Jesus took it out of the realm of an act he put it into the human heart what a gift Billy Graham said that today after he committed his life to Christ all of a sudden the trees were a little greener the flowers smelled a little better that's in the world just looks a little different to me today I have problems Tammy went through breast cancer she's okay I keep forgetting to mention that I get emails is your wife all right you mentioned she had cancer I don't think but that grace that gift and that purpose and that point to life is this is it I was created in the image of a God who loved me enough to create me to look like him he don't make no trash folks you don't make no trash and I live to honor him and I fall short some days but I know I can get on my knees and talk to him no other religion would have me Christ is the only one that accepted me as I was what a gift I'd like to leave you with this I was sitting watching Promise Keepers one day with a notebook next to me and again this is how God works I believe this and Promise Keepers and a little poem a little poem I wrote while I was sitting there and I haven't written one since so I got to figure it was God it wasn't me and who I was is not who I am today I choose to walk a different path so feel free to throw at me the stones of my past that will not deny them but I would gladly receive them and use them to humble me for today my shield is the Lord and is because of who he was and the blood that He shed I no longer have to run from my past but I can embrace it and walk with peace to my future I thank you for letting me share all that folks and I apologize for running long god bless each and every one of you thank you very much you

Channel: Mark Sohmer

Views: 86,683

Keywords: Jesus, God, salvation, Bible, comedy, comedian, marriage, drugs, alcohol, abuse, testimony, christianity, religion, Jeff Allen, Mark Sohmer, Open Air Campaigners, gospel, humor

Id: yb8hCpwFbn4

Length: 22min 47sec (1367 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 12 2011