Stephen Scoggins | Testimony | The Litter Box

Wow. My testimony is actually pretty large, so I kind of have to pick it up in slivers and move parts and pieces around. So.

I'll start with this. I've been reading a lot about Jacob in Genesis. Quite a bit about Jacob. And as I was getting to know his story, I saw so much of my own in it.

Probably my favorite line in there, it says, you struggle with God and it's overcome.

Spent a great deal of time striving with God and wrestling with God quite a bit in my life. Early on, had a turbulent childhood, was a creative one at best. Moved on to young adulthood. Dropped out of high school around the age of 17 for various reasons, family reasons, personal reasons, the whole deal. Then went in and out of all kinds of different jobs trying to become successful. Finally managed to start my own first siding company with someone who actually gave me everything I needed to start.

Proceeded from there to get cocky, arrogant, full of myself. Thought I had taken the time to learn everything I needed to know about everything. Thought I knew everything about everything. And God proceeded to come find me and I proceeded to lose everything. And I do mean everything.

My lowest point was actually sitting atop a Bridge at 440 in Capital Boulevard compared to what I thought at the time was a worthless life. And I hadn't done very much with my life at that point in time. I spent a great deal of time trying to be a good person, trying to kind of earn it myself. I hadn't done a great deal of harm to others that I know of. I hope I didn't. Anyway. If I did, I'm sorry.

But I was fortunate enough to have one person that actually answered the phone and helped me kind of get me off that bridge that night. After I actually tried to reach out to four or five people.

Made me promise that I'd call her the next morning at 8 or 9am she's since gone to heaven last year, last year and a half, she passed away from breast cancer. Her nickname's Mama Wama. Susan Batts used to call me Sugar Wooga. I don't know why, but that's how we got her name. She came one day and said, hey, what's your. You know, you're so sweet. I'm like, oh, you should always find your Mama Llama from here on out. So as you guys know about Mama Wanna Love, which is a charity I started earlier this year. Going forward, it'll be a pretty, pretty fun story, but she's the one that answered the phone and talked me over for a few days. After that. And really, the main part of my story is not.

What God has done to show blessing in a worldly means, but what he's done more in my heart. And that's really where it's at. So I do and did start a company that's custom home exteriors at O'Reilly. I started that out of the salvation experience that I experienced with God. There's a cross at the center of our logo, and it will always be there, which is kind of a cool thing. No one ever sees it until I mention it. They're like, oh, now I see it. So that's kind of cool. But.

The main part is actually what happened before, and that's really the main story. And the main story, actually, it's funny because a lot of people that are involved in the main story are actually here today. My little brother's over there. Ryan. Yeah, My grandfather, who actually led me to Christ. He's back in the. Back there. So if you're a grandparent, don't give up on your grandchildren. He watched me struggle for probably four years, three and a half, four years.

Consistently walking away and denying God and denying what God can do and denying who he was. And, you know, I can do all this myself kind of stuff.

And then one day, I made it from the bridge, walked over to I don't even know where. I honestly, it's a haze, but I remember a phone call coming in. My brother had actually had this cat, Sophie. This cat Sophie, man, he'd had her forever. And things had gotten so low for me that I was completely broke. My brother was actually living in a place I technically bought. He moved in to help me pay the bills. I wasn't staying anywhere at the time, really. Maybe my dad's couch or a friend's couch. Couple cars here or there for about 30, 45 days. Most of my family don't even know that. They're probably hearing that for the first time today. I try to hide it because I'm full of shame. You know, when you're going through something like that, you know, it's not something you brag about, not something you want people to know about. And he calls me up and says, hey, if you'll go empty the litter box for me, I'll give you 50 bucks. 50 bucks, man, 50 bucks. I said, litter box. I said, why in the world is a litter box worth 50 bucks? For the life of me? Go ahead, go ahead, tell them. Because I hated cleaning it. And I will tell you, as I walked up the stairs, all seven Stairs. Walk up through the front door. And as I walked through the front, and I turn, get inside the single wide trailer at the time, I look around, I see the white walls on both sides. I walk through the kitchen. This blue wallpaper now, it has little dots all over it. Old, really wood trim, ironically, about the color of these pews, as far as the wood trim that was inside of it. Walked through the door, walked through the master bedroom, open the double doors, and I was hit by this awesome sense of. Oh.

And I learned why he hate to empty the litter box. And that was because I don't think he emptied it.

What I actually found was I found a litter box that was full. And it looked like somebody, every time they wanted to empty it, they just poured more sand on top because it was like, over, like this. I've never seen a litter box that actually had a top of a mountain on.

Was funny because you don't think about it. Like, if you relate a litter box to life, is it not full of all the stuff that we just have left over and the stuff that we just kind of have, we gained up over time. And a lot of that stuff smells bad. A lot of that stuff we wish that maybe hadn't happened. My life was full of that.

And it hit me as I started to scoop into a bag, scoop, scoop, scoop. I could just feel. I was feeling myself getting angrier and angrier and angrier. And then the stupid bag broke.

And I remember my grandfather had been telling me for a long time, week after week, that God loved me and he was real. And all I had to do was turn towards him. And all I had to do was find him and be with him and walk with him. And he shared scripture after scripture. Be still and know that I am God. Oh, man, I bet I've heard that a billion times. But it's true, isn't it? Yeah.

I was just. I just went off the handle. I did the one thing you're probably not supposed to do. I started yelling at God at the top of my lungs. I wanted to know why he didn't love me. I wanted to know why he wasn't there for me. If he was so real, then how come he wasn't there and why he wasn't there?

And I began to scoop. And every. With every scoop, I began to fling stuff everywhere. Sorry about that. Sure. You had to do some vacuuming.

And I fought and I fought and I fought and I fought and I fought until I was exhausted.

I was spiritually exhausted. I was mentally exhausted. My Brain had been completely fried, my heart was everywhere, the tears rolling down my face. I've never experienced anything like that before. And I finally collapsed back. And it just so happens where the slitter box was at, on the backside was the toilet. And I'm just glad the toilet seat was down because I fell on top of that joker. The funny thing was, is when I fell back and fell down and sit on top of the toilet, I felt like I had just failed some of my norms. And I can never. I'll never be able to properly explain the feeling. I'll never be able to properly understand the feeling that came from that.

But I remember asking one question just before that happened, and that was, if you're real, show yourself to me. Prove it to me. Show me.

And I felt back. And for the first time in my life, I was caught. And it's a pretty special moment for me. Since that moment, I've lived my entire life trying to help other people understand and see what I have been shown. To the point if I drive some of them crazy.

Trying to help them see what I've seen and hear what I've heard and try to help them share as I've been asked to share. I guess.

God told me at that moment, he's like, look, if you'll leave this situation, I'll bless you almost audibly.

My brother will never know how much a litter box, a stinky litter box, impacted my life. But one of the things I know about that litter box is I was never meant to empty it to begin with.

It's not my job to empty the litter box. It was only my job to show the litter box and be at the litter box. It's always been and always forever will be Christ's job to empty the litter box and for you to let it go and move forward and do more and be more.

And that's probably the greatest lesson I learned from that experience, was to let him into the litter box. But at the same time, I had to quit shoveling to let him do it. We spent so much time trying to do it all ourselves. I am the epitome of self sufficiency. I like to do everything myself. I like to do everything by myself. And that's probably my hardest lesson that I'm glad to learn. He spent a great deal of time with me one on one recently, just enlightened me about even more stuff. So I guess the one thing I would try to leave you with today is if you can, if you will.

Put the shovel down.

Take a moment Just kneel down and let him be present.

It's funny, because God will talk to you. He'll whisper in your ear if things are going good. And you would think in my life after going good that everything would be perfect. But after actually making millions and millions of dollars at this point in time, I can promise you that no happiness comes from anything worldly than the world can possibly give you.

I experienced so much love and so much joy and so much concern just last night at my surprise birthday party that I had for the very first time, thanks to this beautiful woman over here behind Allison, threw me my very first surprise party. And all the details she went through was ridiculous.

The fellowship, the love, the compassion, the things that come that really matter come from the people in the body of Christ and the people who love one another.

I would give it all up. I give every dollar, every business sense in order to make sure that you knew what I know about Jesus Christ. And that is, he is absolutely real, and he's absolutely there for you. And there's no doubt about it. Amen.

I don't really have much more to say than that. It's a short testimony, it's a small sliver, but just thank you very much. And I hope you guys will take the time to spend time with him one on one, because that's when he talks to you, that's when he yells at you, that's when you wrestle with him, that's when he works on you. That's when it's just you and him. It's hard to do it when you're being distracted by other things, especially for someone like myself who's ADHD. You've already seen me bop around the story, like, 10 times. So thank you very much, and I hope you guys have a blessed day.