Black & Right’s John Anthony proclaims that Mike’s new memoir, What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO. is “awesome” in this interview with Mike.
He goes on to relate that “the stories that you tell in here, I mean, most people would have never have thought that Mike Lindell went through any of these things. Your story really goes to the heart of overcoming adversity.”
Addiction comes from childhood wounds
Mike believes that “addiction comes from childhood wounds and fatherlessness and all these things.” For Mike, it was his parent’s divorce and not fitting into the new school he had to go to. He developed the feeling that he “wasn’t good enough.” He was introverted and couldn’t talk to people “because you can’t get rejected if you don’t talk to people.” But there would be a “sadness in me that I couldn’t just tell everyone, hey, I’m a good person. You just don’t know me.”
Mike believes that these type of feelings hold a lot of people back. And “that’s where your addictions come in.” Because these feelings “manifest into addictions” that are used as a crutch to get through the “feelings of shame and living in fear of telling people who you really are.”
Addiction affects everyone
Mike believes that “addiction affects everyone, no matter how many forks you eat with.”
In this country, “people are dying, kids are dying” from addiction. And now I think everyone’s aware of it.” Addiction “crosses over political lines, over everything. This is one of the biggest things facing our country. And I believe addiction is the biggest opportunity ever to bring people back to God in a revival in this country.”
Addicts need “hope matches”
Mike believes that addicts need what he calls “hope matches”. In his book, he talks about a friend that Mike considered his equal since “We both got into cocaine at the same time in the early 1980s, and we both switched to crack in the early 2000s.” His friend, who had been straight for four years, all of a sudden showed up, saying he was “sent by God.” Mike says that “He was my hope match.”
Towards that, Mike doesn’t approve of the fact that “over 30 states have laws that state that you have to go to school for 4 years to be an addiction counselor.” Mike said that he “doesn’t want to listen to anybody that went to school for four years tell me about what I’ve been through.” He wants someone that has lived through what he lived through, a hope match.
“If I didn’t quit everything that day, I would lose my calling”
“God set me free of the desire for all my addictions.” on January 16, 2009. Although many talk about “hitting your bottom,” for Mike, it was different. For him, it was that if he didn’t quit, he “knew he would lose my calling.”
He described this as having to live through the second feature of a movie where he was either going to “do my calling or I was going to do whatever this bad path I was going down would take me.”
Mike’s book talks about some very, very low points. But despite those experiences, Mike says he never lost hope. He compares this feeling to the old days of black and white TVs, where, when you turned them off, the display would be reduced to a tiny dot. Mike felt he had that tiny dot, that flicker of hope, inside him: that God was “chasing him.”
Lindell Recovery Network™
Mike is working on a network to help addicts called the Lindell Recovery Network™. One of the missions of this network is to “replace those bad feelings people have” and “address why people are addicted in the first place.” He has been working on the network for 2 years and anticipates that it will be coming out in the next few months.
Meanwhile, Mike encourages addicts to go to a faith-based treatment center because “they’re the only ones that work.” As part of his work in building the Lindell Recovery Network™, Mike’ has “vetted over 3,800 faith-based treatment centers in the US that work.” Some of Mike’s favorite treatment centers are Teen Challenge, The Salvation Army, and Union Gospel.
God gave us grace on November 8th, 2016
President Trump invited Mike to a Made in America summit at the White House, where Mike sat right next to Trump. When his friends saw videos of this, they said, “What is he doing there? Jesus must be real.” For Mike, it’s just one of the many miracles that he has experienced.
Mike “didn’t know anything about politics.” But, he then had a private meeting with then-candidate Trump in the summer of 2016 when Trump reached out to him about manufacturing products made in America.
Mike went “all in” for Trump once he met him. After the meeting, Mike told his board that he was going to do a press release about his support for Trump. The board rejected the idea, saying that “you’re going to hurt us.” But, Mike held his ground, saying that he “didn’t get this far by not listening to God.”
Mike actually wants to get Trump’s message out to people on the left because he thinks that “there are so many good people over there that you can talk to.” He wants to tell them: “Look in your own lives, how everything that’s going on is helping now.” Mike has seen this personally: “The president has helped me with my network because I now don’t have things blocking me from getting good things done.”
Mike will continue supporting Trump, for he believes that “We’re in a big spiritual warfare in this country. And you know, God gave us grace on November 8th, 2016.”
Is Mike running for MN governor?
John asks Mike if he wants to ”make an announcement here on Black and Right for something that’s going to be happening in Minnesota maybe soon?”
Mike responds: “They want me to run for Governor. I’m actually in Washington DC right now and I’ve been talking to many of the governors.” He goes on to say that “The President wants me to help run the Minnesota campaign for him. But I’m also very much considering running for governor.”
Mikes book will “transform you”
John describes his reaction when he saw that Mike’s book was coming out by telling Mike: “I had to do whatever I had to do to get you on the line because I think your story is the American story. It is the American dream. When you were explaining in the book about being in a car chase, I felt like I was in the passenger side looking at you, and I really, really felt that.”
As John says, “Wherever you are, go out and buy this book, and read this story because I really believe it will transform you and you will find yourself somewhere in the book.”
So, get your own copy and find your own transformation here: What Are the Odds? From Crack Addict to CEO.