Pastor Rick's Coaching EP 1 - Introduction

Rick Gittens introduces himself as a life coach and pastor, specializing in blended family and leadership coaching. He shares his own story of being married for 28 years with a blended family and eventually getting divorced. He talks about the importance of faith in his journey and how he found healing and a new wife through surrendering to God. Rick emphasizes that he is open to helping anyone, regardless of their religious beliefs, and is looking for new clients who can connect with his message of unconditional love and honesty. He also mentions his contact information for those interested in reaching out to him. Hello, everybody. How you doing? I hope everybody's fine out there. My name is Rick Gittens and Pastor Rick Cochee. This is my new podcast, and I want to start off by just introducing myself and giving out my life story in just a few minutes of this. I want to say thank you for tuning in, and I'm going to be trying to come in every week. I'm not going to say I'm going to be more than just once a week, but I just want to just relax and just be honest about why I think that I'm very relevant. Once again, I am a life coach, family life coach, and also a blended family. My specialty really is blended family because once you hear my story, I think you will understand, and also leadership. I'm here just want to pour out my heart, and I want to be very honest in a world where, look, we need coaching, and we need to understand that everybody's going through some issues, and you can't do it alone. Let me give my information up front. My information is pastorrick3atyahoo.com. That's pastorrick3atyahoo.com, P-A-S-T-O-R-R-I-C-K-3-atyahoo.com. Also, you can reach me at Ricky Gittens, R-I-C-K-Y-G-E-T-T-E-N-S at gmail.com. My phone number is 580-917-7360-580-913-7360. Also, my Facebook is Ricky Gittens, and also in LinkedIn, L-I-N-K-E-D-L-N, just look up Ricky Gittens, R-I-C-K-Y-G-E-T-T-E-N-S. Now, with all that being get out of the way, once again, why is life coaching, family coaching, and leadership, and blended family important to me? Well, I was married for 28 years, and we had a blended family. I have no biological children, and when people hear that, they're like, wow, you don't have no biological children? No. And once again, I want to also say that I am a Christian. Now, this is for anybody who is having problems, and as long as they can say, hey, I think you could help me, even though you're a Christian and I'm not, that's great. But with that being said, I'm just coming to you with my heart and telling you that I am not hiding my faith, and I am not forcing my faith on anybody. But I know that because of my faith and because of my journey. So I was pastoring for about 20 years, and I start to think, I'm doing a life coaching. I'm doing family coaching before it got popular. And I just didn't feel really affected, and I was burnt out. And everybody talks about church hurt, but they never think about the pastor being hurt. They never think about the leadership being hurt. And a lot of things happened. We started the ministry or whatever. Well, in that process, me and my former wife, things happen and situations happen. And I know it's not very popular for a pastor to be divorced, but I can be very honest with that. And I'm open with that, and I'm okay with that. And I know some is going to love my story. Some is going to reject my story, but that's okay. I'm okay with it either way. So I had to relocate from my previous place to where I'm at now, going on five years. And in that process, I was able to, God was able to, because one thing I think people have to understand, if you're a Christian, so I want y'all to get this, that God don't give you a wife or a husband. I'm going to say that one more time. God does not give you a spouse. What he does is he presents a spouse to you. And then with you spending time with him, you have to be in the Word. You can't just be checking the block. As a Christian, you have to be practicing it. You have to be living it out. You have to be making many mistakes like myself, and then recovering from it, and truly give your heart to him, and ask God to send that. So after that, I'll be very honest with you. I did not want another blended family because of my experience. Me and my now wife that I have now, my wife is Ugandan, and we have two boys, and she lived in Uganda. And one thing about it is that we talk about it, we laugh about it. She come out of a horrible situation, and soon she'll be joining us on the podcast. But anyway, right now I want to stay focused on where I'm trying to go with this. So with that being said, I said, Lord, I can't do this anymore. I need a wife. And so the Holy Spirit came to me and said, I need you to fix some things in your life, surrender. Sorry, we don't fix anything, but surrender some stuff in your life over to me. And I did that. And then when I did that, repented from everything. I'm not going to get into the formal relationship with my ex right now, but I want to be honest. I gave you my information. If you've got questions, please, and I will answer any question. And I'm open to any question. But I had to heal. I was angry with church hurt from a pastor's perspective. I was upset about, after 28 years, what went wrong. I tried everything, made some mistakes about my own. And also I was very ill for a couple of years, very ill. And I believe God healed me, not totally take it away. We'll talk about that at another time if we want to, about healing and express on that. But I'm very, now I just have so much peace in my healing. So anyway, with that being said, God presented me my wife and I'm so grateful for her. And also I can also deal with age gap. Me and my wife have an age gap. I'm not going to reveal everything. If you want to know, hit me up. And with that being said, we have had, we're going on five months of marriage and it's been awesome. I mean, I like what one of my mentors on one of his podcasts said, and he said, everybody's talk about the first two years are hard. They're hard when you got the wrong partner, come on somebody. But when you have the right partner, it's not hard. It's been really great and it's been easy. And because we put God first, we have Bible study every day of between two and four hours because we want to work on everything in our life that we know is not right. And then we want to strengthen our strengths. Does that make sense? And so with that being said, our kids are young and we're planning on having more children. And we also have the different country. So we have to deal with that international, how she thinks and how I think. And I'm from America and she's from Uganda. So we have all that mixed inside there. And so when you're dealing with all that and you understand, but I do thank God for my experience. I didn't go out there just looking for somebody with the age gap that we have, but I did know I did want a woman that wanted to have natural children with me. But anyway, I guess I never finished telling your story. So the story was, I said, Lord, there is a couple of things, because I do believe the Bible says make it plain. Ask God what you want and put it down. And now he's going to match it up with his plan. And this is where the great part comes in. So I said, Lord, this is what I'm looking for. I'm looking for somebody that's educated and wanting to get educated. Looking for somebody that loves you unbelievable, a virtuous woman. Don't care if they got mistakes or have flaws, because I got them. I don't care if they had hurt or whatever, because I had it and I'm still learning. Please don't fool yourself. When you have hurt, you are always constantly, you might've gave it away, prayed away, all that good stuff, but you're constantly healing from that. Amen. And so that's what I did. I have a list of other things too. I truly believe in the power of prayer. And I also believe in making it plain and writing down your own vision and then let God take over. Well, God did everything, except I love Jesus got a sense of humor. He put a twist in it. He said, I hear him, but you know what? He means something else. And I will reveal that to him later. So what did he do? He presented a woman that had two children. I said, Lord, if you don't have a sense of humor and I love you for that. And with that being said, not day one, I fell in love with her and not questioned anything. And I love those boys and they love me and we have a great time. And I do think it's different because my first dynamics, the kids was a lot older. One of them was like seven years apart from me. And so that had a lot to do with it, but I also have a lot of other stuff doing, and I'm not going to reveal everything because once again, I'm officing my services. And I want to say this before I finish up the story and get ready to end this podcast with a prayer is that I am not chasing clients. I'm going to say that one more time. When we live in a world that's materialistic and everything is going up and everybody's losing their mind and everybody's trying to do whatever they can to try to find money. No, God has been good to us. God has been good. It is very difficult to have two houses in two different countries, live two different lives. And then the time we get to spend together until, because my wife is in school until we can, and I'm not going to uproot her from there, but because of God, and that's how we make it. But I believe that God got the right person or persons out there that need a coach like me. And I want to make sure that we have a relationship and a communication and build a community because I don't do my coaching by myself. My family coaches with me. Amen. And when it's required. And so with that being said, I am looking for some more new clients. I have some, but I've always going to add some, but I'm looking for special ones that can understand, feel what I'm going through and hear me and say, this is who God wants me to go with. And once again, I want you to get out of your comfort zone. You say, well, I hear him, but I'm not a Christian. That's fine. I might just be the perfect match for you because I'm coming with unconditional love. I'm not coming with no commendation or any of that kind of stuff. I'm going to be honest and upfront with you. And I'm going to love you through the process. And you might not like what I have to say, but it's going to be honest in the word. And I'm not perfect. I'm broken. I'm humbled. I'm not where I need to be. Just talk to my wife a few hours ago because there's a time change. And after we got done and I just said, babe, I'm not where I need to be, but I'm getting better every day. And that's the sign of a person that loves God, a person that understands that he has to be careful because I'm in this world, but I'm not of this world, but this world can affect me and affect the way I think about stuff. And by the way, I can give you information if you contact me. Yes, I do have degrees, but that's not where I'm coming from. Those degrees is not where I'm at now, where I'm broken. It is the experience. I'm going to say that one more time, but it's the experience that I have. So anyway, finish closing and tearing up, closing up the story that I presented is, like I said, those kids mean so much to me and our plan on having other kids. But I would give a little tidbit of what I told my wife. I said, if we do, though, I am not going to aliate these kids because they have different fathers. And I pray hard on this before it even starts. We pray over her wound even before we even start thinking about conceiving because I want to make sure that they understand that they're going to be sister and brother, whatever God allows us to have, and that they're all part of this family. And when the other two have to go spend time with their other father, then I get all that and that's fine. And that's another thing too I'd love to talk about, that word step. I think you are doing your children an injustice when you use that word step because that is not biblical. And so we have to understand it. And I can show you where that's not biblical at all. And you're aliating these kids. You are dividing your family by using certain words and allowing the world to just put these words in your head. You are a family. They have to learn to cope with two different types of family, from the one house to this house, if you have that dynamic, or whoever pops in or whatever the case situation may be. But you have to be one or it's not going to work. And even if you come into a marriage and you have children, you have to remember this. It is God first, and then it is your spouse, and then it's your children. And when you're out of order, then nothing goes right in your marriage. And I think that's so important. So with that being said, I'm just excited about life. It can get hard. It get tough. It get easy. It's worth it. The struggles, the back and forth and everything, and going from there. I don't know if I ever will pastor a large flock again, but I know what the Bible says. The Bible says, leave the 99 and go after the one. And that's what I'm doing. I do also know that the Bible said that there is grace. So he forgives you. So you have some pastors, I'm not going to question people and what they think, that think that your life is ruined because you got a divorce. There's too much variables to why. Yes, Jesus said that he hates divorce. If you read that passage very closely in Matthew chapter 19, he says that because your heart was heartened, that's why Moses gave the divorce of decree. But in the beginning, it was never so. Now let's take that word heartened. When your heart is heartened, then that means there are scales, there are barriers put up, and then Jesus cannot penetrate, and he's not going to force himself in you. And so therefore, you can start down the road together as two become one, as the Bible says, and all of a sudden, somebody's heart get heartened in the relationship. And you try to do everything. You try to go to counseling. You try to do this. You try to do that. And they do not let that wall down. They do not allow those scales to fall down and break, then Jesus cannot come inside. So does he want that other individual to be miserable? No, I do not think so. But now there's steps. I'm not saying run down to the divorce court. Now, I said I was married for 28 years. I never said that we was married for 28 years. We were separated in separate bedrooms for over six years. And of course, a lot of other things. And like I said, if you hit me up, I will feel free to open up more because I'm a very honest person. Some people say maybe too honest, but I don't have anything to hide because I know where I'm going. I know who I am and whose I am, which is in Christ Jesus. And I think that's understandable. And from that point there, so I just wanted to point those things out. Then I want to leave you with another scripture. And I know it's a simple scripture. You probably have heard it. I don't know a million times, but have you really understood it? John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son and whoever believed in him should have everlasting life. I think that's so deep that we don't even understand it. John 3, 17 says, and I'm paraphrasing is that he came into this world, not to condemn you, but to give you unbelievable life after you die. And also while you're on earth. Yes, you're going to have hardship and hard times, but let me tell you, I've been a sinner and I have been a Christian because I'm not going to use that word saint because I'm nowhere near that, but I've been a Christian and I still am a Christian. And it's been easier being a Christian, even though everything comes against me, the enemy is always around, always trying to attack me and all those things, but it's so much easier. And so I just want to leave you with this and let you understand. So he come to give us abundance of life. How does he do that? He just loves us unconditionally. I think a lot of people, unfortunately, with these podcasts got it wrong on TV and preaching in the pulpit, they got it wrong. There is only one sin that God don't forgive and that's blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. But everything else, he has grace. He got love. He got compassion. He cares about you. And Rick can screw up a million plus times and he still forgive me. If I'm sincere in my heart and repent and turn and you turn away from all the stuff that I've done and truly admit it, he forgets your sins once you ask for forgiveness. And do I truly believe I believe one save, always say, but there's a lot into that and I don't want to go too far, but I just say this. If I'm truly saved, there will be evidence. And then when I screw up, there will be evidence of my repentance. And that's how you know that you're truly saved. But once I give my life to him, I truly give my life to him and I will not lose my salvation. And I have, believe me, audience, I have screwed up too many times just because sometimes it was compassion. I was trying to help people and I made the wrong mistakes, but a lot of times it was self-inflicted wounds. And I will say that I'm getting better and better and better because I know God never leave me, even though I get frustrated and I get tired and I get worn out, but we're going to close now. And so I just wanted to do my introduction today. And I wanted to be serious from my heart. And once again, now I want to give my business information one more time, and then we're going to do a closing prayer. And it's PastorRick3 at yahoo.com, P-A-S-T-O-R-R-I-C-K, the number three at yahoo.com, Ricky Gittins at gmail.com, R-I-C-K-Y-G-E-T-T-E-N-S at gmail.com. And also my phone number, 580-917-7360, 580-917-7360, Facebook, Ricky Gittins, R-I-C-K-Y-G-E-T-T-E-N-S and LinkedIn, L-I-N-K-E-D-L-N, Ricky R-I-C-K-Y Gittins, G-E-T-T-E-N-S. Please, if this touched your heart and the Lord is tugging on your heart or something you don't know, it's just like, I just got to give him a call. Please do so. And that's Pastor Rick's coaching. And I'm going to be here. I'm going to help you and walk. Once again, I can't do the journey for you, but I'm going to coach you through it. And I just want you to know that I love you. Let us pray. Father God, we thank you. I truly believe I'm doing what you asked me to do. And Father, I believe there's somebody, maybe even a small business, an entity, whatever, that needs my coaching experience through the Holy Spirit. And I mean it very humbly. That needs to reach out. Or they need prayer. Lord, I'm so open. And I'm coming to you, Lord, with a humble spirit. And I come to you, Lord, saying thank you. And Lord, I'm praying right now for those families because the enemy wants to destroy family. How they got to a blended family is not my concern. How they walk it out and live and live years and years together until you call them home is my concern. How a regular family is struggling and look like they on the end of the ropes and about to get a divorce or whatever the case may be or get separated, I'm here to help. You send me by to hear the help. Or just somebody needs some leadership instruction because this country, there's a lot of people that just don't have the basic leadership skills. I'm here to help. You send me. And so I'm praying that they'll come, they'll hear this, they'll feel it, and they will say, I need help. They just need me to help them coach them through the Holy Spirit because it's not me by myself, it's you leading me, Lord. And if you are unsaved and you say, I don't know about that, give me a shot. And I think you'll see that, yes, I am the one. I am the one only through the Holy Spirit, through Jesus himself. I do nothing without him. I love you. I'm praying over your situation right now. Even as we speak, I'll be continuing to pray over your situation every day in our prayer, me and my wife in our Bible study. She's been through a lot. I've been through a lot, but I tell you what, it was worth the journey because I have a woman that loves me unconditionally and I love her unconditionally, but we can't do it without Jesus. In Jesus name, I pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen, amen, and amen. Until next week.