Interview with Bishop David G. Evans
Approach to preaching and teaching God’s Holy Word

Em Fergusson:
The book you’ve written, Healed Without Scars, is about how people can fully heal through the power of God. Can you share with us how you were led and inspired to write this book?

Bishop Evans:
 I pastor about 23,000 people and I realize that a lot of people that were saved in church and people in general, are walking around wounded from a lot of historic crisis and intense situations. I realize that a lot of us are functioning in spite of some great traumas that have happened in our past. I came to understand God did not want us to live the rest of our lives feeling the way we feel, based on something that happened, whether it is a negative, detrimental or traumatic event in our past. So I started searching for answers to that. I did not want to make a mistake the way a lot of folks have made mistakes, in that they identify the problem, but they don’t help you. They don’t have to get through it.

I was reading my bible and I ran across the part with the young men in the fiery furnace and I saw where they came out of the fire without a hair singed on their head, without any smoke upon their body and without anything about them changed. So this showed me that we can go through some very intense situations. We should remember them but they don’t have to hurt anymore. We can go through them and come out without behaviors that could be attributed to them, such as sabotaging relationships, opportunities, and all kinds of future possibilities because we’ve been hurt in the past. So that is where it came from.

Em Fergusson: 
So, is this book mainly targeted to people who have experienced a lot of hurt and pain over the years?

Bishop Evans:
It’s written for saved and unsaved people, Christians or non-Christians. This is the best way to describe it to the general population because I don’t know anyone who has not been through some type of intense situation in the past that does not have an effect on their lives. It is written to people who have gone through some things that are having difficulties moving forward.

Em Fergusson:
The album that accompanies the book is filled with great songs. How did the album come together?

Bishop Evans:
The concept came to me that I needed a way to continue the process of the book, especially for people who may not have the book with them. So I asked some writers to write an original song for every chapter…

One of the things that happens to us, is when we are stressed, we are not able to flow in our strengths. In the bible, there’s always a situation where a person calls for an individual who is musical. By calling for that musical person, the power of music has the tendency to soothe and heal and deliver and the person is able to flow in their strength again. So we were able to pull together some great writers, great producers, and pull together an original song for each chapter of the book. It is really getting good reception.

Em Fergusson:
Some people are resistant to the belief that God can heal their pain. How would you approach a non-believer who is in pain in a situation they feel they cannot get out of?

Bishop Evans:
I think with all of this, especially non-believers, we all admit that we have all been through some traumatic thing in the past. And many of us admit, whether we’re saved or not, that we’ve kind of resigned ourselves to feeling the same for the rest of our lives.

The first thing that needs to happen is that the person has to come to the realization that they are hurt (kind of move away from denial) and admit that nothing they’ve been able to do so far has really helped. It is a natural and spiritual battle that has to be fought. What can happen is, when you go thorough some of the things that I have gone through (like a broken home and I’ve seen that poison the spirit of people):  you get into relationships and sabotage that relationship and it’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think: “It’s not going to work, so let me do everything I can to make sure it doesn’t work.” When that happens, it becomes not just an emotional problem, but becomes a part of who we are and a part of our essence. That type of struggle can only be dealt with in a spiritual manner. It becomes a spiritual problem and becomes a part of who we are. Talk about motivation for doing things! It has to be approached from a spiritual standpoint.

We have sold over 400,000 books already and they’ve told me they are short of books now. So, a lot of people that have gotten into these situations in their lives, especially at 30, 40, 50 years old, they are desperate to try anything. A lot of non-Christians are at a desperate point in their lives and they’re saying, “Well, let me try this.” But another thing that happens with me is that, I have a way of explaining biblical principles in a conversational way and people tell me that it’s like sitting down and having a conference session with a non-Christian book. The language appeals to Christians because it’s biblically based, but it’s written in a way that non-biblical people can get the message.

Em Fergusson:
 Do you offer support groups, using this same biblical approach in your book at your church?

Bishop Evans:
Absolutely. The remarkable thing is there are about 200 ministries in the United States that are using the book as curriculum. People are using the book as a reference book. After they read it they keep it close by to address issues that they’re going through.

Em Fergusson:
Are they using a manual that comes with it or are they using just the book?

Bishop Evans:
There is a workbook or study companion that goes along with the book.

Em Fergusson:
Can you share with us a brief testimony of how God pulled you through the difficult times you experienced growing up and healed you from pain?

Bishop Evans:
Well, I come from a broken home. I write in the book about the situation when I went to see my father, during the time my parents were going through a divorce. He had moved and not notified anyone. And of course, as a child being 12 or 13 years old, relationships with men are like relationships with God. Cause if I did not trust my father, I had a tendency not to trust God. So I grew up with this resentment because my dad wasn’t there and because he moved without telling us. It started to affect the way I tried to live my life.

I can remember when my father called to say he was going to divorce my mom, I sat at the bottom of the stairs and I heard her cry and thought to myself, ‘I am not going to be anything like that.’ So, I actually used that negative experience as positive inspiration and that was the first step. I decided I was not going to turn out like him. So everything he did negative became a very positive inspiration for me that I did not want to duplicate in my life. Then I got older and I realized something deeper was going on. There was a place that I kept people out of. I shielded myself and I needed to let God into that place so He could reach down and take the weight out of it (cause I was sabotaging things based on the negative relationship I had with my dad). So I asked God into that place and I asked Him to be my father.

 The other thing that happened was, as I grew as a man, I started fathering other people and acting as a father. I then found out something unique that I lacked in my life: I became something for other people, therefore eliminating my need for it. So, as I became a father to other men and women and acting as a father in a capacity, the emptiness that I had started filling up. It is the same thing that happens with people who mourn very severely when somebody they have loved has died.

A lot of time the way we act and conduct ourselves when a person is alive allows us to cushions ourselves when that demise comes. What happens is this: if I am what I haven’t received myself, it heals me of what I’m lacking. I learned in the bible how to be a man and God showed me what a father should be. And when I became that to other people, it healed me of the fact that I did not have a good dad.