Joshua Barker once dared God to show Himself. “Where is He then?” the former Marine would ask. After eight months of addiction and relentless spiritual torment, he was on his knees, ready to end his life. Then an unopened envelope brushed against his knee. In this episode of God’s Truth Podcast, Joshua shares how Jesus stepped in, and what left his body when He did.
This testimony includes a suicide attempt. If you are struggling, please reach out today to someone you trust, your doctor, or a local crisis line. You are not alone, and there is hope.
“Dear God, help me”
Joshua grew up in a completely secular home and never set foot in church. After high school he joined the US Marine Corps and served two combat deployments in Iraq. The first time rockets and mortars hit, he found himself praying for the first time in his life: “Dear God, help me.”
Drink, drugs and prescription painkillers came into his life during his service, and by 27 they had taken over. His addiction led to three years in prison. There he read The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, the story of an atheist who set out to disprove Jesus and ended up following Him. It planted a seed.
Money became his god
In recovery, Joshua learned to pray to a “higher power” and stayed sober for nearly five years. He married, started a family, and built a telecommunications company bringing in around $100,000 a month. But the money, he says, became his idol, and he justified the long hours as “providing for them.”
In January 2022 he relapsed. Within 90 days he had burned the business to the ground. Adultery and pornography followed. He believes his phone became the open door. Strange things began to happen that he says were nothing like the effects of drugs he knew so well. Thoughts that weren’t his own told him to do terrible things. For his wife’s and daughter’s safety, they had to leave.
The envelope
After eight months, alone in a filthy room in the city, and two and a half days without drugs or alcohol, Joshua knelt to take his own life. He was not a born-again believer. Then something rubbed against his knee: a plain, sealed envelope. Inside was a folded parchment covered in paintings of Moses and Jesus, and Scripture.
“At that moment the Lord stepped in,” he says. He began to pray, “God, help me. God, help me.” The traffic noise outside went completely silent, and an invisible force hit him so hard he felt it physically.
Thousands leaving
The more Joshua prayed, the more conviction came, and he began to sob. Then he felt something swell in the middle of his back until it seemed to explode along his spine. A tingling, like a limb waking up but a thousand times stronger, poured down his back, hips and legs to the soles of his feet, where he felt them go, one after another. “There were thousands,” he says. “Every one of those was an unclean spirit leaving me.”
When it was over, sunlight broke through the clouds into the room and an overwhelming peace filled him. He flushed every drug he had. The soles of his feet hurt so much that it took an hour to stand, and he could barely walk for days.
He points to God’s grace in it. He wasn’t saved, and yet when he cried out, the Lord answered. “None of us deserve it,” he says.
“Get saved right now”
Joshua suddenly knew, without having read the Bible, that Jesus is who He says He is. He went to a church for help, wanting to be saved that day, and was told it would take about a year of classes. Today, when anyone asks him how to be saved, he prays with them on the spot. “None of us know how much time we have,” he says.
Back in treatment and then living alone, he spent a year in Scripture and self-deliverance, learning from ministers like Derek Prince. He believes about 85 percent of his deliverance happened that first day, and he worked through the rest with the Lord.
The lump that disappeared
The same week he was saved in a church, Joshua came down with shingles and ended up in the emergency room after a tick bite. And where his back had seemed to explode, a golf-ball-sized lump had grown. Doctors said it was a harmless cyst.
One day, watching a deliverance minister pray for anyone with a growth on their body, Joshua reached back and touched it. As the prayer was spoken, he says, it dissolved under his fingers. He ran upstairs to show his wife.
“Get me before the world does”
God restored Joshua’s marriage and family. When he had no credit and a criminal record, he prayed for a home where he could serve God. Within minutes a cheque arrived at the rehab for the rest of the deposit, and an apartment in the nicest part of town approved him.
Today Joshua preaches at his church and ministers to people who are homeless, addicted and in jail. He also carries a vision from God to start a church called 3D: deliverance, discipline and discipleship. His first words every morning are, “Dear Lord, get me before the world does,” and then he goes straight to the Word.
Sober isn’t the goal, he says. Freedom is. “The drug use and alcohol is just a symptom. The problem is you’re spiritually dead.” Abigail adds that deliverance isn’t a one-time event: Jesus called it the children’s bread, and bread is eaten daily.
Connect with Joshua
- Email: joshuabarker1984@duck.com
- TikTok: @freedcaptivebytheblood
Mentioned in this episode
- The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel, which Joshua read in prison
- Derek Prince, whose deliverance teaching helped Joshua after he was set free
Scriptures in this episode
- Hebrews 9:27, once to die, then the judgment
- John 8:32, 36, the truth shall make you free
- Matthew 12:43–45, the unclean spirit that returns
- Matthew 24:36, no man knows the day or hour
- Mark 5:9, “My name is Legion: for we are many”
- Ephesians 2:2, the prince of the power of the air
- Acts 2:17, I will pour out my Spirit
- Matthew 15:26, deliverance is the children’s bread
- 1 Timothy 6:10, the love of money
- Romans 10:13, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord
- Isaiah 54:17, no weapon formed against thee shall prosper
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