Captured by God
“The Testimony and Calling of Michael Bowen”
Michael Bowen’s story is a journey from athletic success and opportunity into decades of addiction, homelessness, crime, incarceration, and despair—and ultimately into the freedom he says he found through complete surrender to Jesus Christ.
After approximately twenty-five years of battling addiction and repeatedly trying to rebuild his life, Michael reached what he describes as the darkest point of his existence. On May 19, 2013, he was arrested again. Today, he calls that day “Captured by God.”
What appeared to be another imprisonment became the turning point of his life. In prison, Michael says he finally stopped trying to save himself and surrendered completely to Jesus Christ.
Following his release from prison in 2014, he entered a Christian discipleship program, became rooted in church, studied theology, and entered ministry. He eventually began returning to prisons to preach the Gospel in places where he himself had once been incarcerated.
That calling later carried him to Liberia, West Africa, where he encountered people affected by addiction, homelessness, incarceration, poverty, and rejection. In them, he recognized something of the man he once had been.
His message became simple:
Jesus has not forgotten them—and neither have we.
Today, Michael’s testimony forms the spiritual foundation of Sons & Daughters of Thunder Ministries and the work of Liberation Center Liberia.
Captured by God
My name is Michael Bowen. I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in a family that provided me with opportunities and a comfortable life.
As a young man, sports became a major part of my identity, especially American football. In 1986, I was considered one of the top high school running backs in the State of Texas. After graduating, I chose to play football at Southern Methodist University.
As a true freshman, I made the starting team.
That same year, SMU’s football program received what became known as the NCAA “death penalty,” shutting down the program for two years because of rule violations.
With the program closed, I transferred to the University of Georgia in 1987. I found success there as well and received the Olin Huff Award as the university’s outstanding walk-on athlete. Our team finished the season ranked nationally and won the Liberty Bowl.
But I missed Dallas and still loved SMU.
After one year at Georgia, I transferred back to Southern Methodist University because I wanted to be part of rebuilding the football program from the ashes of the death penalty.
By the time I finished my college football career in 1990, I had been named an All-Southwest Conference Honorable Mention receiver, team captain, and Offensive Most Valuable Player.
Football was my life.
In 1991, I was drafted into the Canadian Football League by the Edmonton Eskimos and signed a six-figure contract.
I believed my dream was finally becoming reality.
Then I was released during training camp.
I was given a one-way airline ticket back to the United States.
I returned home depressed, humiliated, disappointed, and unsure of who I was without football.
That disappointment became fuel for something that had already begun growing inside my life.
Addiction.
When the Dream Became Darkness
During high school and college, I had experimented with alcohol and marijuana. Later came cocaine.
Eventually, I discovered what would become my drug of choice:
Crack cocaine.
During my football years, I was still able to exercise some control over my drug use because football mattered more to me than anything else. When it was time to train, I could temporarily put the drugs away and focus on becoming the best football player I could be.
But once football disappeared, that restraint disappeared with it.
My cocaine use intensified.
I began slipping away from my college campus or from my home in suburban North Dallas and going into inner-city neighborhoods looking for crack houses.
I would disappear for the night and often stay until the sun came up.
After my professional football opportunity ended, addiction began taking control of my life.
I went from football fields and college stadiums to abandoned houses, drug dens, and run-down motels.
The life I had known began collapsing.
Twenty-Five Years of Captivity
For approximately the next twenty-five years, I fought addiction with everything I had.
I went through treatment centers.
I tried 12-step programs.
I spent time in mental-health facilities.
I went through jails and prisons.
My family tried everything they knew to help me.
At times I rebuilt my life.
I married.
I became a father to three children.
I worked.
I had periods of apparent success.
But addiction was always waiting.
My life became like a broken record.
I would get clean.
I would rebuild.
I would regain employment, transportation, relationships, and stability.
Then I would relapse and disappear again.
I would spend my money on drugs, give away or sell possessions, abandon the people who loved me, lose jobs, lose vehicles, and eventually find myself back on the streets.
I began stealing to support the addiction I could no longer control.
For years, I considered myself religious. I attended church many times and believed in God.
But I had never fully surrendered.
I kept trying to defeat addiction through my own strength.
And eventually my own strength always failed.
Prison
In 2007, at the age of forty, I was arrested after stealing a car, leading police on a high-speed chase, crashing the vehicle, and attempting to flee on foot.
I was captured and ultimately spent approximately fourteen months in Arizona county jails before being placed on intensive probation.
For a time, I did well.
Eventually I transitioned to regular probation.
With greater freedom came another relapse.
I went back on the run.
I knew that violating probation could send me to prison, and I adopted an attitude of simply not caring anymore.
I returned to the streets of Tucson, using drugs and stealing while trying to avoid law enforcement.
One night, a man in a truck approached me and asked whether I knew where he could buy crack cocaine.
I told him I did.
He gave me money, and I purchased drugs for him.
When I returned, I broke off a piece for myself and began smoking.
The man was an undercover police officer.
I was arrested and later sentenced to two and a half years in the Arizona Department of Corrections.
I served my sentence and was released on parole to Austin, Texas, in December 2009.
I believed prison had finally scared me straight.
I thought I would never use drugs again.
And for a while, my life appeared to be moving forward.
Another Chance
In 2010, I was featured in ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary Pony Excess, which told the story of the SMU football scandal and death penalty.
I began working in real estate.
I started coaching youth football.
Eventually I became a football commissioner in my community and coached my son’s team to three consecutive championships.
By 2013, we believed we had a team capable of competing for a national youth football title.
From the outside, my life looked restored.
But internally, something remained unresolved.
In March 2013, I went to a bar for a few drinks.
I never came home.
The Final Descent
I disappeared again into crack cocaine.
This time methamphetamine entered the picture as well.
During what would become my final descent into addiction, I went deeper into darkness than I ever had before.
I abandoned my children, family, and friends.
For approximately three months, many of the people who loved me did not know where I was.
I lived in my car and in drug houses.
I smoked crack.
I sold drugs.
I stole.
I began injecting methamphetamine.
I had reached a place where I no longer cared whether I lived or died.
I believed death might be the only thing capable of stopping my addiction.
At one point, under the influence of drugs and after prolonged sleep deprivation and lack of food, I experienced a terrifying vision.
In my understanding of that experience, I became acutely aware of the spiritual darkness surrounding the life I had chosen.
I felt as though evil itself was confronting me.
The experience terrified me.
I believed I had gone farther into darkness than I could ever return from.
But even there, I now believe God was protecting me.
Several weeks later, the drug run finally ended.
May 19, 2013
On May 19, 2013, I was arrested on six felony theft charges.
Most people would describe that as the day I was captured by law enforcement.
I describe it differently.
That was the day I was:
Captured by God.
God took me out of the streets and eventually into the Travis Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
And there, something happened that had never happened during all my previous attempts at recovery.
I surrendered.
Completely.
I stopped bargaining with God.
I stopped trying to repair myself.
I stopped believing that my own strength could save me.
I repented of my sins and surrendered my life to Jesus Christ.
For years, I had tried to escape addiction.
Now I began to understand that what I needed was not simply another attempt at sobriety.
I needed a new life.
I needed a new identity.
I needed Jesus.
A New Creation
In prison, I came to understand myself as a new creation in Jesus Christ.
The labels that had defined me for years began losing their authority over my identity.
Drug addict.
Criminal.
Failure.
Prisoner.
Hopeless.
I began believing something different.
I belonged to Jesus Christ.
I believed He had rescued me, delivered me, forgiven me, and given me His Holy Spirit.
Where my own strength had failed repeatedly, I began learning to depend upon Him.
I had been blind.
Now I could see.
Freedom in the Most Unlikely Place
On May 27, 2014, I was released from prison into a Christian drug rehabilitation and discipleship home in Austin, Texas.
I joined a Spirit-filled church.
I was baptized.
I began being discipled.
I immersed myself in the Word of God.
The desire that had consumed me for years began being replaced by a desire for the presence of God.
Jesus had become my only hope.
After trying so many other ways to change, I had finally reached the place where I believed He had to be everything He said He was.
And He became more to me than I could have imagined.
Relationships began to be restored.
My children came back into my life.
I began working and serving others.
My life developed purpose again.
But God had not rescued me merely so that I could live comfortably.
He had a calling for me.
Sent Back
After my release, I enrolled at Life Christian University and earned a bachelor’s degree in theology.
I was licensed and ordained into ministry as an evangelist.
And then God sent me back into the very places from which I had come.
I began preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ inside the Texas prison system.
There is a room where, as an inmate, I once laid on the floor, weeping and surrendering my life to Jesus.
Later, I returned to that same place as a preacher of the Gospel.
When I stand there, I remember who I used to be.
In my heart, the old Michael is buried there.
And I give God glory because the man who once entered that room in captivity later returned carrying a message of freedom.
Sons and Daughters of Thunder
Out of that calling came Sons and Daughters of Thunder Ministries.
The ministry began with a burden for people living in the same kinds of bondage I had known:
Addiction.
Habitual incarceration.
Hopelessness.
Darkness.
I knew what it meant to have people give up on you.
And I knew what it meant to discover that Jesus Christ had not.
Our calling became to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to people living in defeat and show them that their present condition does not have to become their permanent identity.
But the calling would eventually take me much farther than Texas.
Liberia
God began opening doors for me to travel to Liberia, West Africa, where I became involved in mission trips, crusades, revivals, evangelism, and outreach.
There I encountered people commonly referred to as Zogos—people affected by addiction, homelessness, poverty, trauma, incarceration, and social rejection.
Many of the Zogos are the former child soldiers from Liberia’s brutal civil wars where they were fed drugs to make them fight and they became addicted.
Some lived in ghettos.
Some lived in the tombs of cemeteries.
Some had been pushed to the margins of society and viewed as people who would never change.
When I encountered them, something happened inside me.
I recognized them.
Our lives were not identical.
Our countries were different.
Our histories were different.
But I understood what it was like to become hopelessly trapped in addiction.
I understood what it was like to live in places no one should have to live.
I understood what it was like for family and society to lose hope in you.
And most importantly, I understood what it was like to discover that Jesus had not forgotten me.
So our message became:
Jesus hasn’t forgotten them, and neither have we.
Liberation Center Liberia
In Liberia, we organized a ministry team and established Liberation Center Liberia.
The work grew around a desire to proclaim Jesus Christ while helping people affected by addiction and vulnerability move toward restoration, discipleship, purpose, and a new way of life.
Thunder House became part of that vision—a discipleship and restoration environment where people affected by addiction could leave the graveyards and ghettos, begin rebuilding their lives, encounter Christ, and learn a different way of living.
The ministry has continued developing outreach, discipleship, vocational, community, and health-related initiatives as part of its mission in Liberia.
But the goal has never been merely to construct buildings.
The goal has never been simply to create programs.
And the goal is not merely sobriety.
The goal is transformation.
The Liberation Model
Through everything God has taught us, the ministry has developed a simple framework for carrying out this calling:
Prevent.
Protect vulnerable people and the next generation before addiction takes hold.
Rescue.
Go into dark and forgotten places and reach people others may have abandoned.
Restore.
Walk with people toward healing, freedom, stability, dignity, and renewed purpose.
Disciple.
Raise faithful followers of Jesus Christ who grow in the Word of God and mature in their faith.
Multiply.
Equip transformed disciples to become leaders, witnesses, and disciple-makers who return to reach others.
The people who are rescued should become part of rescuing the next person.
That is multiplication.
My Charge
I believe the Lord called me out of addiction and habitual incarceration and commissioned me to carry His Word to others still living in defeat.
That is my charge.
I once lived in captivity.
I once believed my life was over.
I once believed I was too far gone.
But Jesus Christ reached me.
I found true freedom in the most unlikely place:
Prison.
Not because prison saved me.
Jesus did.
Prison was simply where I finally stopped running and surrendered everything to Him.
Today, I want anyone living in addiction, incarceration, hopelessness, or any other kind of bondage to know this:
Your present condition does not have to be your final identity.
I believe there is freedom in Jesus Christ.
I believe no person is beyond His reach.
I believe that because I have lived it.
My life belongs to Him.
My testimony belongs to Him.
And the mission He has given me continues:
Proclaiming the Gospel.
Protecting the vulnerable.
Rescuing those living in darkness.
Restoring broken lives.
Making faithful disciples.
Multiplying Kingdom leaders.
One soul at a time.