Episode 131 - Jason Sautel
For most of us, life-altering tragedies are something we experience in rare instances. For a firefighter in a big city, they’re everyday occurrences. Working as a first responder in the Oakland Fire Department, Jason Sautel saw suffering, tragedy, and death constantly. Jason looked to his job to make something of his life and to redeem his troubled childhood, but without any hope to draw from, he eventually ran dry himself. The misery he saw on a daily basis was too much for Jason, and at his lowest moment, he planned to take his own life. Instead, Jason found Jesus and learned that there was hope even in the worst circumstances.
In the wake of the fires currently raging in California and other parts of the western US, it's perhaps clearer than ever just how much of a challenge jobs like Jason's are. We depend on people like Jason for our safety, but that comes at a tremendous cost to these brave men and women. Jason knows what it feels like to walk through literal fires to save a life, and what that can do to a person, but he also knows a source of hope that makes that can transform that pain into purpose. Jason sits down with Davey to share a bit of his story and how he’s made it his mission to help others see God in the midst of their trials.
“When you hang onto hope and Jesus is in the mix, time doesn’t heal anything, but time with Jesus will heal everything. ”
He helped save people every day—but he had no idea how to save himself.
Jason Sautel had it all. Confident in his abilities and trusted by his fellow firefighters, he was making a name for himself on the streets of Oakland, California. His adrenaline-fueled job even helped him forget the pain of his childhood—until the day he looked into the eyes of a jumper on the Bay Bridge and came face to face with a darkness he knew would take him down as well.
In the following months, a series of traumatic emergency calls—some successful, others impossible-to-forget failures—drove Jason deeper into depression. Even as he continued his lifesaving work, he realized he could never rescue everyone, and he had no idea how to save himself.
In the end, Jason was forced to confront the truth: only the relentless power of love could pull him back from his own deadly fall. Action-packed, spiritually honest, and surprisingly romantic, The Rescuer transports readers inside the pulse-pounding world of firefighting and into the heart of a man who needed to be broken before he could finally be made whole.