Fight the Good Fight: A Conversation with Jesse Cunningham
Good morning, Passionate Life Church. Today is a very special Sunday. We are putting our War For My Will series on pause, though you are going to see how it all blends together in a moment, because today we get to honor someone who got saved in this church, baptized in this church, and discipled in this church. And this is what happens when you keep showing up, and you keep stacking days of obedience. God uses you in a great and powerful way.
I remember the first time I met Jesse Cunningham. He was, and I say this with love, a complete disaster. I think we almost died in a car accident on the way to a Nuggets game the first time we hung out. I still remember the backstory of how he ended up at Passionate Life Church. He had been doing drugs all day, took a bump of cocaine, and told the Lord that if he was still alive in the morning, he would go to church. He woke up. He came. And the church he walked into was this one.
To watch what God has done in his life since that day, to have a front row seat in his discipleship process, and to see where God has taken him, is genuinely one of the great honors of my life as a pastor. So today we are going to hear Jesse's story, learn about the organization he serves called Aerial Recovery, and talk about something the church does not discuss nearly enough: sex trafficking. Because I believe, as your pastor, that we need to know what is happening, not just in some far-away country, but in our own backyard. Right here in Colorado. Right here in Littleton.
We are going to keep it PG-13 today. But we are not going to pretend this is not real.
Fight the Good Fight
Let me set the stage with two passages of scripture before I bring Jesse up.
Second Timothy 4:6-8. This is the Apostle Paul writing to his spiritual son Timothy near the end of his life. And I hope this is me at the end of mine. I hope it is you too. He says, as for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me, the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me, but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.
We get to be part of that fight. Not all of us can go on the kind of covert missions Jesse goes on. Not all of us would want to. But we can be part of it through prayer and through giving. Add Jesse Cunningham and his wife, Sarah, and Aerial Recovery to your prayer list. I have been praying for them every day for years. And now that I know the full scope of what Jesse is doing, I pray for him even more.
The second passage is from Matthew 25. Jesus is telling his disciples a story, and he says, " The king will say, I tell you the truth, when you did it for one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it for me. And then he says, away with you, cursed ones, into eternal fire, for I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was thirsty, and you did not give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in. I was naked, and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. And they ask, Lord, when did we ever see you in those conditions and not help you? And he answers, when you refused to help the least of these, you were refusing to help me.
Jesse is going to talk about the least of these today. Children who have been kidnapped. Women who have been captured and trafficked. The invisible people of society. And when we are part of helping them, whether through prayer, through giving, or through the kind of direct action Jesse takes, we are literally helping Jesus. Because Jesus loves these children. He loves these people.
Come on, let us welcome Jesse Cunningham.
Jesse's Story: From the Military to the Mission Field
Jesse, thank you for being here and for being willing to be vulnerable and share your story. Let me frame it for everyone before you take it from there.
Jesse's desire from a young age was to be a police officer. He has always had this drive to protect people, to serve. He served in the military, including two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and one doing drug operations in South America. When he came home, the transition to civilian life was brutal. Going from a life-or-death environment to trying to be a dad and a husband, struggling with PTSD, turning to drugs and alcohol for years, and getting a DUI that pushed back his law enforcement timeline by a decade. That was Jesse when he walked into this church. And then God got hold of him.
He stayed clean. He worked toward his goal of becoming a police officer in Thornton. He was about three weeks away from meeting with the chief of police and being offered a position at the academy when he got in a motorcycle accident right here at Alamo and Kipling. He was t-boned going through the intersection. Six or seven broken bones. Torn ligaments. By all rights, he should not be here today. But God intervened.
And Jesse did not sit down. He refused to let it define him. He went right back to work and right back to the gym because he knew there was something deep inside of him that had not been fulfilled yet. About a year and a half later, through a Christian motivational speaker named Billy Als and his coaching program, Jesse was introduced to Aerial Recovery. And that is where God redirected the calling that had always been in him.
Jesse, take it from here.
Aerial Recovery: Three Branches, One Mission
Aerial Recovery has three branches. The first is the Heal the Heroes program, which is designed specifically for veterans and first responders like Jesse, men and women who have given everything in service and then struggled to find purpose on the other side of that service. The suicide rate among veterans and first responders is staggering. Eighteen a day. One every eighty-four minutes. Heal the Heroes was created to give these men and women their purpose back and redirect their skills and training toward combating human trafficking and disaster response.
Jesse was nominated for the program. Through it, he has been trained in disaster response, extraction operations, and anti-human trafficking work. His specialty is anti-human trafficking. He runs his own task force. And what he has found is that it has not only given him purpose. It has helped him heal in ways that nothing else had reached.
The second branch is operations, where teams conduct missions around the globe, gathering intelligence, building prosecutorial packages, and conducting extractions. The third branch is aftercare, partnering with vetted facilities in multiple countries that rehabilitate survivors and help them rebuild their lives. Children have gone all the way through the Aerial Recovery aftercare program and graduated from college.
And Jesse does all of this as a volunteer. He and his team volunteer their time so that every donor dollar goes toward saving children rather than paying operators.
What Jesse Has Seen
I want to share some of what Jesse walked us through this morning, because the church needs to hear it.
In Uganda, Jesse's team tracked down a witch doctor in a tribe who was keeping children alive to harvest their blood. When they got through the door, they found approximately nine children in beds, alive but not coherent. They recovered those children. It is the kind of thing that sounds like a conspiracy theory until you are standing in the room. And Jesse has stood in the room.
In South America, Jesse's team rescued a four-year-old girl named Maria. Seventeen children were recovered in that single operation, which is remarkable. What is even rarer is that Maria's three-year-old brother was with her. Traffickers deliberately separate siblings as a form of control. Saving both of them together almost never happens. Jesse got to meet Maria during a subsequent mission. He sat down with her to help her untie a knot in her shoe, and she swatted his hand away and tied it herself. A four-year-old who has been through a living hell, still determined to do it on her own. He said it hit him right then and there. She is HIV positive because of trafficking, which in many South American countries means she will face discrimination and barriers for the rest of her life. And yet she just had to tie her own shoe.
That moment is why Jesse does what he does.
It Is Happening Here
I want to be direct with you about something that Jesse shared this morning, because I think some of us want to believe this is a distant problem. It is not.
Denver is one of the top cities in the country for sex trafficking. Colorado is not immune. Jesse shared the story of a friend named Eric, a former Army Ranger sniper, who lived in Englewood. Eric used to wave at a neighbor down the street, the kind of guy who mowed his lawn and seemed perfectly normal. That house had children chained in the basement, being trafficked. It was discovered when one girl escaped. Three or four houses from where Eric's kids rode their bikes.
And then Jesse shared something even closer to home. His nephew, about eight years old at the time, was playing a game on his cell phone when someone with the handle Tom Holland, the actor who plays Spider-Man, started chatting with him. Within minutes, this person was asking where his little sister was, asking for pictures of her and the house, and trying to arrange a meeting at Southwest Plaza Mall. Right here.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is happening in Littleton. It is happening in Denver. It is happening in our backyard. Sex trafficking generates two hundred and thirty-six billion dollars annually and has increased by over four hundred percent in the last decade. Of the forty-nine point six million people trapped in modern slavery worldwide, twelve million are children. Seventy to seventy-five percent of those are between the ages of four and eleven.
Jesus. These kids have not even had a chance at life.
I am not sharing this to scare you. I am sharing this because the church is supposed to fight wickedness, not pretend it does not exist. And our God is greater. Our God is greater than all of this.
How You Can Be Part of the Fight
Jesse walked through the practical ways each of us can engage.
First, prayer. This is the most important thing you can do. Add Jesse, Sarah, and Aerial Recovery to your daily prayer list. They are operating undercover in dangerous places with no government support. The United States currently has no federally funded program to fight sex trafficking. None. Jesse and his team are in conversations with senators and recently spoke with a White House delegate about changing that. Pray for those conversations. Pray for protection over every operator in the field. Pray for the children.
Second, give. Aerial Recovery is one hundred percent donor-funded. Every dollar goes directly toward operations and aftercare. You can learn more and give at their website.
Third, be aware. If you have children, download the Life 360 app. This is not about invading your child's privacy. It is about your responsibility as a parent to keep them safe in a world where traffickers are using video games and social media to target them.
Fourth, spread the word. Jesse is available to speak to offices, schools, and community groups to raise awareness. If that is something your workplace or organization would benefit from, connect with him in the lobby today.
If you are a veteran, a first responder, law enforcement, or someone in government, there may be a direct role for you. Talk to Jesse privately.
We all have a part to play in this fight. We can all fight the good fight. Not everyone goes undercover, but everyone can pray, everyone can give, and everyone can be aware.
Communion
Before we move into response time, I want to take communion together this morning. Not out of religious obligation. But as a reflection on what Jesus did for us, and as a reminder of who we are fighting for.
When Jesus was hanging on that cross, he had you in his mind. He was seeing through eternity, your life, your purpose, your plan. And he said it was worth it. He said it was worth every moment of what he was going through.
He took the bread and said, this is my body, which will be broken for you. The promise is not that you will never go through brokenness. The promise is that Jesus is close to the brokenhearted. You can find healing because he paid for it. As we partake in the bread, let us thank Jesus for the sacrifice that made us whole.
He took the cup and said, this represents my blood that will be shed for you. A blood sacrifice was required. It needed to be a perfect sacrifice. Jesus was the only one who was perfect. His blood covers all of our sin, past, present, and future. Once, for all time. Finished. And because of that sacrifice, we do not have to fear death. We do not have to be controlled by sin. We can live in true freedom. As we partake in the cup, let us thank Jesus for that freedom.
Respond Today
We are transitioning into our response time. Three stations are available. The station of the cross, where you can write anything on a piece of paper and pin it to the cross and say in Jesus' name, it is finished. The altar, where you can get alone with God. And the prayer cove, where prayer partners are ready to stand with you.
Maybe today God is stirring something in you about the fight Jesse described. Maybe He is calling you to pray differently, give differently, or engage differently. Whatever He is saying to you this morning, respond.
Father, I thank you for Jesse's testimony and for Aerial Recovery. I thank you for what you are stirring up in our hearts. We can all fight the good fight. Give us endurance and strength and perseverance to step in and finish the race you have placed before us. In Jesus name. Amen.
To learn more about Aerial Recovery and how you can support the work Jesse is doing, visit their website. You can also watch the full service on the Passionate Life Church media page.
If this message stirred something in you, submit a prayer request and let our community stand with you. Get connected through a life group where real people do real life together. Find your next step at passionatelifechurch.com/next-steps. Reach us through the contact page or call (303) 835-7968. Services are every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 10:30 AM at 10393 W Alamo Pl, Littleton, CO 80127. We would love to see you.
I remember the first time I met Jesse Cunningham. He was, and I say this with love, a complete disaster. I think we almost died in a car accident on the way to a Nuggets game the first time we hung out. I still remember the backstory of how he ended up at Passionate Life Church. He had been doing drugs all day, took a bump of cocaine, and told the Lord that if he was still alive in the morning, he would go to church. He woke up. He came. And the church he walked into was this one.
To watch what God has done in his life since that day, to have a front row seat in his discipleship process, and to see where God has taken him, is genuinely one of the great honors of my life as a pastor. So today we are going to hear Jesse's story, learn about the organization he serves called Aerial Recovery, and talk about something the church does not discuss nearly enough: sex trafficking. Because I believe, as your pastor, that we need to know what is happening, not just in some far-away country, but in our own backyard. Right here in Colorado. Right here in Littleton.
We are going to keep it PG-13 today. But we are not going to pretend this is not real.
Fight the Good Fight
Let me set the stage with two passages of scripture before I bring Jesse up.
Second Timothy 4:6-8. This is the Apostle Paul writing to his spiritual son Timothy near the end of his life. And I hope this is me at the end of mine. I hope it is you too. He says, as for me, my life has already been poured out as an offering to God. The time of my death is near. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me, the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on the day of his return. And the prize is not just for me, but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.
We get to be part of that fight. Not all of us can go on the kind of covert missions Jesse goes on. Not all of us would want to. But we can be part of it through prayer and through giving. Add Jesse Cunningham and his wife, Sarah, and Aerial Recovery to your prayer list. I have been praying for them every day for years. And now that I know the full scope of what Jesse is doing, I pray for him even more.
The second passage is from Matthew 25. Jesus is telling his disciples a story, and he says, " The king will say, I tell you the truth, when you did it for one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you were doing it for me. And then he says, away with you, cursed ones, into eternal fire, for I was hungry and you did not feed me. I was thirsty, and you did not give me a drink. I was a stranger, and you did not invite me in. I was naked, and you did not clothe me. I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. And they ask, Lord, when did we ever see you in those conditions and not help you? And he answers, when you refused to help the least of these, you were refusing to help me.
Jesse is going to talk about the least of these today. Children who have been kidnapped. Women who have been captured and trafficked. The invisible people of society. And when we are part of helping them, whether through prayer, through giving, or through the kind of direct action Jesse takes, we are literally helping Jesus. Because Jesus loves these children. He loves these people.
Come on, let us welcome Jesse Cunningham.
Jesse's Story: From the Military to the Mission Field
Jesse, thank you for being here and for being willing to be vulnerable and share your story. Let me frame it for everyone before you take it from there.
Jesse's desire from a young age was to be a police officer. He has always had this drive to protect people, to serve. He served in the military, including two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and one doing drug operations in South America. When he came home, the transition to civilian life was brutal. Going from a life-or-death environment to trying to be a dad and a husband, struggling with PTSD, turning to drugs and alcohol for years, and getting a DUI that pushed back his law enforcement timeline by a decade. That was Jesse when he walked into this church. And then God got hold of him.
He stayed clean. He worked toward his goal of becoming a police officer in Thornton. He was about three weeks away from meeting with the chief of police and being offered a position at the academy when he got in a motorcycle accident right here at Alamo and Kipling. He was t-boned going through the intersection. Six or seven broken bones. Torn ligaments. By all rights, he should not be here today. But God intervened.
And Jesse did not sit down. He refused to let it define him. He went right back to work and right back to the gym because he knew there was something deep inside of him that had not been fulfilled yet. About a year and a half later, through a Christian motivational speaker named Billy Als and his coaching program, Jesse was introduced to Aerial Recovery. And that is where God redirected the calling that had always been in him.
Jesse, take it from here.
Aerial Recovery: Three Branches, One Mission
Aerial Recovery has three branches. The first is the Heal the Heroes program, which is designed specifically for veterans and first responders like Jesse, men and women who have given everything in service and then struggled to find purpose on the other side of that service. The suicide rate among veterans and first responders is staggering. Eighteen a day. One every eighty-four minutes. Heal the Heroes was created to give these men and women their purpose back and redirect their skills and training toward combating human trafficking and disaster response.
Jesse was nominated for the program. Through it, he has been trained in disaster response, extraction operations, and anti-human trafficking work. His specialty is anti-human trafficking. He runs his own task force. And what he has found is that it has not only given him purpose. It has helped him heal in ways that nothing else had reached.
The second branch is operations, where teams conduct missions around the globe, gathering intelligence, building prosecutorial packages, and conducting extractions. The third branch is aftercare, partnering with vetted facilities in multiple countries that rehabilitate survivors and help them rebuild their lives. Children have gone all the way through the Aerial Recovery aftercare program and graduated from college.
And Jesse does all of this as a volunteer. He and his team volunteer their time so that every donor dollar goes toward saving children rather than paying operators.
What Jesse Has Seen
I want to share some of what Jesse walked us through this morning, because the church needs to hear it.
In Uganda, Jesse's team tracked down a witch doctor in a tribe who was keeping children alive to harvest their blood. When they got through the door, they found approximately nine children in beds, alive but not coherent. They recovered those children. It is the kind of thing that sounds like a conspiracy theory until you are standing in the room. And Jesse has stood in the room.
In South America, Jesse's team rescued a four-year-old girl named Maria. Seventeen children were recovered in that single operation, which is remarkable. What is even rarer is that Maria's three-year-old brother was with her. Traffickers deliberately separate siblings as a form of control. Saving both of them together almost never happens. Jesse got to meet Maria during a subsequent mission. He sat down with her to help her untie a knot in her shoe, and she swatted his hand away and tied it herself. A four-year-old who has been through a living hell, still determined to do it on her own. He said it hit him right then and there. She is HIV positive because of trafficking, which in many South American countries means she will face discrimination and barriers for the rest of her life. And yet she just had to tie her own shoe.
That moment is why Jesse does what he does.
It Is Happening Here
I want to be direct with you about something that Jesse shared this morning, because I think some of us want to believe this is a distant problem. It is not.
Denver is one of the top cities in the country for sex trafficking. Colorado is not immune. Jesse shared the story of a friend named Eric, a former Army Ranger sniper, who lived in Englewood. Eric used to wave at a neighbor down the street, the kind of guy who mowed his lawn and seemed perfectly normal. That house had children chained in the basement, being trafficked. It was discovered when one girl escaped. Three or four houses from where Eric's kids rode their bikes.
And then Jesse shared something even closer to home. His nephew, about eight years old at the time, was playing a game on his cell phone when someone with the handle Tom Holland, the actor who plays Spider-Man, started chatting with him. Within minutes, this person was asking where his little sister was, asking for pictures of her and the house, and trying to arrange a meeting at Southwest Plaza Mall. Right here.
This is not a conspiracy theory. This is happening in Littleton. It is happening in Denver. It is happening in our backyard. Sex trafficking generates two hundred and thirty-six billion dollars annually and has increased by over four hundred percent in the last decade. Of the forty-nine point six million people trapped in modern slavery worldwide, twelve million are children. Seventy to seventy-five percent of those are between the ages of four and eleven.
Jesus. These kids have not even had a chance at life.
I am not sharing this to scare you. I am sharing this because the church is supposed to fight wickedness, not pretend it does not exist. And our God is greater. Our God is greater than all of this.
How You Can Be Part of the Fight
Jesse walked through the practical ways each of us can engage.
First, prayer. This is the most important thing you can do. Add Jesse, Sarah, and Aerial Recovery to your daily prayer list. They are operating undercover in dangerous places with no government support. The United States currently has no federally funded program to fight sex trafficking. None. Jesse and his team are in conversations with senators and recently spoke with a White House delegate about changing that. Pray for those conversations. Pray for protection over every operator in the field. Pray for the children.
Second, give. Aerial Recovery is one hundred percent donor-funded. Every dollar goes directly toward operations and aftercare. You can learn more and give at their website.
Third, be aware. If you have children, download the Life 360 app. This is not about invading your child's privacy. It is about your responsibility as a parent to keep them safe in a world where traffickers are using video games and social media to target them.
Fourth, spread the word. Jesse is available to speak to offices, schools, and community groups to raise awareness. If that is something your workplace or organization would benefit from, connect with him in the lobby today.
If you are a veteran, a first responder, law enforcement, or someone in government, there may be a direct role for you. Talk to Jesse privately.
We all have a part to play in this fight. We can all fight the good fight. Not everyone goes undercover, but everyone can pray, everyone can give, and everyone can be aware.
Communion
Before we move into response time, I want to take communion together this morning. Not out of religious obligation. But as a reflection on what Jesus did for us, and as a reminder of who we are fighting for.
When Jesus was hanging on that cross, he had you in his mind. He was seeing through eternity, your life, your purpose, your plan. And he said it was worth it. He said it was worth every moment of what he was going through.
He took the bread and said, this is my body, which will be broken for you. The promise is not that you will never go through brokenness. The promise is that Jesus is close to the brokenhearted. You can find healing because he paid for it. As we partake in the bread, let us thank Jesus for the sacrifice that made us whole.
He took the cup and said, this represents my blood that will be shed for you. A blood sacrifice was required. It needed to be a perfect sacrifice. Jesus was the only one who was perfect. His blood covers all of our sin, past, present, and future. Once, for all time. Finished. And because of that sacrifice, we do not have to fear death. We do not have to be controlled by sin. We can live in true freedom. As we partake in the cup, let us thank Jesus for that freedom.
Respond Today
We are transitioning into our response time. Three stations are available. The station of the cross, where you can write anything on a piece of paper and pin it to the cross and say in Jesus' name, it is finished. The altar, where you can get alone with God. And the prayer cove, where prayer partners are ready to stand with you.
Maybe today God is stirring something in you about the fight Jesse described. Maybe He is calling you to pray differently, give differently, or engage differently. Whatever He is saying to you this morning, respond.
Father, I thank you for Jesse's testimony and for Aerial Recovery. I thank you for what you are stirring up in our hearts. We can all fight the good fight. Give us endurance and strength and perseverance to step in and finish the race you have placed before us. In Jesus name. Amen.
To learn more about Aerial Recovery and how you can support the work Jesse is doing, visit their website. You can also watch the full service on the Passionate Life Church media page.
If this message stirred something in you, submit a prayer request and let our community stand with you. Get connected through a life group where real people do real life together. Find your next step at passionatelifechurch.com/next-steps. Reach us through the contact page or call (303) 835-7968. Services are every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 10:30 AM at 10393 W Alamo Pl, Littleton, CO 80127. We would love to see you.
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