He Calls Me Daughter: God’s Love for the Father Wound–Rick Altizer

Episode Transcript

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He Calls Me Daughter: God’s Love for the Father Wound

Guest:Rick Altizer and Rachelle Starr

From the series:He Calls Me Daughter (Day 2 of 3)

Air date:March 12, 2026

Rachelle (00:04):

Louisville has seen a 76% decrease in exploitation in human trafficking and strip clubs. And I can say confidently, largely due to women who have come to know Christ and have left that life and strip club owners that have come to know Jesus and put chains on their door and their club is no more, that’s the God that we serve.

Ann (00:32):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:39):

And I’m Dave Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Alright, we got Rick Altizer back in the studio. I’m not going to hand you a guitar unless you want one. You got another song in your head. You look like me, like you could sing one on the spot.

Rick:

I can match you a song any day, anytime. But don’t do this to me.

Dave:

Except, you know what Bruce is thinking. He’s thinking “Yeah Dave, but he’s a lot better than you.” But anyway—but sitting beside you—

Rick (01:12):

Yes.

Dave (01:12):

I can’t wait to hear your story because I don’t know exactly how you two met, but Rachelle Starr is here.

Ann (01:18):

Rick alluded to it and mentioned it. Yesterday, Rick, we talked to you about your new film coming out March 17th and 18th.

Dave (01:25):

That’s next week.

Ann (01:26):

Yeah, next Tuesday.

Dave (01:28):

Tuesday and Wednesday.

Ann (01:28):

But it’s called, He Calls Me Daughter. It’s about really, father wounds that we all have. Most of us have. Even if you have a good father, you can still have a father wound. And then take us back to this journey where you two met because it was kind of accidental.

Rick (01:45):

Well, I mean it was God.

Ann:

It was God.

Rick:

God closed the door as we mentioned yesterday. God moves mostly in my life through the closed door. Had a story in the film that God closed the door on and so I’m needing another story. Just happened to be on the phone with someone else who’s in the film. Her name is Dee Dee Mayer, and she’s at Pepperdine. She does the Boone Center for—Family Center there. And I’d mentioned to her, this story just kind of blew up and it’s gone and it’s over. I don’t know what to do. And she goes, well, I know someone in Louisville, her name is Rachelle Starr, and she has a ministry called Scarlet Hope. And so I’m going to let Rachelle tell the rest of the story. But then she connected us and it was the God send of the movie because the movie was kind of not quite there. And as soon as this came, it’s like everything just aligned and it was just that moment of God brought Rachelle to this film and the person that she knew named Priscilla and we’re going to hear all about it, but it was a work of the Lord.

Ann (02:47):

Did you call Rachelle?

Rick:

Yes.

Ann:

What was that like, Rachelle? This is out of the blue?

Rachelle (02:52):

So I had gotten a message from Dee Dee would I be interested in a call with Rick? And I thought, “This is kind of crazy. I mean I’m up for anything.” So I said sure. So the next thing I know within minutes really, he’s on the phone with me telling me about the film, asking me more about the ministry and how this would relate. I knew as soon as he told me what it was about, I knew it would be a really cool puzzle piece to his overall story, and I hadn’t even heard or seen the movie. So we ended up connecting. He came up to Louisville, we sort of interviewed together, and we committed to being a part of the film.

Dave (03:32):

Alright, so what’s your story? I want to hear this.

Rachelle (03:35):

Pertaining to the movie. I grew up actually with a father who’s got a little slice in the movie who showed me how to be Jesus with skin on. That was a very different story than what the film was honestly even about. And to what you guys have already been talking about yesterday and now is like everyone has father wounds, no father is perfect, but my father showed me as a very young child how to love the unlovely and how to be Jesus to people.

Ann (04:07):

Which in the film is super inspiring to watch your dad.

Rachelle (04:10):

He modeled it, I don’t want to say perfectly, but he modeled it enough for me to catch on that this would be something I wanted to do with my life.

Ann (04:20):

And he was doing what?

Rachelle (04:22):

So he was a pastor of really small churches around the country. They would go around and he would pick up homeless people, prostitutes. He would pick up people on the side of the road on Sunday mornings. We would bring donuts to them and we’d say, “Do you want to go to church?” I was like five years old at this time. And my dad, we would do this on Sunday mornings and there were a number of churches that asked my dad to leave the church because my dad would bring people that were smelly or didn’t look like everybody else.

Ann (04:50):

Wow.

Rachelle (04:50):

I remember actually being a little girl that wanted to fight for those people that the church cast out. So then fast forward to my early twenties, I started asking God to give me a people and a purpose for my life. I did not know what that was going to be. I was like, send me to India, send me to Thailand, wherever. And it really was actually in my backyard. So I was driving down the road going to work. I’d driven this path hundreds and hundreds of times before, and I passed a theater X that was a truck stop that also had triple X peep shows and different things like that. I had never paid attention to it before in my life. And I heard the Holy Spirit say, “I’m sending you there to share my hope and my love.” And I knew instantly that that was exactly what Jesus would do, would be to go to the people in complete darkness. And one of the things that instantly—

Ann (05:54):

Wait, wait. First of all, I love that you’re like, “Well, of course this is it.” There wasn’t any hesitation, “Wait, what? I thought I was going to Africa or India.” You kind of knew in your heart, “Well, of course.”

Rachelle (06:04):

Yeah. I knew that that was the moment God was answering my prayers for sending me to the people that He wanted me to go to.

Dave (06:13):

Were you married at the time?

Rachelle (06:15):

I had just gotten married about a year prior to this.

Dave:

How did that go?

Rachelle:

Well, actually my husband knew I was longing for this in my heart. I actually worked in corporate America and loved that climbing that ladder as well.

Ann (06:30):

But did he know you were praying for a people and a purpose?

Rachelle (06:32):

He did and He was praying with me.

(06:34):

He’s a web designer so he could have worked anywhere in the world. So he was like, “If God opens a door for India or another country, let’s go there.” But He didn’t. He said, “Right here in your backyard, we’re going to go here.” And so when I called my husband, I said, “Jesus answered my prayer and He’s sending me to the sex industry and to share the gospel.” My husband said, “That’s exactly what Jesus would do.” And God had just lined it up, lined all of our hearts up.

Dave (06:59):

Whoa, whoa, wait.

Rachelle (07:01):

That was his—

Dave:

—first response.

Rachelle:

—first response.

Ann (07:04):

People, this is why we need to marry a spouse that loves Jesus, that gets it.

Rachelle (07:08):

Amen. Yes. Yeah, I mean when you can see looking back how God has orchestrated so many things for not only my life, but now I can see 19 years later in ministry for thousands of other lives. And when we say yes to Him, which is all God needs, right? He just needs us to be obedient, take the first step, then He does the rest and it’s pretty incredible to be a part of.

Dave (07:35):

So did you walk in that club the next day? What happened?

Rachelle (07:38):

So after that, the next step that the Lord gave me was to pray outside of that place among others. In Louisville, Kentucky where I started this ministry called Scarlet Hope, we were the fifth largest sex industry per capita in America.

Dave (07:54):

Really?

Rachelle (07:54):

Yeah, it was honestly alarming because we have some of the largest Christian Baptist churches in our city. So I actually started calling churches and saying, “Hey, are you guys working with anybody in the sex industry or prostitutes?” And unanimously every church would either hang up on me or say “There’s a sign outside. They can come if they want.” And so for 18 months we prayed and fasted for God to open the doors of these places and allow us to go inside to minister to these people.

Ann (08:26):

So you took a year and a half to pray and fast?

Rachelle (08:29):

Correct, yes.

Ann (08:30):

That just brings tears to my eyes because that’s the first move.

Rachelle (08:34):

It was just such a beautiful time in my life because I didn’t know the people God was calling me to. I knew where he was calling me to, but I didn’t know the people yet. And so I read Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love.

(08:49):

And if you remember the first two words of his book, it says “Stop praying.” And I was reading that in August of 08. I had been fasting and praying for 18 months and that hit me like a ton of bricks. And I remember looking at my husband, looking at my best friend saying, “It’s time to go.” And so we fasted from a Sunday to a Tuesday and God opened the door on that Tuesday and directed our path to a strip club in Louisville and completely swung open the doors to begin serving home cooked meals there. And that was in 2008.

Dave (09:21):

So you walk in.

Rachelle (09:23):

Yeah, so we walk in and I had no idea, no experience. I’m not from the industry, I didn’t do a lot of Google research on it or anything, but I walk in and it’s dark and we pay $10 to get in the door. Quickly, I realize we are very out of place. I wore a black turtleneck and you’ll appreciate this, no makeup. I was like, “I do not want them to think I’m here for a job.” And so just so silly. I was young twenties too, and I just remember God directing our time to this man and I went over to him and I stuck out my hand and I said, “Hi, my name’s Rachelle. Jesus sent me here to do something kind and loving for the people in this place.”

Ann (10:08):

I love this.

Rachelle (10:09):

“Could I bring in a home cooked meal?” And his face, his jaw dropped and he said, “What’s the catch?” And in my spirit, I was like, “God, you better give me the next words.” And I said, “There’s no catch. I just want to share a meal and tell people Jesus loves them.” And he had never heard anything in his whole life. And for an hour and 45 minutes he told us his whole story and said, “When can you come in?” And that was on a Tuesday night. We showed up Thursday with an Italian meal because I’m Italian and I cooked it and my friend helped me and we served a homecooked meal to about 30 women and we’ve been doing that every Thursday night since then.

Ann (10:50):

What’s the first week? Okay, here’s this incredible meal.

Rachelle (10:54):

So a lot of the women, sadly, because in 2008 this was really kind of before anti-trafficking and human trafficking started to become awareness and marches and things. The only experience with Christians that people in the industry had had was hate.

Ann (11:14):

Judgment.

Rachelle (11:15):

Judgment. I was actually physically in a strip club when a group of people from a church nearby set a box of Bibles on the front doorstep of the club, and they wrote on the box of Bibles that they were delivering “Repent or go to hell.” Well, I was physically in the club serving a meal to these people, telling them about the same God that that Bible speaks of. And so I just had to sit for a long time and learn what was so harming to these people was that the God that they understood was harsh. The Father that they understood was harsh and harmful and there was no way they were going to connect God as Father. And we spent about a decade building trust with each individual person in all of these places across the nation telling them that Jesus loves them, that I’m sorry Christians have hurt them, but that is not the God that we serve. And God has changed thousands of lives through that.

Dave (12:21):

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Ann (12:26):

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Dave (12:30):

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Ann (12:42):

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Ann (12:53):

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Dave (12:59):

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Ann (13:09):

I think my favorite character and story in the film is Priscilla.

Rick (13:15):

This is the story. I mean, what an amazing ministry that Rachelle has done. And I just want you to notice too, she had a father who was modeling Christ. He wasn’t just talking about, “I’m going to go to church.” He was showing her what Jesus looked like and look at what she’s doing. This is the power of a godly father for the young men who might be young fathers. You have such an influence and an impact on your children. And so for those who don’t, like you said, I would just go because that’s your go-to. That’s how you learn. I got to do. But she was able to pray because her identity was set.

(13:51):

She had a godly father who modeled Christ to her. So I wanted that good father story as well, where it’s not just the story “My father threw my head into the table and broke my nose.” That’s a powerful emotional part of the film. But I wanted some good stories too.

Ann:

There was hope.

Rick:

So one of the women who for four years, Rachelle spoke with and discipled and spent time with, “This is how you do this week after week,” and then her heart changes and then she comes to the Lord, and we get this amazing story in the film. Tell me about the way, had I called you a year and a half earlier, we wouldn’t have been able to talk to Priscilla. Explain that.

Rachelle (14:30):

So Priscilla in the movie is just such a—first of all, she’s such a beautiful person in general. I mean, I just love that God put our paths together. But a year before Rick came to me, Priscilla really didn’t believe in Christ. She really absolutely could not believe in a man named Jesus, let alone somebody that I call Father. And so I would just sit with her for dinners and coffee and any chance I got and just listen and ask questions. Then a couple nights later after this happened, I fell into a deep sleep in my basement on the couch watching a movie. This never happens. She called my phone 10, 12 times and I never answered. Well, the next morning I wake up and she, all my text messages say is, “I called you to tell you I gave my life to Jesus.” And I could get emotional about it because I knew what she had gone through to get to this place. That she had to truly surrender everything that she knew about the absence and lack thereof of an earthly father to throw herself into the arms of a heavenly Father. There just is nothing better than getting to witness that here on this earth. And I’m very grateful to the Lord for that.

Ann (15:57):

Which is so amazing too that because you could have given up, because she mentions that whenever you came on Thursdays to bring a meal, she would be sure that she wasn’t working then because she didn’t want to be around these God followers or Christ followers. And I also remember vividly you just asking her the question, “How are you?” And she said, “I can’t remember when someone has asked me that genuinely.” And she said, “I could tell she was really asking because she wanted to know.” And so for you to come in to meet those needs, to show the love of the Father and then to introduce her to Jesus, wow. So you’re saying, Rick, that story couldn’t have taken place.

Rick (16:45):

No. When I was doing the film, had I called Rachelle then, she wouldn’t have been in the film. I had to go through this step of this thing happening, this thing blowing up, God shutting that door to direct me here and now this amazing story, her testimony, it’s in my opinion, the highlight of the film when she just shares how she came to Christ and how in the shower she asked God to come into her life because she can’t do it anymore. She needs Him and begins to see him as a Father and the freedom that the gospel brings, it’s so powerful. And so it’s my favorite one.

Ann (17:24):

It’s so powerful.

Rick (17:25):

Well, I can’t say my favorite story in the film, but it kind of is.

Dave (17:28):

There’s a lot of them.

Ann:

Yeah, there’s some good ones and that’s powerful.

Dave:

I mean, what do you say to the people like that put the Bible there that says “Repent, you’re going to hell,” and they want them to take a Bible and read it? Some of our listeners or watchers may be like, “Yeah, well I wouldn’t go that far, but I don’t think going into a strip club where these women are is what Jesus would do.” Again, I’m just playing devil’s advocate to the ones that are like, “I’m not sure.” What do you say to that? Either one of you.

Rachelle (18:02):

Well, what I would say is we all have to look at ourselves first, no one is without sin, that we all received mercy that we don’t deserve. And so going into the darkness, people used to tell me, “Oh, you’re going to become like them.” I mean, let’s not get into a theology lesson here, but just because I go minister to them does not make me, going to become a stripper or become a prostitute or whatever.

Ann (18:35):

You don’t lose your light.

Rachelle (18:36):

And that too is the motivation behind why I’m going is because Jesus said to go. And so I say to people all the time, “Unless you know them, unless you have gotten to literally know them, there is no place for judgment. And then after you know them, you certainly are not going to judge them.” And so the command from Jesus is to get the plank out of our own eye and to really look to Him first, examine ourselves second, and then go. I have a couple of examples of organizations that were Christian organizations raising millions of dollars to bring law enforcement against the strip clubs in our city where we started. And they meant very well. And that’s at the time all they knew that they did. But they called me up after I started going to strip clubs and they asked me to meet.

(19:32):

And so I’ll never forget it, they asked, we go to a restaurant, we sit down and they said, “What are you doing? Do you claim to be a Christian?” I said, “Absolutely. I wouldn’t be in a strip club if I wasn’t trying to bring the gospel.” And they said, “Well, we are raising money to try to shut all these clubs down.” And I asked the people that I was sitting across the table that had raised, like I said, millions of dollars to try to shut the clubs down, I said, “In your effort to shut them down, has anyone come to know Christ?” And all of the people around the table—now mind you, I’m 23. They’re like at the time in their forties and fifties, and they look at me and one of the leaders that was on the board said, “No, we’ve never heard of anyone in our efforts.”

(20:19):

And it wasn’t but six months later that they dissolved that organization and said, “We have been doing this wrong.” Now I can say to you today, here we are, almost 19 years later, and Louisville has seen a 76% decrease in exploitation in human trafficking and strip clubs. And I can say confidently, largely due to women who have come to know Christ and have left that life and strip club owners that have come to know Jesus and put chains on their door and their club is no more, that’s the God that we serve. That’s the Father that loves his daughters and will do anything to go after them.

Dave (21:00):

Golly, that’s—preach that. I mean, when you were saying that I thought of, and I’m sure you’ve connected the same dots, Luke 15, where Jesus is sitting with tax collectors and sinners and it says all the tax collectors, sinners were drawing near to him. Whenever I preach on this, I’m like, “How many non-Christians like to hang out with you folks?” Usually church people repel non-Christians. They don’t want to be around us because they feel judged, and yet they want to be around Jesus. These scum of their culture and the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, which is another Christian thing we do really well—grumble, grumble—grumbled saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” I’m not the biggest Bible scholar, but I think what happens next is because of what they said about Jesus, “This man receives sinners and even eats with them.” You know what it is? The only time He did this, three stories about the same point, the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son, the prodigal son, all are making a point. I think, and this is how I preach it, is like Jesus was like, you do not understand the heart of my Father. You don’t understand. He loves lost people. He loves to be around dirty people. He doesn’t judge them and run away from them or stand 50 feet outside the strip club

(22:22):

and say they’re a bunch of terrible people. He goes in the strip club. I’m not saying Jesus would, but—

Ann (22:28):

And he knows the story

Dave (22:29):

And he goes in there and leads them to himself. What a beautiful—

Rick (22:33):

It’s such an important ministry that needs to be led by women. I can’t, I can’t go in there. I can’t go in and do that. I know the men might be sitting in the cars praying and being there to make sure everybody’s safe, but they’re not going in. So this is something that God put on her heart and did. And she has been prepared for this.

Ann (22:52):

Yeah.

Rick (22:52):

You see it. You see how God’s been preparing her for this from the beginning, from the day she was born. When did your dad get saved?

Rachelle:

The year I was born.

Rick:

When she was born. God’s preparing her for this. And what an amazing God we serve.

Ann (23:05):

A couple of things that have struck me is one, Rick, you said God closed the door. So often when we feel like God closed the door, we get discouraged or we give up. We’re not thinking like, “Oh, what’s next, God? You closed that door on purpose for another purpose.” So I love your tenacity of not getting discouraged but knowing that God would show up.

Rick (23:25):

Well, that father wound: you shut the door on me. You’re not there for me.

Ann (23:29):

Yes.

Rick (23:30):

Once again, you’re disappointing me. Once again, God. It’s that same father wound. We’re projecting that onto God, instead of going, “You’re leading me, you’re guiding me because you want what’s best for me, because you love me, because you’re good and you’re going to work out good in me.” That’s the faith, that’s the belief, that’s the work—

Ann:

That’s the good Father.

Rick:

—that’s that ongoing sanctifying work that we’re all on that train.

Dave (23:53):

That is a powerful conversation with Rick and Rachelle. Wow.

Ann (23:55):

It’s inspiring, isn’t it?

Dave (23:58):

Yeah. I hope a lot of people go to the movie, He Calls Me Daughter because it’s going to literally change lives.

Ann (24:02):

It will.

Dave (24:03):

Yeah, get the link in the show notes, FamilyLifeToday.com. The movie’s going to be out next Tuesday and Wednesday and I’d say get a group of friends and go.

Ann (24:12):

Alright, let me just say this. We know life is full of challenges and families today need biblical truth more than ever. Isn’t that true?

Dave (24:20):

That is true.

Ann (24:22):

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Dave (24:31):

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