When God Tears Down Your Identity to Build Something Real

Clint Riggins stood on stage in 2017, gold medal around his neck, at the peak of his bodybuilding career. Four months later, his thyroid stopped working. He gained 70 pounds. His memory failed him. Doctors couldn't explain what was happening.

Looking back now, Riggins sees it clearly: God was dismantling the first of many false identities he'd built his life around.

"My identity was being put in everything I would do," Riggins reflects. "Everything that I was really good at performing, and letting people see and validate me — that's where I got my value from."

The Military, The Medal, The Collapse

Riggins joined the Navy in 2011, right as his parents' marriage fell apart. He worked on EA-18 Growlers — jets capable of EMPing entire cities. For six years in Hawaii and two more in Washington State, the military became his identity. Then bodybuilding gave him another platform for validation.

When his body betrayed him, everything unraveled. Unable to remember details at his command, watching his physique deteriorate despite clean blood work, Riggins turned to cocaine, Molly, and ecstasy. He was eventually discharged honorably from the military, but the real battle was just beginning.

For three years, addiction ruled his life. He worked private security for President Trump's first inauguration, traveling 27 states in eight months. "I would go and fuel that drug addiction," he admits. "Nobody ever knew. I would just go do the work and then I would come back and party. I was really good at hiding things."

The Woman, The Business, The Breaking Point

A relationship built on shared drug use led Riggins to Orlando. After a year of partying, he decided to cut ties with everyone in his old life and launch a fitness coaching business. It worked — for about a year.

"Guess what?" Riggins says. "My identity was once again in the business that I created."

On May 1, 2022, he woke up not knowing who he was or who his clients were. Conversations he'd had the day before vanished from his memory. His partners walked away. The business collapsed in what felt like 24 hours.

I believe that God needed to wake me up. This veil that I had around my eyes needed to come off.

What followed were 14 months of crushing depression. Riggins stared at 130 pills from the VA and considered ending it all. Police intervened and took him to a psychiatric facility for five days. His parents couldn't reach him and thought he'd died.

The Road Trip That Changed Everything

After his release, a friend demanded he join him on a 60-day road trip across the United States. Riggins only agreed because his friend needed to use his car — left to himself, he would have stayed isolated in his room, ordering Uber Eats and playing Call of Duty.

The third stop was Tulsa, Oklahoma. A stranger came over and spoke words of knowledge about Riggins' life — details no one could have known without divine insight. The man prayed over him and said, "Clint, if you walk by faith and not by sight, God's got a really great plan for your life."

Riggins had no idea what that meant. But he started reading the Bible. After 165 days on the road, he got baptized — at the very place where drugs had once taken over his life.

The transformation wasn't instant. He fell back into drugs. He tried launching two more businesses — running yoga events while teaching the Bible, posting Scripture on Instagram while posing in his underwear. "I am the most lukewarm you could ever imagine," he says now. "And man, God was with me every step of the way, just working on my heart."

The Calling He Kept Running From

When none of his businesses worked, Riggins finally asked the question he'd been avoiding: "God, are You really calling me into vocational ministry?"

He's now in his third year of undergraduate studies at a Southern California seminary. He moved to Austin, Texas — first into a relationship that started with church on Sunday and compromise by nightfall. When conviction hit, he moved out. The next day, through a series of connections he can only describe as divine orchestration, he landed in a house with two roommates: one Buddhist, one agnostic.

"You know how God works," he says with a laugh.

Today, Riggins co-leads Limitless Faith Kingdom Builders, a ministry that looks nothing like the business model he first envisioned. He'd planned workshops, ticket sales, revenue projections — $50,000 a month if they could just get the numbers right.

When his first event bombed, God's message was clear: "You want to just use the gospel to make money? No, that's not going to happen."

When you're about the Father's business, He takes care of business.

That truth, spoken by his co-minister Ed, revolutionized everything. Riggins stopped charging for events. He shifted from chasing scale to going deep with a few. Instead of addition, he pursued multiplication.

Ministry Is Where Your Feet Are

Riggins now spends his mornings in what he calls "thanksgiving, adoration, and confession" — repenting for where his thoughts and eyes wandered, asking God to clean his heart. He studies the original Hebrew and Greek, learning Context, Interpretation, Application to avoid cherry-picking Scripture.

He meets weekly with a recovery group of men who know they need Jesus and aren't pretending otherwise. He sits with a group where the average age is 65, absorbing wisdom from men who've sold their businesses and raised grandchildren.

His message to other Christian leaders is simple but radical: stop separating secular work from sacred calling.

"Business in itself, as you do it for the glory of God, is neither secular nor whatever you want to fill in the blank," Riggins says. "It's all about where your motives are, where you are taking care of your people, and how you are serving the mission God has called you to serve."

If you're a barber, you have a sacred opportunity in that chair. If you work behind a desk, your coworkers need to see the gospel lived out in joy — especially when life gets hard.

Everybody is in ministry. Ministry is where your feet are.

The God-Sized Hole

Riggins returns often to Proverbs 3:5–6: "Trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not into your own understanding, but submit to Him in all of your ways, and ultimately He'll make your path straight."

"We have this God-sized hole that we fill with things that aren't God-sized," he explains. Pills, bottles, careers, bodybuilding, businesses — anything but God Himself.

His journey required losing everything three times. Each collapse peeled away another layer of false identity until nothing remained but the raw, broken man God could actually use.

"Following Jesus is going to take all of you," Riggins warns. "The seed has to go down and die for new life. To be fruitful, it has to be pruned."

He's living in a season of waiting now — two weeks off from school, fighting the urge to fill every moment with productivity. He suspects God is testing him: Can you just sit with Me?

For a man who spent decades performing for validation, sitting still might be the hardest calling yet. But Riggins has learned that God's best work happens when we stop building our own kingdoms and start asking the question that changes everything:

"What are the things that I'm holding on to? What are the things that I don't trust You with? And what do I need to release control of today?"