- This 200-year-old castiron kettle was passed down

to Will Ford from hisancestors who were slaves.

His family used this bowlduring prayer meetings

to muffle the sounds of their prayers.

Well fast-forward to 2005,

and this same kettle connected Will Ford

with a man named Matt Lockett.

Take a look.

- [Reporter] Will Ford and Matt Lockett

met at a prayer meetingand became good friends.

Both had similar callings,

to war against social injustice.

Yet, they had no ideahow deeply their lives

and callings were woven together,

through history and by the hand of God.

- Matt's family owned our family,

and I had to wrestle with it.

- [Reporter] In theirbook, The Dream King,

they share how God isusing their story to bring

forgiveness and healingto our divided nation.

- It's an incredible story.Please welcome to The

700 Club Will Ford and Matt Lockett.

It's great to have both of you with us.

Well, I enjoyed your book so much.

I mean only God could putsomething together like this,

(laughs)

like this story, but let'sstart with the kettle,

because what a treasure,Will, to have this.

Talk about this kettle and how it was used

by your ancestors.

- Yeah, well, like you mentioned it's been

in my family, passed down.

It's probably about 200 years old.

It was used by the slaves in my family.

They used it for cooking, theyused it for washing clothes,

but secretly they used it for prayer.

They were owned by aslave master who would

literally beat them ifhe heard them praying,

because he did not wantthem praying for freedom.

- [Interviewer] For freedom.

- Because he didn't wantthem getting any kind

of hope for freedom, butthese folks were Christians,

and they decide to pray anyway,

so they go into a barnlate at night to make

sure their prayer meeting wasn't seen,

and so that it couldn't be heard,

they used this pot.

They turned it upside down,propped it up with rocks,

and then lay flat on the ground

and prayed beneath theopening between the ground and

the kettle so that thepot muffled their voices

as they prayed through it at night.

- [Interviewer] Wow, amazing.

It's an honor to touch it you know?

- Yeah, it's a memorial stone.- Yeah, it is a memorial stone

yeah, to remind me of thosepeople who prayed like that.

- Wow, I guess.

Well, Matt, God gave you adream that really connected you

to the Kettle and toWill. Talk about that.

- You know, for me, I had adream during a low point in my

life, I'd lost my Father.

And one of the things thatwas really important to me

was I wanted to know where myFamily came from, and no one

in my Family ever knew our history,

it was all a mystery to us.

- [Interviewer] You kindahad road blocks from anybody

who tried along the way?

- Yeah, the story brokendown, the records were missing

and so we couldn't get past myDad's Grandfather. And so we

never knew where we came from,but then I was drawn to this

gathering at the Lincoln Memorialbecause I had a dream from

God, and I show up and thiswas the first place that I ever

came together with Will Ford.

And that day he had told thestory of his ancestors who had

prayed, and I was reallystruck by that because I didn't

know my family history buthere was this rich spiritual

heritage that Will was talkingabout, and it just touched

a deep part of me and Ifelt very connected to it.

- So how did you discover theamazing relationship between

your two families, Will?

- Well, it was the connectionbetween the Locketts because

this pot comes from theLockett side of my family,

my Father's side of the family.

So it was passed down to Harriett Lockett,

and Harriett Lockett passedit down to Noah Lockett,

who then passed it on toher son William Ford Sayer,

who then passed it on to William Ford, Jr.

Who then gave it to me, William the third.

- [Interviewer] Wow.

- It comes from Lake Providence, Louisiana

so when I was sharing thatstory the day that we met,

and I was led there too

because of a dream that I'dhad about Martin Luther King

which we talk about more in the book,

Matt came up to me and hesaid, "Hey, you said Lockett.

I'm actually a Lockett."

And so, we kinda comparednotes but we didn't make

too much of it- you just spelled it

we just it was so symbolic.- different, right?

- Yeah, we spelled it differently.

- So one with one T and yours is two Ts.

- Yeah, my family was from Kentucky,

as far as we knew.

And his Locketts were in Louisiana.

- Yeah, and then our Locketis spelled with one T

and his Lockett's spelledwith two Ts at the end,

so we thought it's a coolenough coincidence to connect us

but it was enough to connect us as friends

for about 10 years.- Wow.

- Where we've been praying together,

doing ministry,

doing life, really that'swhat it's all about, right?

- So how did you finallymake the connection

that it was your Lockett family

that had owned Will's ancestors as slaves?

- That came at a momentwhen we made a breakthrough

in our genealogy,

and we discovered this amazingpiece of Virginia history,

actually not far from here,

where our family had come in as settlers,

but then fast forward tothe American Civil War,

we found out that the last battle

of the American Civil War happened

at the battle of Lockett's farm,

right before Lee surrenderedon April 9th, 1865

and so we found out thatwas actually my family.

The last battle of the Civil War

was in my family's front yard.

- Okay, so friends of 10 years. (laughs)

- So we thought it was a cool coincidence.

I have this artifact frommy family, this kettle pot

that was used during this time period

to pray for the ending of slavery,

and then basically,slavery comes to an end

in his family's front yard,

in this house, like a farm house

which has a memorial stonein the front that says that.

So we thought what a cool coincidence.

But then we stumbled on more research,

and then we learned thatit was Matt's family

that owned our family wherethis kettle pot came from.

- Yeah.

I can't imagine the feelings

that must have stirred up in both of you,

from different perspectives.

Matt, you first.

What a wonderful, rich history story,

initially to find out about,

and then what did youfeel once you realized-

- Well once all the bellsand whistles wore off,

we had to come to terms with that fact

that oh my, my connection to the story

is to that of the slave owner.

That was very painful to find out

because it wasn't abstract anymore.

We're talking about the pain

of an entire community inAmerica and my connection to it

was actually to this man.

This now had a face, and it was the face

of somebody that I loved.

- and relationship, wow.

- Yeah, right, right. And sowe kinda look at it this way,

God allowed us to builda ten year relationship

and a friendship beforeHe revealed any of that,

and I think that's a key element here,

is we need each other.

We need relationship inorder to process this pain.

- So Will, you had to feelsomething completely different

than what Matt did.

How did you deal with that?

- I did, plus we're inthe prayer movement,

and all the while this stuff is going on,

but when everything died down,

it finally dawned on me, manMatt's family owned my family

and we had stories of where slaves

were beat to death- It's real now

- Yeah and now I have aface connected to that

and it's a face of someone that I love

and now I'm trying to forgethow my friend was ever my enemy

so I had to do some ofmy own soul-searching,

I had to forgive even deeper.

And we talked about it together

and we did a lot of workseparately from each other

- But it's the laying downof self that has to happen

- But you know about a year after that,

guess what we found out?

Matt found out another piece of the story,

another storyline in his family,

and tell them about the

- Yeah, so revival duringthe Revolutionary War

came to Virginia

and I found out that one of my ancestors,

a man named Daniel Lockett

became an abolitionist anda Methodist circuit rider

and he actually carriedthe gospel to the frontier

but he also preached thesetting free of slaves.

- Story comes full circle, right?

- So we have generationalcurses in all of our families,

and we also have generational blessings

that represent these dominatingthemes and storylines,

and that's what God isshouting to America right now.

What storyline do you wanna be a part of?

The healing or the hurt?

The blessing or the curse?

What storyline are we gonna- We get to choose

- be a part of.

We get to choose.

- Choose wisely, America.

Well, Will and Matt's bookis called The Dream King.

We are just skimming the surface,

but the story is fascinating.

It's available wherever books are sold.

You can also hear more from Matt and Will

on our Facebook page.

All you have to do is goto Facebook.com/700club

Thank you both.

- Yeah, the thing that'sfascinating to us too

is that this happened to two guys,

who both live by dreams,

to the place where Dr. Kingsaid his I Have a Dream speech.

I have a dream that one daythe sons of former slaves

and the sons of former slave owners

will be able to sit togetherat the table of brotherhood.

So maybe the Dream Speech wasn't poetry.

Maybe it was prophesy.

- Oh, for certain.

Well, thank you so much.

Great to have you here again.

The Dream King is the name of the book.