We just watched The Sound of Music with a few of the grandkids, which got us talking about our favourite things. What would make your list? Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? I might list music, conversations around a warm fire on a cold night, my wife nibbling my earlobe, a good biography, lasagna, Facetime with the grandkids. But I gotta tell you, in a world gone mad, I love nothing more than a story of grace and redemption. I never tire of hearing what God is up to.
Greg Laurie was fifteen and fresh out of hope. His mom had been divorced seven times. He didn’t know his dad. Each day a faithful pastor’s wife saw him and his searching classmates coming past her house. She prayed they would find Jesus.
One day, Greg listened as a “Jesus Freak” told him of a Saviour who loved him to death. He repented of his sin, came to Christ, and went to church. The pastor was Chuck Smith. His wife Kay was the woman who prayed for Greg. He never dreamed he would preach the gospel for 50 years, pastor one of the country’s largest churches, and see more than a million pray with him to receive Jesus as Saviour.
One was drug-addled Steve Mays. Steve liked to crush together 20 dextroamphetamine tablets, add an Excedrin, and a vitamin for good health—and swallow the deadly concoction with coffee. One evening his parents came home and found that he had turned the taps on and turned the living room into a giant indoor bathtub and was sitting in the middle of it, smoking a pencil and laughing at a TV set that wasn’t turned on. Soon Steve turned to a life of gangs and crime. He was lying in the gutter when a Christian couple took him in, fed him and took him to church. “I walked in there with my gun stuck in the back of my pants,” Steve remembers. “This little squirt named Orville said, ‘Do you know Jesus?’ I said no.” Steve prayed with the little squirt to receive Jesus, flushed $10,000 worth of drugs down the toilet and threw his gun into the ocean. Steve became pastor at a church, serving as its leader for 34 years. Today that little church started by the once hopeless drug addict is a mission-minded, diverse, and flourishing congregation of more than 8,000 people.
Ah, my friend, never forget: God answers prayer. He changes lives. He’ll do it again. I guess my new favourite thing is overdosing on hope.
