Lost Boy: Pastor Greg’s Personal Story

Hey everybody, Greg Laurie here. You're listening to the Greg Laurie Podcast and my objective is to deliver, hopefully, compelling practical insights in faith, culture, and current events from a biblical perspective.

To find out more about our ministry, just go to our website, harvest.org. So thanks for joining me for this podcast. Greg, thank you so much for joining us today. We'll be right back. Greg, thank you so much for joining us today.

We'll be right back. Next thing I know, there I am with a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, partying with the gang and I'm thinking, wait a second, isn't this my mom's life? Isn't this a life I said I never wanted to live? How did I end up here so I decided I should change my life? So around this time, the whole, you know, the 60s drug thing is in full swing and, you know, and a whole generation of young people are rebelling against the upbringing they've had and they're saying that drugs will expand your consciousness. And so I tried marijuana and I was hoping that I could sort of change my life.

I wanted to be a different person. See, I didn't see it as just another substance to abuse. I don't know that I really was a substance abuser in that I was addicted to any drug.

I was trying to find some kind of answer. It was relatively easy for me to let go of drugs once I came to faith. I was actually thinking, believe it or not, through drugs, I would somehow find the answers to life. And so by turning from alcohol to drugs, it wasn't like I was going from just one deviant lifestyle to another in my mind at that time. But no, this is going to enlighten me or so I thought. Well, of course, you know, it didn't enlighten me at all.

One thing was true. It made me more aware. I became more aware of how miserable and empty I was. And so through my drug experimentation, smoking pot, and then ultimately trying LSD, which was sort of like the next level, as it would be described at that time, I thought it was going to be really turned on that I was going to now know all the mysteries of the universe and it did nothing of the kind.

My life was just going down the tubes. In fact, one time, some friends of mine were in a car. We went down to Laguna Beach in Southern California to buy a whole bunch of marijuana, a trunk load of marijuana, and we had it in the trunk and we weren't going to sell it.

We were going to smoke it all ourselves. And as we were in the cars in the backseat, my friend was driving. He lost control of the car. It was raining that night.

He began to fishtail and we're near one of the cliffs there in Laguna. And I thought, I'm going to die. And the newspaper headline tomorrow is going to be drug dealers die in solo spin out.

And there'll be Ward and June Cleaver having their morning coffee and chomping on their toes saying, serves them right, the deviants. And I remember sitting there thinking, I don't want to die like this. And I actually offered up a little prayer to God. And I said, God, if you're real, get me out of this.

If you get me out of this, I promise I'll serve you. And God caused that car to get straightened out. We didn't get into a wreck.

We didn't go off any cliff. And I said, thanks, God. See you next crisis. I began to smoke more pot. I took LSD on the weekends.

This is not a prolonged period of time, but for a number of months. And I saw all of my creative juices being drained out of me. Well, I once had a pretty good sense of humor. It was just, it was almost like it was gone. I was becoming just a shell, just a, just a aimless, stupid kid who just thought about getting high after school.

I saw what it was doing to my friends. I knew it was the wrong path. And I actually had come to the conclusion, I'm leaving this lifestyle. I'm going to walk away from it. I'm going to turn my back on drugs, but I just don't know where to go because I thought I don't want to get into the whole social scene. I'd kind of done that.

I went out and was going out for the football team, hanging around with the cute cheerleaders, partying on the weekends. I'd done that scene. Didn't want to do that scene, done the whole druggy thing. Now it didn't make my life any better.

It just made it worse. So where am I going to go now? Uh, you know, what, what am I supposed to be?

What do I do? And this is all in kind of the context of a high school mind understand, you know, my options are limited. I don't know that much yet.

And, uh, and so it was again, as I said earlier, process of elimination. It's not here. It's not there. There's something out there. There's something good.

There's something cure. There's something noble. I mentioned that, uh, as you read in the book, my mom rebelled against her religious upbringing. I rebelled against this sin and it drove me to find something pure and good and noble out there, but I just didn't know where to find it.

Well, let's, let's talk about how you did find it. Uh, you were a kid that spent a lot of time on the streets, uh, Newport beach. Uh, it was the kind of the burgeoning time of the Jesus movement. And, uh, you write in the book that you'd see often some of these kids out there sharing their faith on the streets around Newport beach. Uh, did you ever have any encounters with them?

You know, it's an interesting thing. Uh, I, at that time I would hang around in Newport and I was in my little drug phase at that point. And I would go down and hang around this area called the fun zone, just a place where kids would congregate and I'd lean up against the wall. I had a pretty good, tough look on my face at that point. And, um, and I would lean up against a wall, hair hanging over my eyes, use your imagination.

I have no hair now, but I used to have a pretty good head of hair, cigarette hanging out of my mouth, you know, looking tough. And I remember I would see the Christians out there handing out their little tracts and religious literature. And they had these little Bibles they would hand out.

They were tiny little red Bibles that had verses printed in them. And I remember they would walk up to me. I would watch them talk to other people. And I remember thinking to myself, come talk to me. You were really thinking?

Yeah. I wanted someone to talk to me, but I was too proud to go and say, talk to me. But I was saying, come talk to me. And they would walk up to me, look at me, kind of gingerly thrust the little booklet into my hands and back away. You know, they bought They're afraid of you. They bought into my fake tough guy persona.

It was an act. What if they would have come up to you or were you wanting to debate it with them? Or were you really looking for what they were offering? You know, I think I would have been pretty receptive actually, Dave, because I never threw any of these things away. I would take them and I would shove them in my pocket like I didn't care. But the point is I shoved them in my pocket.

I didn't throw them in the trash. And I went home and I would empty my pockets and I would put them in a drawer. Every religious item people gave me, whatever tract, and it might be a Christian, it might be one of the cults that were out handing out the materials.

I saved everything in a drawer. And every now and then I'd take this drawer out and I'd dump it on my bed and I'd sit there and I'd read through these materials and I'd try to figure them out. I wanted to know the meaning of life and I thought one of these little booklets, one of these little pamphlets might have the answer, but I couldn't make rhyme or reason.

I needed someone to explain it to me. You know, the Bible tells the story of a man who came from Ethiopia searching for God. He didn't find God in Jerusalem at that time, but he did obtain a copy of a scroll of Isaiah that he was reading from when the Lord directed Philip the apostle to go to him and share the gospel. And Philip said, do you understand what you're reading? And the man said, how can I unless someone shows me the way? That's where I was at. I had all this stuff. I needed someone to show me the way.

What does this mean? What do you think your view of God was at that point? Did you have a kind of a realization that there was a God? What did you think of Jesus in those times? I always believed in God. I had gone to church with my grandparents as a little boy.

I found it boring. I daydreamed a lot, drew cartoons on the little church bulletin, but there was a picture of Jesus my grandmother had on the wall and I would look at it. And it's a picture many would be familiar with. Jesus is sort of turning away.

He's not looking at you in the picture. And I would look at Jesus and, you know, I'd think he seemed like a pretty wonderful guy and I'd hear stories about him. And whenever there was a movie about Jesus on television, I'd watch it all the way through.

So if King of Kings came on to the greatest story ever told, or Ben Hur, I would watch it. And I was always deeply moved by the story of Jesus Christ. But the thing I didn't like about his story was how he died. And I thought, you know, someone should rewrite this story and take out the part where he dies. Because here he's doing miracles and giving these great teachings. And why did they have to go and die? That's a bad idea.

They should just, you know, end it differently. And I always admired Jesus from a distance, what I knew of him. And quite frankly, whenever I was in a moment of crisis, and I called out to God, I didn't call out Buddha or Krishna, I said Jesus. I knew Jesus was out there somewhere. I just didn't know exactly where. And I didn't know he could be known in a personal way. But I believed he existed. All right, well, let's fast forward a little bit.

You're on your high school campus, and there's a certain girl that captures your attention. She kind of plays a role as far as a catalyst to bring you into contact with the gospel. Yes. Well, let me just backtrack for a moment to show you where I was at at this point. I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'd gone through the whole little drinking social phase.

I'd gone through the whole drug scene. Okay, process of elimination. The answer is not in these things. Where is the answer? I don't know, but it's somewhere.

And so I'm in mega search mode at this point in my life. And I'm walking across my high school campus one day, and I see this girl, and I don't know really why I was drawn to her. Because honestly, she wasn't the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. She was cute. But there was something about her that was different. And I looked there and go, wow, who's that girl?

And one day she was talking with one of my friends. I thought, this is my moment. I'm going to walk up there. I'm going to turn on the charm. I'm going to meet this girl. I'm going to ask her out. So I went walking right up, and they're in mid-conversation.

I'm just kind of standing waiting for a break, and I'm kind of looking at her and looking at him. And I look down, and she has her textbook for class, and she has her notebook, and then she has, oh no, oh no, one of those books with black leather covers and ribbons coming out of the bottom and gold pages. She's a Jesus freak.

What a waste of a perfectly cute girl. That was my thought. Though I respected Jesus Christ, we had these kids on campus we called the Jesus freaks. We thought they were all collectively nuts. And my friends even warned me, hey, we have a lot of Jesus freaks on this campus, Greg.

Stay away from them. See, I'd been going to Coronado Mar High School. I was the local celebrity there.

I was the cartoonist for the school paper. But I left that life, and I transferred to another high school because I wanted to become a different person, and I wanted to become like this hippie guy, this guy who's tuned in, this guy that is deep and thoughtful. And I would do it through drugs, and the drug scene at Harbor High School at that time was really strong, stronger than it was at Coronado Mar High School.

And the administration seemed to turn a blind eye to it. But also, on Harbor High School, there was a heavy duty revival that was taking place of Christians. Now, we had Christians at Coronado Mar High School, but not like there were at Harbor High School. These were out front, overt Jesus freaks, as we called them, who had Bible studies on the front line. So my friends warned me when I transferred in, watch out for the Jesus freaks.

I said, Oh, yeah, as if I'm going to become a Jesus freak. And I'm like laughing at the thought of it, because these people are, to me, here's what these people are. These people are idiots. They don't think for themselves.

They are people that are sort of like brainwashed. And I want nothing to do with them because I'm an independent guy. I'm a cynic because of my upbringing.

No one's going to tell me what to do, I'm thinking. So I am like the last guy who's ever going to become a Christian on that level. But things changed. Because I meet this girl and I think, well, you know, she seems like a normal girl.

She doesn't seem crazy. And the reason I thought this was, you know, I would see the Jesus freaks after class when the school bell would ring. And they'd have their little notebooks in their Bibles. And they'd only been in class for 40 minutes. They'd throw their arms around each other.

Bro, love you, man. I think, you guys are so weird. You know, I'd watch a Jesus freak drop their notebook and all their pages would go flying. I'm waiting for them to cuss and, Oh, praise the Lord. They'd gather the papers. They're such idiots, I think. But then I started piecing things together and I thought, no, wait a second.

Okay. Now this girl, she seems like a normal girl. These Jesus freaks, they are weird, but I'll give this to them. They do seem happy. Yeah, they are happy.

Could it be that these people have something? No, of course not. You know, but I was for the first time entertaining the thought.

Okay. Just entertaining the thought that I would not even have entertained, you know, a month earlier. And this girl, I wanted to get to know her better. I introduced myself to her and said, hello.

And so I think it was a day or two afterwards. I'm walking across my high school campus and I actually heard there was a guy that was selling some drugs and I wanted to buy some drugs for the weekend. So I wasn't completely out of the drug thing yet, but I knew it wasn't the answer, but I was still in it still. And I'm walking along and I see the Christians, the Jesus freaks, singing songs on the front lawn of my high school campus. I go, there they are. And then I saw her sitting with them and I thought, Oh, there she is with them.

And I thought, you know what? I'm going to just sit down here right now and I'm going to kind of eavesdrop in their conversation and figure out why this is all wrong. So I was far from being open to the gospel. I sat down close enough where I could hear what they were saying, but not so close where it looked like I was in the group because that's like social suicide, okay, on a high school campus.

So I'm just sort of sitting there listening, kind of eavesdropping and watching them sing their songs about God and thinking, you know, they're weird, but they do seem happy. And there was a couple of problems now. A couple of the guys that were now Jesus freaks used to be my buddies from elementary school. I knew the way they used to be. One of them I'd done drugs with.

Now I saw the change in his life. Oh, wow. Okay. He's actually a pretty normal guy. Maybe there's something to it. I don't know what, but you know, of course I could never become one of these people, even if I wanted to, even if it's true, I would never qualify. I'm too cynical. I'm too hard.

I'm too, I'm just not the right guy. That's all. And so I'm watching them thinking these thoughts for the first time in my life, thinking the thoughts of knowing God in a personal way, the idea that God could be known was apparent to me because of the lives they were living. I believe they knew God. I was not disputing this any longer.

I'd gone from thinking they were idiots to, okay, I will concede they know God, but I could never become one of them. So that's where I was at in my thinking. So there's a guy that was there and he stood up, found out his name was Lonnie Frisbee. He was a youth pastor from Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. He has long shoulder length hair, parted in the middle in a beard. Quite frankly, he looks like Jesus, at least the Jesus from the movies I'd seen. He kind of looked like the Jesus from the painting in my grandmother's house, you know?

And he stands up and even his shirt, he's wearing this shirt that almost looks like a robe a little bit, kind of has loose sleeves on it. And he opens up the Bible and starts preaching. And I'm stunned by it because he's sharing things from the Bible and it's making sense to me.

I'm relating to this guy being kind of a hippie kid myself. And I don't remember what much of what he said, but it's this one statement when he said, Jesus said, you're either for me or against me, with me or opposed to me. And I looked at him and I looked around at the other Christians and I thought, you know what?

These people have something. Then I thought, am I against Jesus? Now, why would I want to be against Jesus? He's always come through for me.

Whenever I called for him in crisis, he's gotten me out of the mess I'm in. Could it be that I'm against Jesus? Well, I don't want to be against Jesus. I mean, I actually thought I believed in Jesus on my own way, but I didn't know what that meant yet. And then he said, if you want to accept Jesus Christ right now, you know, get up and come forward.

And kids are actually standing up and walking forward. This is lunchtime at high school to accept Christ. And I hung my head down and I thought to myself, there's no way I could do this. I would like to do this.

I really would like to do this, but I can't do it. Next thing I know, I don't even remember going up there. I was standing up there and I remember praying this prayer. And even as I'm praying the prayer, I'm thinking there is no way this could work for me. God will not accept someone like me. And after we're done with the prayer, I remember one person next to me is laughing with joy.

Another person is weeping uncontrollably. And I felt nothing, nothing. And I thought, that figures. God rejected me. You felt like it hadn't gelled with you. It didn't take.

Yeah. Because I wasn't the religious type. I'm not the kind that will ever become a Christian.

It just won't work for me. But I also did sense as though a huge burden had been lifted from me. It was a distinct sensation as though a weight had been taken off of my shoulders.

I later read where Jesus said, Come unto me, all ye that labor and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, casting all your care upon him, for he cares for you. The Bible says, I believe at that moment, God lifted the guilt I'd been carrying my whole life for my sin, but I didn't quite understand it yet. But I prayed that prayer, but I wasn't even sure if it was real. And then the school bell rings, which means it's time for lunch to end. And as I'm walking away, stunned, knowing something's happened to me, but not quite sure what, that girl that I had been following comes running up to me, throws her arms around me and says, Praise the Lord, brother. God bless you. And I thought, Hey, Christianity, this is good.

Okay, well, walk us through the next few hours of that day, then school gets out. Who's the first person you told about this new? I didn't tell anybody. You didn't tell anybody? No, I kept it to myself. I didn't know what to think of it.

I was processing it still. Am I going to become a Jesus freak? Am I going to carry a Bible publicly?

No, I can't do that. Greg Laurie's a cool guy, you see. Greg Laurie is a guy that mocks people. You don't mock me, I mock you. I'm a professional mocker. I can out-mock your mockery.

I've been honing my skills for years. Now I'm going to become a Christian. As a matter of fact, we went that weekend to go smoke some pot and trip around in nature, man, you know, and we were going to go to the Ortega Mountains and I went with my friends and we were all together and one of them asked me if I wanted to drop some acid, which was the vernacular of the day for ingest LSD. And strangely, I said, no, I don't want to do that.

Don't want to do that. I want to be by myself. And so I walked off with a little bag full of marijuana and a little pipe and I thought, I'm going to think about what happened to me. Something's happened to me, but I'm not sure what.

And I went and found a little rock and I'm sitting on this rock and I'm filling up this little pipe and getting ready to smoke it. I actually remember not hearing an audible voice, but I remember that same sensation, that same, I don't want to call it a feeling because it was much more real than that. But it was like that impression, that voice, which I believe was the Lord that had spoken to me only hours before on my campus when I accepted Christ, I remember hearing what I believe was the Lord say to me, you don't need that anymore. And I thought, okay, God actually said, okay, God, I'll make a deal with you. I didn't know how to pray yet.

If you're real, I'll give this all up, but you have to make yourself real to me because I'm having a really hard time with this. And I took my little bag and I pitched it and I threw my pipe and said, I'm going to try, I'm going to give it an effort. And so that weekend I went back to school on Monday and I found the little group of Christians and I started going to their meetings. I remember I was walking, you know, along the campus and some guy who would recognize me from one of the meetings yells out to me across the line, brother Greg.

I'm like, oh Jesus. Brother Greg. Hey. How you doing? Bro. Yeah. He hugs me.

I'm like oh. See I don't hug. Okay. I didn't grow up with hugs. My mom never hugged me.

My mom never said I love you. So I cringed when someone hugged me. All right.

This guy is a complete stranger. He is hugging me. I'm like oh. Okay. And he goes, bro. Yes. I got something for you.

He is a really loud guy you know. And what is that? I got you a Bible.

And he holds up. It is not a nice looking Bible like the one I am holding in my hands. This is like a really big Bible and it was this really distressed kind of leather but it had popsicle sticks glued together in the shape of a cross. Oh come on. Bro. It is the Word of God. Read it.

Right. So I take the Bible. I had a jacket and I shoved this Bible as deep into the pocket as I could. I thought I am going to hide this thing somewhere.

I am not carrying this publicly. So I hadn't gone to visit my friends for a long time. I went over to one of their homes that we usually go to every lunch time.

We get loaded at lunch time and go back to class. And I went over there and they hadn't seen me for a while and I go up to this guy's house and I have got this big old Bible in my pocket. I can't walk in with this. So there was a planter out front. There was some little greenery there. So I took my Bible out and put it in the plants.

Hit it. I was a really bold witness for Christ you know. So I walked in this room and my friend said, Greg how have you been? I said I have been fine. Where have you been? Oh nowhere. What have you been doing? Oh nothing.

And the Holy Spirit is speaking to my heart and He is saying you tell them about me. And I am saying no. No. So Greg you want to get loaded? No. Come on man. Let's get loaded.

No. I don't want to do that. Why not?

I just don't want to get loaded. They can seem really uptight. Well Greg you are acting weird. I am not acting weird.

They are all just looking at me. All of a sudden the front door opens up. My friend's mom walks in and she is holding my Bible with a popsicle stick. I found this in the bushes.

Who does this belong to? She has kids doing drugs in her house and she is searching the bushes for a Bible. Holding up the Bible with the popsicle sticks crossed. Every eye looked at the Bible and every eye looked at me.

Somehow they knew there was a connection. I said that's mine. So I reach out and take it. They say what is that? It's a bubble. A what? It's a Bible. A what? It's a Bible. A Bible.

Grab it. One of my friends says oh praise the Lord brother Greg. Are we going to be a Christian now? I said no.

What we are going to do is punch you in the mouth. What do you think about that? I hadn't read 1 Corinthians 13 yet. I just hid the Bible.

I didn't read it. Hey everybody. Greg Laurie here. Thanks for listening to our podcast and to learn more about Harvest Ministries please subscribe and consider supporting this show. Just go to harvest.org. And by the way if you want to find out how to come into a personal relationship with God go to knowgod.org. That's K-N-O-W-G-O-D dot org.