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. Well, you know, Kathy and I were developing in our love for one another, but I have to say that we had our disagreements as well. In fact, we had big arguments, so much so that we broke up three times. And I'm saying, break up. I never want to see you again. I don't ever want to see your face again. This relationship is over with. I don't need you in my life.
I'm going to find somebody else I can get along with. And then we would get back together, break up again, get back together. We broke up and he went on tour with a music group called Children of the Day. And he was gone for about three months. And during that absence, right before he left, he pretty much said, this is it, you know, it's over between us.
And I think just facing the reality of life without Greg at first didn't bother me. But as time went on, I really began to miss him. And as I would see other guys or date other guys, I felt like nobody's really quite like he is. There's nobody that makes me laugh like he does.
There's nobody that is as interesting or as focused about what they're doing. And they always seem to pale in comparison. So I really began to wonder if maybe we weren't supposed to be together after all. And finally, after the third breakup, we just realized that we didn't want to be away from each other. We wanted to be together. And so I like to say that we got that out of our system before we got married, you know, because thankfully, we've been married now 34 years.
And the word divorce was never a part of our vocabulary. And having come from the background that I came from, and being so up close and personal with the effects of divorce, the last thing I ever wanted was to have a family that would end that way. And so I guess, in some ways, I may be overcompensated wanting to be the best husband I could be, not that I am, but the best father I could be. I wanted to do such a great job at it. And I'm not in any way implying that I have done that. But it was my desire to have the strongest family I could possibly have.
It's always been a very high priority in my life. So Kathy and I, our relationship got more and more serious and fun. And it's funny because I asked her, I said, When did I propose to you? She said, You know, you actually didn't really propose to me.
I said, Well, what happened? She said, Well, we were just at dinner one night. And you just said, Well, I guess we're gonna get married, right?
And that's how I said it. Such a romantic, you know? Well, I guess we're gonna get married and just sort of assumed it. And fortunately, she assumed it along with me.
And so we set a date. And I went to her parents. And of course, at this point, I'm not making much of a living.
I'm just barely eking by. And so I go to her father and I asked permission to marry his daughter. And he says, No. Serious? Oh, yeah, he said no.
No, he said no. My dad was really concerned about Greg's ability to provide financially for me. I'd grown up in a very sheltered, very wonderful family, very protected, very, you know, my mom and dad are still together. I was raised a Catholic, very stable environment, they saw in Greg, someone who had come from a very unstable home. And that really troubled them. They weren't sure that a kid who had been through seven divorces, knew anything about commitment or marriage or family life. And as an adult, now I look back, I can understand their, their feelings about that. And I see they couldn't see underneath all of that hair was a bald man. No, that, you know, was a fairly good son in law that would love their daughter. I'm understand now, you know, looking back as a parent, how they would be concerned. I mean, here I am coming from the most unstable family imaginable. I've got this long hair and a beard.
I'm starting some church. They probably thought Kathy had hooked up with a crazy guy. Plus, you're very young. Very young. Yeah. I was 21 when we got married, and she was 18.
That's very young. Yes. And it's a funny thing because, you know, my name is Greg Laurie, of course. And we went down the aisle and we stood there and Pastor Chuck married us. And he married us and pronounced Greg and Laurie man and wife.
We had a good laugh over that. So I basically married myself. So if you want to know the secret.
So Kathy's off the hook. Yeah. And if you want to know the secret to a successful marriage, marry yourself.
Marry yourself. Yeah. That's right. That's right.
So those first few years of your marriage must have been, times must have been kind of tight. Yeah. You were mentioning in the book that you drove a special kind of car. Yeah, my old Corvair. That you were proud of. I had an old Corvair and I bought it, I remember, believe it or not, for $225. I believe it.
Yeah. And it was a trusty little car, but the brakes weren't so good. And every time I wanted to stop the car, I had to hit the brakes three times and it stopped. And I had to pump, pump, pump, and it would stop. And one time I was driving down the street and I was fiddling with a cassette player, not in the dash.
They didn't have him in those days. It was one just sitting up on my dashboard trying to listen to a Bible teaching tape, as a matter of fact. And I looked up and realized the traffic had stopped and I was only able to get two pumps in until I rear-ended this guy in the front of a Corvair with no engine up there crinkled like aluminum foil. And I had my headlights crossing each other and I kept driving it. So I'm driving down the freeway now with my headlights crossing each other. Finally, a cop pulls me over and says, get the thing off the road now.
You can't. That was the end of the beloved Corvair. Yeah. So, you know, humble years. They were humble years.
But, you know, let me say this, Dave, that when Christopher was born, our firstborn son, you know, it's a funny thing. It was never really an option for Kathy to go to work. We just felt like she ought to be home with him, raising him, being there with him. And you know what? Our furniture, it came from the Salvation Army. It had stuffing coming out of it. We didn't have any clothes. Pretty much everything we had was hand-me-down. But we had each other and we decided we wanted to be with our child. And, you know, I look back in those years and maybe we could have had a little bit, you know, our furniture could have been a little newer and had a few more clothes to choose from. I don't regret it one bit. I'm glad we took that time to be there in those formative years of his life and give him that solid foundation that I never had.
That's a good word to the wise for a young couple starting out today. Now, let's talk about another chapter in your ministry outreach. You actually had an opportunity to be reunited with the man who lent you his last name, Oscar Laurie.
Yes. Many years later. Tell us about that reunion and how special that was. Well, thanks for asking.
You know, Oscar Laurie always, you know, held a special place in my heart, but I had no communication with him. And so now I'm an adult. I'm married. I'm pastoring the church.
I have a son. And I just thought, boy, you know, I would like to talk to him again. I wonder if he's still alive. So there was a girl in our church who worked for the Bar Association, and I asked her to see if she could track down Oscar Laurie somewhere in the East Coast.
It took her no time at all. She found him. I got the phone number of his office and I called it. And the lady answered it.
Hello. You know, this is the office, law office of, you know, attorney Oscar Laurie. And I said, yes, I would like to speak with Oscar Laurie, please. She said, he's not in right now.
He's out at lunch. Can I ask who's calling? I said, yeah, it's Greg Laurie. She said, well, how do you spell your last name?
Said the same way he spells his last name, L-A-U-R-I-E. This is his son calling. So I get a call about an hour later.
It's Oscar. And he's just thrilled to hear from me. And I told him, I said, you know, I'm going to be on the East Coast and I'm going to be speaking there in Central Park. A group had asked me to come and speak.
You know, could we get together and have lunch? Because he's remarried at this point. He has a new family. He'd adopted a couple of other children.
Oscar was unable to have his own children biologically. And so he had adopted a couple of others. I didn't want to interrupt his new family, his new life, you know. And he says, no, come out and spend the weekend at our house.
And I said, OK. So I did my speaking engagement in Central Park and we got on the train and we made our way to Red Bank, New Jersey, where he lives. And I remember, you know, the sense of anticipation, what it was going to be like, what I was going to say to him, what I was going to call him even. And when I got off the train, it was just like I went back in time.
He was older, of course, but he looked so much like he used to look. And before I could even catch myself, I was calling him dad. We just reconnected and we had a lot of long talks. And he told me one night that he knew of the turmoil I was going through and the life I was living with my mom. And he had actually tried to get custody of me.
And my mom had fought him tooth and nail, which I found ironic considering the fact that I wasn't even with her a good deal of the time. But, you know, I look back on that and I say, well, the Lord had his hand on it because he knew that day that I would come to Christ and the events that would lead to me coming to Christ. And so we reconnected and talked and Oscar had remarried a wonderful lady named Barbara, a Catholic lady. And so one night we had a great Italian meal that Barbara had cooked up and she asked me to tell the story of how I came to faith.
So in effect, I did there what I'm doing now. I shared my life story and she listened and had a lot of questions. My dad was sitting at the opposite end of the table. And I remember that he had his hands sort of pressed together up to his face, almost like I'm in a court of law, giving my testimony. And the judge is listening, you know. And as I looked at him, I thought, I don't think the judge is really totally getting what I'm saying or liking what I'm saying.
He just there was no physical reaction that I could see it. And one thing I left out is prior to going to visit Oscar, he had had a car accident. The reason was he was having severe heart issues and he had blocked out at the wheel and crashed.
And so he was on heart medication, having to take walks and seeing a heart specialist and so forth. So we had this talk that night. I shared my story. So he had to walk early every morning and he asked me, will you walk with me in the morning, Greg? I said, okay, Dad, sure. And the next morning he knocks on the door of my room and it's six o'clock New Jersey time, three o'clock California time. So I'm really sleepy.
We go out into that cold New Jersey air. And as we're walking along, he said, Greg, I was listening very carefully to what you said last night. I said, yeah.
And he says, I want to give my life to Jesus Christ right now. Talk about a wake up call. Wow. Wow. I woke up and I said, well, Dad, are you sure you understood what I said?
Let me say it again. And I went over the whole thing again, explaining what it meant to be a Christian. He said, I want to do that.
And we're walking the whole time. And at this point I said, well, what you need to do, Dad, is pray. He drops to his knees right there. I didn't mean drop to your knees, pray. Just what you need to do is pray. He's on his knees ready to pray.
So what can I do? I get down on my knees with him. We're in the middle of a park now. So I said, pray this prayer after me. And I let him in the prayer of receiving Christ into his life, a prayer not unlike the one I lead folks in on this broadcast on a regular basis. And after he was done praying, he said, I believe Jesus Christ is coming to my life. Now, understand, this is not an emotional man. This is a very intelligent, articulate, educated man.
One that does not show his emotions quickly. Totally emoting and saying, Christ is coming to my life. I know it. And then he says, I believe God can heal my heart too. Let's pray for my heart. I'm like, yeah, let's go for it. He had so much faith.
It was just delightful. So we prayed and he says, I believe the Lord's healed my heart, Greg. He says, let's go to my doctor. He's not far from here. His office is nearby. I want to introduce you to him.
Okay. So we walk into his doctor's office and I just thought, what was his doctor thinking? He was a nice Jewish gentleman. And, and my dad walks in and says, doctor, this is my son, Greg from California. He's a pastor of a church. And I just asked Jesus in my heart. And I believe Jesus has healed me as well. I'm thinking, I, you know, oh, and the doctor's saying, now, Oscar, we don't know about this.
Let's run some tests. Well, you know what? They ran some tests and sure enough, his heart had been touched and healed. And he had 15 more years of life after this, and he dedicated his life to the Lord. He became an elder in his church. He became a member of the Gideon Society and he served the Lord all the way to the very end.
So that was a beautiful way to take a painful part of my life and see a glorious conclusion. Almost 20 years ago in a radio interview with Pastor Greg, I asked Oscar if he wanted to share any thoughts with his adopted son. Well, the only thing I could say to Greg is that as he well knows, I love him. I love him as a father loves his son. And I love him more for the fact that he brought me to know the Lord and he changed my life all around. And I thank the Lord for him. He gave me, as I mentioned in my turbulent, youthful years, an oasis of stability that I never forgot.
And it just helped me. It gave me something of an anchor in the midst of all of that because it was just a crazy childhood. Well, I told my mom about Oscar's conversion, I remember. And after I was done, she said, that's nice.
I said, so what do you think about that? I don't want to talk about it. That was my mom's reaction whenever we talked about spiritual things. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it.
And it was very hard to broach the subject with her. And so, you know, long after I'd blasted her with both barrels of my gospel gun, I felt the best thing I could do was to be a witness to her and to love her. Though I must say, I don't think I was the best son I could have been. I think in many ways I was a failure in that regard. And I look back with some regret, feeling that I wish I'd spent more time just with her.
But I didn't. And, you know, that's behind me now. But the Lord was still working on this prodigal. And, you know, I talk about my story. Well, you know, my mom's story is interesting, too. She's like the prodigal daughter, you know, running away from God her whole life.
And what happens? The Lord saves her own son that was conceived out of wedlock in the midst of her madness. And then her son becomes an evangelist and is now seeking to reach her. So, you know, she was going to come around sooner or later.
We all felt that. In fact, one night my wife and I were asleep and the phone rings about one in the morning. It's my mom. She's had a couple of drinks.
She's slightly slurring her words. She says, Greg, if I were to come forward at your church to accept Jesus Christ, would you sing just as I am? My mom had been raised in the Baptist Church, had sung that song over and over at the end of their services. And, of course, she was well aware of Billy Graham's ministry.
And that's sort of their signature song. And I said, Mother, if you accept Jesus Christ, I'll sing anything you want. Well, the next morning I was excited. Wow, a breakthrough in my mom's life. I said, hey, about that call last night, she didn't remember any of it.
And then when I brought it up again, I don't want to talk about it. So, you know, the Lord, she was a tough nut to crack. And it took a long time. And as the years passed, her beauty began to fade. She had had an auto accident.
One night, going home from work, after she'd had too much to drink, she wrapped her car around a tree or a telephone pole, cut her face horribly. She had been so beautiful. But with all of that, it totally changed. And it changed her. And she wasn't as beautiful as she had been. And her whole identity was in her beauty. And it was like a bucket of cold water was poured over her. She never was able to return to that state of beauty she had once had as a younger woman, and the toll of drinking and smoking and all the rest had taken their toll on her over the years. And then her kidneys began to fail. And she had to go in for dialysis three days a week.
And this would take hours at a time. My mom's very proud, very self-sufficient. And this for her was very, very hard. And I could see how hard it was. And so I could see her soften. And see, when we would be up for a meal or something, we would always pray for the food. And she would just sort of, out of respect, bow her head and pray, but never really participate. And I remember during this time, we went out to eat, and Kathy and I forgot to pray, and we just attacked the food. And my mom looked at us like we were both crazy.
And what? She said, Are you going to pray? Well, my mom's reminded me to pray.
So those are little things, small little things, you know, that we were seeing, giving us hope. And so a month before, my mom died. And I didn't know she was going to die, of course. I thought, I need to have a conversation with my mom. And I said to my wife, I need to talk to my mom.
I feel very strongly. I need to go and have this conversation with her as direct as I can be. So I went over to her house, and she was there alone that day. And I said, Mother, I need to talk about your, you know, your relationship with God, you know, where you're at with God. She says, I don't want to talk about it. I said, We're going to talk about it today. We're going to have this conversation.
I don't want to have this conversation. We are going to have this conversation. So I was persistent. See, she was a rebel, but I'm a rebel too. And so she met her match in me. She wasn't getting out this time, but we had to have this, because I felt impressed by the Lord.
This had to happen. Looking back, I realize now why. I asked her, just point blank, Do you think that you are a Christian? She said, much to my surprise, Yes. Really? Yes, I believe I'm a Christian.
Why? And she explained how she had accepted Christ as a little girl. And suddenly I looked at my mom a little bit differently. Maybe she wasn't just a non-believer. Maybe she was just the prodigal daughter all these years running from God.
And so I said to her, Well, you know what? If you're a Christian, why don't you go to church? Why don't you read the Bible? I mean, that's what a Christian ought to do. And I never had a conversation with her along those lines. And kind of backtracking for a moment, when she would come to church, and she came to our church a few times, I remember a couple of times we had a communion service. And I really emphasized the fact that this is for believers only. You know, if you're not a Christian, don't receive the elements of communion because of what the Bible says. And I remember both times she received communion. And that confused me.
What is this? My mom always felt she was a believer, but obviously she wasn't walking with God. Obviously she was running from God, but God hadn't forgotten about her. And so I mentioned this about coming to church. And that Sunday night, we were having a special service at our church.
It was close to Christmas. A country music star, Randi Travis, was coming, and she showed up at church. And she was so ill from the treatment she was receiving and the state of her body at this time, she could hardly walk. She sat up in my office, and we have a little TV in here with a closed circuit feed from the service. And she watched it there. She threw up a couple of times. She was so ill.
But she came and she was making that effort. And we saw change starting to happen in her life. I remember when she was literally on her deathbed, she did pray, and she said, Everything is okay. I know that everything is okay between me and God. Would I have liked to have seen a complete, radical, total commitment to Christ on my mom's part, and that we would spend many more years together as believers?
Yes. But it didn't happen. But I believe, though, that she recommitted her life to the Lord, and my aunt had many conversations with her and felt the same thing. And then unexpectedly, a month later, she died. It was a real blow.
It was devastating. But we had that confidence that she had returned to the God she had been running from all those years. You really did love your mom.
I did. Even though she put you through so much. Well, yeah. You know, I felt like I was supposed to—you know, it's a funny thing. Instead of expecting my mom to take care of me, I felt my job was to take care of my mom, you see.
And I felt, in some ways, I'd failed in that, though I had tried so hard. And in the end, though, the Lord never forgot about her and always loved her. You know, Pastor Greg, there could be so many why questions you could ask about your life. You know, why did your mom live like that? Why did she neglect you like that?
That really could have become the theme song for your life. But maybe God knew how your mom would be, and he knew that he needed to give your mom a son like you that had the tenacity to rise above that past and not only accept Christ yourself, but to be that catalyst, that pivot point for your mom to seal that relationship, to re-energize her faith in the Lord. Yeah. Your childhood very well could have been the 40 years in the wilderness that equipped you for the ministry that you're in today. Yeah, I do believe that, you know.
The Bible says that God can work all things together for good to those that love him and are called according to his purpose. And before my mom came around, a member of my wife and I had a conversation, and my wife said, You know, your mom actually did something very good for you. And I said, Well, what was that? She said it was pre-evangelism. She got you ready to hear the gospel. I said, Oh, that's true.
That's an interesting way to look at it. And I think that with my upbringing, it gave me a certain sense of knowing what it was like to live that way, and it gave me an ability to relate to those people. And having discovered the power of the gospel, it gave me a passion to want to communicate it with as many people as possible. People on our program know that I preach the gospel in our crusades, but, you know, I often defend the gospel and make a real issue out of presenting the gospel and being authentic in the presentation of the gospel and biblical. The reason I have such a passion about this is because I know the gospel is the answer. I know God can turn lives around because my life was turned around. I wasn't a church brat that had heard it all my life and then just finally came to my senses. I was just an outright non-believer knowing absolutely nothing about God that had the Lord intervene in my life unexpectedly and turn it around completely.
So how can I do anything less than what I do today? I mean, it's all I could do is to, you know, to whom much is forgiven, that one loves the much more. I'm not saying I have a greater love for the Lord than anybody else, but what I am saying is I had a lot of sins to be forgiven, and I'm grateful to God. And I'm reminded of the words of Joseph, who, of course, was sold by his brothers into slavery for 20 pieces of silver. And through a course of events, we all know how it turned out, and he ended up the second most powerful man in the world. And, you know, he had been sold by his brothers, falsely accused of rape, did prison time. He didn't deserve any of it. If anyone could have been bitter, it would have been Joseph. If anyone could have engaged in payback, it would have been Joseph. But when he faced his brothers in this position of power where he could have had them all executed, he made this statement to them, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good to save many people alive. I think these things that happened in my life were meant for evil from the devil, but God used them for good to save others alive. Meaning, I think the Lord let me go through the things that I went through so I could have a better, perhaps, understanding of the culture I'm speaking to and hopefully bring a more clear gospel message to them. Thank you.
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