This is the Truth Network. How many people have been mentoring you for over 50 years?
Well, I'm sitting with my mentor. And this guy Don't hold him to the fire. Don't judge him based on how I've turned out. But David Parsons. You're in chapter, I want to say four or five of my new book.
You have been mentoring me for a long time, many decades, and a lot of people. How many folks you meet with right now on a regular basis, just trying to pour the Lord into them, whether it's for coffee and at a breakfast place or just driving around that Jesus Loves You bus?
Well, we got guys we meet with daily, regularly. We meet with these guys and we sit down and get a cup of coffee. We get a biscuit. We sit and talk about Jesus. We sit and talk about things that God is teaching us from His Word.
Right now, we're going through the book of John with some men. Hmm. And looking at what God Sent his son to do and what Jesus did, and that he was a miracle worker. But things changed when Jesus got there. And sometimes we've got to realize that in our lives, guys, we need to bring Jesus into the equation.
Is he there? Have we brought him there? Have we made him notable where he is? Have we prayed about it with our family, with our wife, with our children? How do we do it?
How do we make Jesus known in our family and in our personal lives?
Well, not too long ago, I was in a hospital looking down at your body, and I thought, this guy's going to heaven. You were plugged into every cord I could imagine, every tube coming in out of your body. You weren't even conscious. I almost took a picture, but you looked so bad and so pale, I didn't. But you had a near-death encounter, David Parsons.
And Somehow, gratitude took over.
Somehow, you started writing Bible verses. And you taped him to the walls of that hostel room? What were you thinking?
Well, I was thinking, and you're taking a lot of meds when you're in the hospital, and your mind goes some crazy places, and everything's going on, and this meds are working on you, and you're in pain, and you're in agony, and you're wondering, How did I get here? How did this happen so fast? Why have I been here for 17 days? And I didn't even know I was coming in for this. I was coming in for I didn't know what, late one Sunday night.
But you know, when you walk in an emergency room, and the emergency room is crowded, you can't find a place to sit. No, no, that was God's divine appointment. We walked in, there wasn't a soul in the place. The guy said, Let's go, let's walk right on in. Walk right to a room in the Back of the emergency room, the lady was able to take us, do all the necessary stuff.
She couldn't figure it out, she couldn't get anything. Wonder why the blood pressure was off the wall. And I wasn't feeling that bad, just knew something was not right, Stuart. Didn't know what it was. And so from that point on, we went to Went and checked in all this stuff and In the hospital with all those meds and all the whirlies going on, all the crazy things and questions.
I started thinking, I know some things are certain, for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him until that day'. And so I started thinking about the believe verses in the book of John. And I wrote down, even in my state with all these pipes and stuff, I took my phone and I looked up the 10. Powerful verses about believe. In the book of John, it has about 85 to 90 times, it talks about believe.
These things are written that you might believe. Starting with John 1:10, going to John 20:31, all of John 3:16, 5:24, all of them. And I wrote down the 10 most notable verses. And I had my, I sent them my email to my son. And I said, Hey, print these out on eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper.
and bring him to the hospital. We're going to nail them to the door.
So we put him on the door right there where we could see him. Not that other people could see him, but that I could see him. It's my faith that needs to be strengthened. And if I don't take care of my faith, you only have two things: faith and fear. As it's been said, you feed your fear and your faith will die.
But if you feed your faith, your fears will die. And all of my fears about what's wrong with me, what am I going to do? And am I going to make it through this? Am I going to live? What's God going to do?
through those verses and through believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and just doing it. And I can I might not can get up and do, I might not can talk, I might not can say, I might not can even pray with a hoot. But I can believe. And I can choose to believe. And that was it.
Agree with God, believe the Bible, choose Jesus Christ. Decide to walk with him. And it just believing the word of God was so powerful. And it just spoke to me in an unusual way. And it has, I got a place in my phone.
It says OHS Ocean Open Heart Surgery. Believe. Believe. And I go through it.
Well, that story is being shared with a lot of people because my buddy's book, Thanksgiving, has got you featured at the beginning of one of the chapters. And I'm about to give you, he gave me a signed copy to put in your hands today after this interview. David Parsons, who's been mentoring me and a whole bunch of people for five decades. That's scary. I was just a little guy.
And you let me right on your lap while you were cutting the on that Sears lawnmower. You were cutting the yard. You were staying above our garage as a Bible student working at the rescue mission. And you paid your rent by mowing the grass and doing some household jobs. And then little Stu Jr.
had to run around. And you taught me how to catch those crickets that trailed the lawnmower. And then we'd put them in a bag and then we'd go bait the hook with them. And we went fishing out at the At the time, it seems like Piedmont International or Piedmont Bible College, then, now it's California University, had a big aviation and they had a pond out there. We went fishing.
Remember those days? Yeah, that was great. Your dad and I put the lawnmower together. We went out there in the yard with all these pieces, parts. This was in the 70s or 70s.
Early 70s, yeah. We were there putting this lawnmower together. Had a catcher to catch the grass behind it. This thing was like, it was a little too much. You know, you drag it behind you, you know, another mower on it, another mower.
But you got to use those moments to, you've been like a big brother, a mentor, an uncle to me for all these years. I remember being in the waiting room. Your body is in the other room. We're not sure if you're going to make it. I remember praying with your wife, Kathy.
I remember Daniel, Benjamin, Jonathan, and Jonathan. Their wives were there, some of the grandkids. And it was just really a worship service, just asking God to do what he wanted to do. Because, hey, here's the deal: it can only get better for someone like that who knows Jesus. And you have these verses everywhere.
And God decided to keep you around so you could keep discipling me and a bunch of other people. That's right. God has had His hand in the whole process, He's used it in my life in a mighty way. You never think how God's going to use these things. But we have to trust him, put our belief in him, and say, Lord, I'm walking with you.
I'm doing what you're saying, and we're going to go that route. We're going to see what you do.
Now, you wheel up in this big bus. It's a God loves you bus, and the Christian Radio helps sponsor it. You got a Truth Network on there in different languages, Christian Spanish as well. Tell us what you're doing now and why mentoring. Young people or mentoring men, you meet with 10 or 15.
I call you on the way to Wednesday at Word, and you're meeting with a bunch of guys at McDonald's, just pouring into them, walking through the scriptures. Why is discipleship so important? And tell us what you're doing, David Parsons, as a model to others out there listening.
Well, Howard Hendrix is one of the great guys in mentoring and discipleship. He said, Every man needs three men in his life. He needs a Paul, a Timothy, and a Barnabas. He needs men in his life that are pouring God's word into him, people he can talk to, people that can look at him and say, You need to stop that, you need to start this. And he needs men that he can be pouring his life into.
And so the process of discipleship has been just drilled into me through men throughout the years, and God has blessed. And the God Loves You Bus is such a tool. We took a bus that was given to us, a short bus, like a 15 passenger bus and an actual church bus, and we took it and made the seats go around in an outer perimeter, and so it's like a mobile classroom. We're able to take it into communities and share Jesus Christ with boys and girls regularly. We got a TV on it and a screen on it.
So, another thing we wanted to do on it was get some boys on there, some teenage boys, and bring a pastor or two with us who've got some kids. We've got one pastor now who's got two young boys. He brought his boys with us last week, and they played. We put the Nintendo Switch on there.
So, we got a Nintendo game.
So, we've been trying to learn how to do that at our age and share with these 11-year-old, 10-year-old, 12-year-old boys, and how they can do it and how they can play Nintendo and then stop. And let us tell you, Jesus is and tell you the story of Jesus Christ. And we go through a Bible with them. Everybody has a Bible. We sit down and talk God's word together.
We pray. And it's just building a relationship with them in a new way, offering something new. It's another tool in the gospel. Just like that ball goal you have hanging on the back of that thing, too, right? Shoot some hoops and share the gospel.
That's right. We got a basketball goal in the back of a rover truck. And it's like a U-Haul truck with a basketball goal in the back. We took it out. We took the.
Rover truck out with basketball goal and suits to play from a local church. We took it out probably 10 times this summer, 10 weeks. We went out with it and places we'd never gone with it before, pull the rolling door down, slide the basketball goal in where the trailer goes, and have a big basketball goal. And everybody, even men, we took it to a couple of churches. Men loved it.
It's great. They get to play. It's just like regular playing. It's 10 foot high, does super. David Parsons challenges us all about being intentional about discipleship, about connecting with people spiritually to push them on closer to God.
Can you give us one challenge, something you've done? You've always encouraged me. At some point in the conversation, you're going to ask me, Stu, how's your walk with God? How are you loving your wife? How are you growing in Christ?
How can I pray for you? How are you really doing? Those are important questions. You've always asked me. And I find myself intentional with that because I've had a model, a role model, a paul in my life like you all these years.
So, thank you for that. What's your challenge, real quick, as we get out of here?
Well, as we leave and think about this, the challenge is to be strategic and intentional. Don't just say, I read my Bible.
Well, I go to Sunday school. Will I go to a men's group? No, we need to be a small group, three, four, five men. And let us share. Let us share our story.
Let us share the story of what God's doing in our lives. Let them hear it. Let's go through scriptures and see what it says. Here's what Howard Hendricks said. There was no identity crisis in the life of Jesus Christ.
He knew who he was. He knew where he had come from. He knew why he was here. And he knew where he was going. And when you are that liberated, Then you can serve.
Howard Hendricks tells us that. If we know who we are, we know it in Jesus, if we know where we come from and where we're going and why we're here and what we're going to do with our lives. We're liberated. We can serve Jesus. We can do it with grace and mercy and with determinance, just like Cornelius.
He knew that God was going to send somebody. And. I'm having guys call me now, Stuart, from 10 years ago, young boys that I worked with and discipled and mentored, and had three call me in the last month. One of them just had a baby. And one of them just had a baby the other day and said, Mr.
Parsons. I want to do the same thing with my son. Ms. Parsons, how can I do this? And so, you know, that's a reward at my age.
You want to see that, to see these guys calling you and want to talk with you.
So we need to do it. Church, we need to wake up. We need to go out there. You say, how do I get started? It's easy.
People say, where are fatherless kids? They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're sitting next to you in church. They're in Sunday school.
They're in all of these places. They're in the communities. Go play with them. Go bait. Go do sports with them.
Go do anything where you can stop and and sit down with them, have a snack, have a drink, a pot can a pop and say, Hey, look, Do you know Jesus? I want to talk to you. Let's talk. I want to be your friend. And get to meet their family and take it from there.
Website for your ministry, folks, to learn more and support you. You're a full-time missionary doing this all the time. The website is missioncenternc.org. Missioncenternc.org. Call us Texas, and we'll be glad to.
And our emails will be glad to get back with you. And you go to churches to preach about mentoring and showing them how to do it practically, how to take the kids how to disciple. We'll be there. We'll be at church this Sunday. We were one last Sunday.
We went to. 30 churches this past summer. Sharing with you. God as it were. Amen.
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