Greg Laurie
speaker
159 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Greg Laurie’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And I didn't have an emotional experience, though people next to me did. One was laughing, one with joy. One was crying, maybe over their sins. I felt nothing. And I thought, that figures. God rejected me. But I marked that day in 1970 as the day that Christ literally came into my life. And it changed everything for me. In fact, that weekend, we had planned to go out into the mountains and take...
and smoke and I went out with my friends and I broke away. I felt like being alone. I had this little baggie full of and a pipe and it just dawned on me, I don't want to do this anymore. And I don't know why I felt that way, but I thought I don't want this anymore. And so I said, God, if you're real, make yourself real to me. And I threw my pipe away and my way.
Yeah. And it was and there was no one talking to me. No one explained like what we do when someone prays at one of our events. We're there to explain it. We give them a Bible. We're there to follow up on them. No one did any of this for me. But, you know, God says those that seek me will find me. And I think if we genuinely reach out to God, God will respond.
You don't have to do anything perfectly. It just needs to be a movement of your heart toward God. And as much as I knew as a 17-year-old kid, I took that step of faith. And that is when my life began to change. And I've led people in this.
Yeah.
So I go back to school, and the Christians there saw me and said, hey, Greg, come to our Bible study. And, oh, okay. And I went, and I felt kind of uncomfortable there.
I had a bunch of low-life friends. I was going to one school called Corona DeMar High School that was kind of a— a school attended by a fluent kid. So I was not an affluent kid. Uh, we lived in a little apartment in, in that area. And so it was very different. I literally transferred to this other school, Coronado high school to Harbor high to change my identity.
I said, I want to become a different person. I don't want to be the preppy guy that everybody knows. And, and, you know, uh, And trying out for the football team, I was ultimately rejected. But I hung out with those kids because my grades were too low. But anyway, so I wanted to be a different person. And I thought the drug culture had the answers.
So what happened ultimately was I transferred to another school where I had relative anonymity because people didn't know me like they knew me at the school I transferred from. Right, right. But in reality, I ended up becoming a different person, just not in the way I expected.
Yeah, I did. But there was a time I was in the drug culture there, very much so, every day as a matter of fact. But then when this transformation happened, so here's an illustration. So I'm walking across the campus and one of these Christians says, hey, Greg, here's a Bible. And they gave me a Bible. And I'm like, wow, I'm not going to carry this Bible around.
So I shoved it in the pocket of my coat and I went over to my friend's house, which was a stone's throw from our high school because we would literally get high there every day at lunchtime. So I walked over there. I hadn't seen them since I'd prayed this prayer with these Christians. So I looked around. I'm not going to walk in with a Bible.
So I took the Bible and put it in the hedge in front of my friend's house. And I walked in. They said, hey, Lori, where have you been? I said, nowhere. Hey, we're going to get high. You want to get high? I said, no, I don't want to. Really? They kind of looked at me, what's wrong with you? Like, what have you been doing? I said, nothing. I wasn't going to talk about this.
Suddenly my friend walks, mom walks in, holding my Bible. I'm thinking, what is this woman? Check her bushes when she comes in her house? And then the thing that struck me, he says, who does this belong to? I thought, lady, kids are doing drugs in your house and you're concerned about a Bible in the bushes? She holds it up. Who does this belong to? It's so funny.
Every eye in the room went to the Bible and they looked at me. And I said, that's mine. And one of my friends said, you're reading the Bible? I said, yeah. And they said, oh, are we gonna be nice little Christians now and follow Jesus? I said, no, maybe I'll hit you in the mouth.
I hadn't read 1 Corinthians 13 or anything at that point. And so they all started mocking me. So it kind of helped me because I thought, these are not good people, and I don't need to hang around these people anymore. They made it easy to make a break with that crowd. So I thought, I'm going to give the Christians another try.
And I went back to their meetings and ended up at this church that was in the middle of a spiritual awakening called Calvary Chapel, filled, packed up with people of all ages, And then Chuck Smith, who I mentioned earlier, this older man who is the pastor, opened up the Bible, and suddenly this book came alive to me. And suddenly I found truth. I never had any absolute truth in my life.
I was just looking for something. I remember we're in school, and Ray Bradbury, the well-known author, came and spoke. And we thought, he's gonna give us truth. We were just looking for someone to give us some truth. And he didn't have anything for us. And all of a sudden I find that truth I've been looking for in the Bible. And so then you can't keep me away from the place.
So I was like a sponge wanting to make up for lost time and just absorbing these things. And then my life was changing. And it wasn't long after that that I started talking to people about this because I wanted to talk to people that were like I used to be, cynical, closed off. And I wanted to say, if God could change someone like me, he can change you too.
And fast forward 50 years, I'm effectively still doing the same thing.
Well, it's funny, because this young hippie evangelist, he was kind of cool. We all looked up to him. And so— That was Frisbee. That was Lonnie Frisbee. That's hilarious that his name was Frisbee.
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