December 9, 2025 • 55 mins
You may have seen parts of Pastor Greg Laurie’s moving testimony in the movie Jesus Revolution, but never like this. On today’s episode of The Greg Laurie Show, Pastor Greg takes us on an unfiltered, inspiring journey through his tumultuous upbringing—a story marked by instability, loneliness, and the relentless pursuit of hope.
Born into a world of broken relationships, absent fathers, and a longing for family, Pastor Greg shares how his early years were shaped by a mother struggling with addiction and a parade of stepfathers. From military school mischief and lonely nights speaking to “Mr. Nobody” under a blanket to the comfort of his grandparents’ Southern kitchen, Pastor Greg discovered the hand of God—revealing to him how moments of pain ultimately became pathways to purpose. Throughout the episode, Pastor Greg invites each of us to reflect not just on his journey, but also on our own—reminding us that no matter how difficult our beginnings, God can use every chapter for something greater.
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 God’s Call: Preach the Gospel
01:37 “My Mother Had Me Out of Wedlock”
03:23 Military School Mayhem & Burning It Down Joke
04:45 Grandmother’s Southern Cooking and Family Memories
06:15 Lonely Nights and Mr. Nobody
07:22 Becoming the Parent for My Mother
08:52 Christmas Morning: “It’s Got to Get Better Than This”
10:52 Envy, Family Dinners, and Craving Belonging
12:28 Stepfather Oscar Laurie: “He Treated Me Like a Son”
13:59 Hawaii Move and Celebrities at Davy Jones Locker
16:12 Fights, Tragedy, and Losing My Only Friend
17:28 Alcoholism’s Impact: “These Were Choices”
18:31 Witnessing Violence and Survival Instincts
19:41 Becoming a Juvenile Delinquent & Expulsion Threat
21:21 Teacher’s Outburst: “Bury Him in the Sand”
22:28 “I Realized I Was Living My Mother’s Life”
23:58 Entering Drug Culture: Searching for Escape
26:05 LSD Trip Leads to Crisis and Existential Fear
28:28 Encounter with Campus Christians & The “What If It’s True?” Moment
29:16 Lonnie Frisbee’s Message: “You’re For Me or Against Me”
31:13 Saying the Prayer—But “I Felt Nothing”
32:41 The Moment I Quit Drugs for Good
33:33 Outed as a Christian by a Popsicle-Stick Bible
36:20 Answered Prayer: Receiving My First “Real” Bible
38:09 Watching Billy Graham—Grandmother’s Spiritual Legacy
43:06 Creating Living Water: A Comic That Changed Lives
46:03 First Preaching Moment and Surprising Courage at Baptism
50:25 Called to Preach: “A Glimpse of My Future”
52:15 Cleaning Toilets for Jesus: Humility and Preparation
55:25 My Accidental Journey to Becoming a Pastor
58:15 Full Circle: God’s Hand from Childhood to Calling
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Life audio, and as clear as day, God spoke to
my heart and said, preach the Gospel. The thing I
had feared was happening. The thing I did not want
to do, I was being asked to do. But strangely
I had a courage and a boldness to do it.
(00:32):
You know, the Bible says, we live our lives like
a story that's been told. Our life is like a movie.
Of course, we're the main character, and it has its
ups and downs, it has its highs and lows. And
as you look back, as you get older, you realize
that often there is a pattern to what happened to
you in your life. As scripture says, the lines have
(00:55):
fallen in pleasant places. And I can certainly see that myself.
As I look back in my own life, I can
see how God it has handed me the earliest days
of my life. So some of you know my story,
some of you know parts of my story. I want
to tell it to you in the proper sequence and
(01:16):
sort of explain how God worked in my life. So
I was born in nineteen fifty two. Doesn't that sound
long ago? Yes, I was born in the fifties. Elvis
was king, Marilyn Monroe was the number one movie star
and Dwight Eisenhower was the President of the United States.
(01:38):
I wasn't planned. My mother, a beautiful lady named Charlene,
had me out of wedlock. She couldn't wait to get
out of her home. She was raised by her parents
Stella in Charles McDaniel in Arkansas, and my mother was
a beautiful young girl and couldn't wait to escape her childhood,
(02:01):
even though it was a very nice childhood. According to
my other aunts, they went to church every Sunday. They
went to church Sunday night, they went to church Wednesday night.
You might say my mother had a drug problem. She
was drug to church, drug here, drug there, and she
didn't like it. My mom was a rebel, so her sister, Willie,
(02:21):
my aunt Willie, helped her packer suitcase and she escaped
and entered into her first marriage. I wasn't born yet.
And sometime after that first marriage, she had a fleet
with some sailor in Long Beach, California, and she got pregnant.
I'm so thankful she didn't abort me. That could have
(02:42):
happened very easily. But she carried me to Termine. I
was born and on my birth certificate was the name
of my biological father, or who I thought was my
biological father and later found out was not at all.
Get to that later. So my mother was going from
marriage to marriage, from relationship to relationship, if you want
(03:04):
to call them that. And she was a men magnet.
I remember, even as a little boy, wherever I went,
men were drawn to my mother. They would even come
up to me and say, is that your mom introduced
me to her, which is kind of weird actually. And
so I lived for a time with my aunts and uncles.
I did a couple of stints in military school, Southern
(03:27):
California Military Academy. It no longer is there. It used
to be in Signal Hill and Long Beach, California. The
reason that's not there is I burned it to the ground.
Not really, it just was torn down eventually. But I
spent a good part of my childhood living with my grandparents,
the very parents my mother was rebelling against. Actually it
(03:49):
was a very stable environment. My grandmother was the greatest
cook of all time, as she did Southern cooking like
there was no tomorrow. You know, you have all the
great things that Southerners loved to eat, like fried chicken,
and the black eyed peas, and collared greens, greens and okra,
(04:10):
and she would make cornbread from scratch, and then what else?
She made so many other things, mashed potatoes, of course,
But the crown jewel of Mama Stella's cooking was her biscuit.
I don't know what she did how she did it.
In fact, when she was getting older, I had my
wife Kathy watched her. I said, watch mam Sella make
the biscuit, so we don't lose the secret of this biscuit.
(04:33):
But no one could make them quite like she did.
My grandfather was a very strict disciplinarian. He'd use the
belt on me. I don't remember being exceptionally rebellious, but
they made sure that I had a lot of respect.
Funny little things you remember from your childhood. They would
go to bed at night and my grandmother would take
her teeth out, her false teeth and put them in
(04:55):
a little glass of water. And I'd look at that
and I was slightly traumatized by it. I remember playing
with those little Tonka trucks. They were made out of
metal in those days. Now they're made out plastic. But
I remember that there was a portrait of Jesus hanging
on the wall of our front room, and I would
often find myself just looking at it, thinking about it.
(05:19):
I was drawn to Jesus at an early age. Also
below that portrait of Christ was a floor furnace, and
it had a grate on the top, and I remember
putting my little green army men. They would come in
little bags, a whole bunch of them, and I would
set them there and let them melt. I'd get in trouble.
(05:40):
That's probably when my grandfather would use this built on me.
But another interesting thing living there, I was very lonely.
I really missed my mother, But I didn't really like
living with my grandparents that much. I wanted to be
with my mom, and I'll tell you why in a moment.
But at night I would pull the covers over my
head and I would talk to an imaginary character that
(06:03):
I made up on my little kid and his name
was mister Nobody. Or I got this idea, I don't know,
but I would talk to mister Nobody and I would
pour out my heart to him. I would tell him
what was scaring me, what I was hoping for, And
in reality, I think in my way without knowing how
(06:24):
I was trying to talk to God. Coming back to
my mother, the reason I wanted to be with her
was not because I wanted her to take care of me,
but more because I felt like I needed to take
care of her effectively. I was the only consistent man
in my mother's life. All these other men came through
(06:44):
a revolving door. They came, they left her. But I
was always there for my mom. And even though I
was a little boy, in some ways, I was more
like the parent in the relationship than she was. She
was parental at times and would take care of me,
but many times she was not. She was an alcoholic
(07:06):
I would call a raging alcoholic. She would drink to
excess every single night and either pass out or get
into a fight with one of the guys she was
with at the time. And when I see a fight,
I don't just mean an argument. I mean it would
come to blows, things thrown around. She would slap these guys,
(07:27):
some of them would slap her right back. And that
was pretty much every night at my house. I would
be laying in bed, she was gone. She would come home.
I would hear the eyes dropped into the little glasses,
some boozebean poured, talking maybe quietly, then the voices get raised,
Then the argument starts, then the screaming starts, and finally
(07:51):
it stops. And I would always go and check on
her and make sure she was okay, make sure she
got into bed. And it was a tumultuous and honestly
an awful childhood. But I had this weird I want
to call it weird, because it was great, really optimism
that things were going to get better. And I think
that was put in my heart by God. You know,
(08:13):
the Bible says God has placed eternity in our hearts.
Here's a story that illustrates that optimism. One morning I
got up for Christmas. We had this artificial white tree
and it had one of those slowly turning color wheels
you ever see those, you know, putting the color on
(08:34):
the tree. The room smelled of booze and smoke. So
a little boy walked out. You know, you're generally excited
on Christmas morning, and I saw my mom passed out
from drinking all night on the couch, and I looked
at that funky little tree in my drunken mother, and
I just thought, it's got to get better than this,
(08:56):
and it did, it did, but it was a hard life.
She had this one bachelor guy that she would go
to in between her husband, so whenever she broke up
with a husband, she would go stay with him. And
I remember going to his house and I'd sleep out
(09:18):
on the couch. And let's just say, to put it delicately,
I was exposed to things a little child shouldn't be
exposed to. I saw things a little boys shouldn't see.
And all of this was a part of growing up.
And weirdly enough, this was normal to me. Now there
were some pluses. I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted.
(09:42):
So my favorite go to me and at that time
was Hamburger, French fries, Vanilla mall. I still actually like
a Hamburger, French fries and a Vanila mall. So every
night I would get a Hamburger, French fries and Vanila Mall. Now,
no responsible parent would ever let their child eat that
every night, but because nobody cared, I ate what I wanted.
(10:02):
There was a little restaurant near our house that was
called a snack shop. Later it came to be called Cocoas.
Now they've turned it into a place called rubies. But
every night I would get the hamburger, French fries, vanilla malt.
Sometimes I didn't have money, so I'd scrounged around the house,
find a cord of there, find a dime over there,
over here, get it all together, cobble my finances together,
(10:26):
and then go buy my hamburger, French fries and vanilla malt.
But I had friends that, you know, they would eat
with their parents every night, and they envied me, and
I envied them. They would say, oh, Greg, we wished
to could eat what you eat. That sounds so amazing.
But I kind of wanted their life. And I had
this one friend. I would go and visit him and
(10:46):
his family and I would eat with his family. And
I didn't even like the food they ate, but I
would do it just because a family was such an
unusual thing to me. And this is what I really
longed for. I longed for a family for myself. So
these are some little glimpses of my childhood. Here's something
(11:07):
I find interesting. My mother effectively always seemed to marry
the same guy. Now, they were different guys with different names,
but they were so similar. They hung out in bars,
they were wanna be rat pack guys. You know what
I mean by the rat pack Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,
Sammy Davis Junior. That was their vibe. And my mom
(11:30):
was drawn to that kind of guy, and they all
let her down. But in the midst of it all,
she met a guy that wasn't like any of them,
and his name was Oscar Lourie. Instead of having his
shirt unbuttoned a few too many buttons, he was more
buttoned down. He was more East Coast preppy. He was conservative.
(11:52):
He was a moral man. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke.
I don't know what my mother saw on him. I
remember my mother getting Oscar to start drinking and smoking,
and and remember, even though a little boy, I thought
she was corrupting him. But here was what was unique
about Oscar. He's the only man of all the guys
my mom married and actually treated me like a father
(12:15):
she'd treat his son. He loved me, He disciplined me,
he taught me things. He put me on an allowance
which I had to earn by doing chores. He also
was an attorney by trade, so he was a hands on,
responsible father. He would get down and play with me.
I remember I had this one little slot car set.
(12:36):
It was so cool, and you know, you have the
little controls that were very popular in my childhood, and
I remember the cars had little lights that lit up,
and he'd play it with me. All the other guys
my mom was married to never had any interest in me.
They didn't want to talk with me, they didn't want
to hang out with me. But he was like a dad,
and I called him Dad. And he's the only man
(12:58):
of all the men my mother married that adopted me,
and he gave me his last name, Glori, which I
still carry very proudly to this day. So you can
imagine the shock when I got out of school in
New Jersey one day. It was brisk, as I remember,
and our family car was loaded up with luggage and
(13:20):
my mom says, get in the car. We're leaving. And
I said, where are we going. She said, we're going
to Hawaii. I said, where's Dad. She said he's not coming.
And I didn't see my father oscar for the rest
of my childhood. So we get on this plane. It's
a long flight, obviously, from the East coast all the
way over to Hawaii, and we'd land there on the
(13:40):
island of o Wahoo. What a contrast from New Jersey
to o Wahoo, the blazing bright sun. And here's another
guy that she has found and is going to marry.
And he was like all the other guys she had
married in the past, but maybe he was an elevated
version in a way, because he was quite wealthy. He
(14:04):
owned a little bar called Davy Jones Locker underneath a
hotel there right there on Waikiki Beach. And in this
bar was a large plate glass window that looked into
the swimming pool, and it was one of those old
school kind of tiki bars, very dark. I remember he
had a fish tank with seahorse in it, of all things,
(14:25):
and some very interesting characters. They weren't really worried about
enforcing the laws back then. I would sit at the
bar talk to all the patrons. I would go and
swim in the pool, and when it was lunchtime, they
would put a note up against the window, your lunch
is ready, and I would dry up and come down
and guess what I ate? Hamburger, French fries, vanilla malt So.
(14:49):
In many ways, that was a pretty happy part of
my childhood living there in Waikiki Beach. All the celebrities
would come in. If there were somebody, they would show
up at Davy Jones Locker. I remember Johnny Weismuller, who
played Tarzan, came in. I remember him picking me up
and holding me in the air. The Duke was also
(15:09):
someone who was a familiar face. Any celebrities if they
were in town, they would come to Davy Jones Locker.
So there was the husband who walked called Eddie, and
the beautiful Charlene at his side. Pretty good life all
things considered. I would hang out on Waikiki Beach and
there were the beach boys there. I don't mean the band,
but that's what they called, the local Hawaiian guys who
(15:31):
would take the tourists out in the outrigger. So I
became friends with all of them, and I remember they
would give me free rides on the outriggers where the
tourists did all the paddling. So I enjoyed that part
of my childhood. So remember going to school barefoot? You
can do that over there, and I like that too.
But things turned ugly because Eddie was a big drinker
(15:53):
along with my mother, and they would get in the
biggest of all her fights. One time we were living
in a beautiful home with a huge plate glass window,
and I don't remember what they threw through it, but
they smashed the entire window. The police were there, all
the neighbors were watching. I was kind of embarrassed, you know,
by all these things that were happening. But one little
(16:16):
ray of light in the middle of it was my
little dog, Nicki, a little black poodle that I had
in New Jersey and I brought her with me to Hawaii.
So I love this little dog. I always had Nikki
the little poodle to talk to, and she had sort
of replaced mister Noboddy. And so at night when there
was fighting and screaming, I have my little dog. And
(16:38):
I remember one night they woke me up, like it's
really late. They wake me up and someone says, drunkenly, Greg,
Nicky is dead. And I thought they said, Micky. That
was a friend of my mother, And I said, oh, no,
that's so sad. They said, no, Nicki, your dog is dead.
And I was devastated because it kind of felt like
(17:00):
she was the only friend I had at that time.
And one of the drunk people left the door open.
You said, great, don't say drunk people. No, I'll say
drunk people. I was raised around alcoholics, and I think
a lot of times people want to say, oh, this
is a disease and people have no control over it.
I'm sorry, I don't buy that line of thinking. These
(17:22):
are people that choose to drink, they choose to live
this life, and I've seen the worst elements of it.
That's one of the reasons I don't drink at all today.
I don't drink alcohol. I've only seen the destructive power
of it in the lives of so many people. But
I digress back to what happened. So Nicky, my dog
(17:42):
died and I was devastated by that. And so one
night my mother got into a fight with Eddie. And
he was a big dude, very large. He said that
when he was in World War Two, he was in
a tank and a grenade exploded and he had shrapnel
in his leg, and that's why he was angry all
(18:02):
the time. I don't know if that story was true
or not, but he said it. And so one night
he got into a fight with my mother and I
was in the other room and I heard a loud
thud and I came out my mother was lying on
the floor in a pool of blood, and I remember
he was holding a wooden statue of Don Quixote. Those
are very popular back then. I don't know why, but
(18:24):
he hit her with this heavy wooden statue. She was
lying on the floor unconscious, and I remember what he
said to me. He said, go to bed. It's only ketchup,
ketch up. I knew what blood looked like. So I
climbed out the window and went over to a neighbor
and the police were called, and so we left Eddie.
(18:45):
We returned to California. And so now I'm a young,
younger man. I'm getting ready to enter my middle years
and soon my teen years, and all of this upbringing
is starting to affect me, and I'm becoming cynical and
I'm becoming hard. And then I turned into just a
(19:05):
a little juvenile delinquent. So we moved to Newport Beach, California.
That's where I spent most of my childhood. I went
to elementary school there, middle school, in high school. Now,
at this phase of my life, in the fifth grade,
the sixth grade, I'm kind of a troublemaker. Now when
I say juvenile delinquent, I'm not hurting anybody, but I
(19:27):
just I create chaos. I became quite the jokester, the prankster.
I like to make people laugh. I was starting to
draw cartoons at this point, a lot more, creating my
little cartoon adventures. And I had one teacher. He was
a really good guy. His name was John Robinson, and
(19:50):
he really liked his class. He really taught us well.
But I wanted to see how far I could push
the envelope with him, so I made up a nickname
for him. I started calling him toilethead. I'm not proud
of this, get it, John, toilet toilet heead. It's very bad.
So he'd be like writing something on the blackboard and
(20:10):
we would say toilet head. He'd turn around. Who said
that would I'll just sit there. He'd go back to
writing on the blackboard, toilet head. This just went on
and on, and you know what that guy did. One day,
he took me in front of the class, pulled me
over his leg, and spanked me. It was the best
thing he could have possibly done. I was so humiliated.
(20:34):
I never called him toilet heead again. And then I
actually became closer to him. But anyway, I digress. So,
hearing of my antics in this classroom, the principal called
me into his office and said, you know, you've got
to stop. And I just kept doing it. And then
they decided they were going to expel me from this school.
And my mother showed up and said, if you expelled him,
(20:55):
I'll sue you. So I stayed at the school. There
was one teacher that had a classroom right next to
mister Robinson, and hearing of the abuse that I would
hurl at him and the way I would misbehave, she
once said to her entire class, I'd like to take
Greg Glory, bury him up to his neck in the sand,
(21:16):
out on the blazing sun, and have ants eat him alive.
All the kids told me this after class. Actually, when
I heard that, I kind of thought that was cool.
I thought, well, wow, that's quite a compliment. In a way,
it wasn't a compliment. But so I graduated from middle
school and then I went to high school, and still
(21:37):
I was a problem, spending a lot of time in
the vice principal's office for discipline issues. Now at this point,
I'm fully into art. In fact, I was a cartoonist
for the school paper, and I have one cartoon where
there's somebody waiting to see the vice principal and they're
a skeleton with cobwebs hanging off of them, and someone says,
(22:00):
the vice principal will see you. Now, that was my life,
sitting outside waiting to see the vice prince getting in
trouble again. Well, this is the sixties, and so my
friends would drink and party. So I started partying with
my friends. I remember we'd drink six packs of beer,
and I would drink vodka and orange juice. It's called
(22:23):
a screwdriver. That's what my mother drank. And I remember
hanging out with them in Palm Springs partying, and I
was realizing, I'm living my mother's life, and I don't
want to live this life. I knew that was not
the right way to live. But the drug things coming now.
I Now you have to understand, drug culture is quite
(22:44):
different than it is today. Today. People take drugs to escape,
they take drugs to numb their senses. But back then,
we thought drugs had the answers, and we were following
the pipe pipers of our generation, people like the Beatles
and others who are saying, you know, turn on, you know,
(23:08):
Timothy Leary, sort of this self made guru of the
day would say turn on, tune in, drop out, and
we believe this stuff. We didn't know any better. So
I started experimenting with marijuana and smoking it, and I
started doing it every now and then. Then I started
doing it a couple times a week. Then I started
(23:28):
doing it five days a week, and so I became
fully committed to becoming a hippie and a druggie because
I thought I was going to find the answers I
was looking for. Interestingly, all my art was going downhill.
You can even see it reflected in the drawings they did.
At that time, it felt like my personality was disappearing.
(23:49):
And the people I was hanging around, they were a
bunch of low lives. I thought these but I didn't
care because I wanted to change my identity. So I
literally transferred from cronodom Or High School. And this is
a school with a lot of affluent young kids attending there.
Actually there would be porsches in the parking lot. You
know that some of these kids would drive because they
(24:12):
had rich parents. So I transferred from Crono TOMR High
School over to Harbor High School, and the reason I
did this was because I heard they were really lenient
over there, and no one knew me and I wasn't
being sent to the vice principal's office over there. So
I made friends with a bunch of low lives and
I thought, I'm going to become a new person. So
(24:33):
understand I transferred from one school to another school to
become a different person. I wanted to change. I had
the right idea, I was going about it in the
wrong way. But God had a better plan. So when
I get to Harbor High, my friends said, Greg, we
got to tell you we have a lot of Jesus
(24:54):
freaks on this campus. My reaction was, what Jesus freaks?
Oh yeah, these weird Christians. They talk about Jesus all
the time and stay away from them. And I remember saying,
the last thing you'll ever see is Greg Glory becoming
a Jesus freak. And I meant it. And so I
was just hanging out with my friends. I was getting
(25:15):
high every single day, and I was taking LSD now
on the weekends. Coming back to LSD, I had a
bad trip. If you saw the Jesus Revolution film, you
remember that scene where my characters in that vanity runs
down the street screaming and he's hallucinating. That actually happened
to me. And when I was hallucinating, I looked up
(25:36):
my face in the mirror and I saw my face
melting off, and I saw a skull, my skull, this
is what I thought I was seeing. And I heard
a voice saying, you're going to die. So that really
scared me, and I knew I didn't want to live
that drug life. It's weird. It was sort of like
finding my way to christ was like process of elimination.
Even before I became a Christian, I knew what I
(25:57):
didn't want to do anymore. I didn't want to live
the life of my mother and drinking and smoking and
all that. Now I'm discovering I don't want to live
this drug life either, because I'm seeing what it's doing
to me and what it's done to others. And so
one day I'm walking across my high school campus and
I see one of my friends talking to this girl,
and something about this girl caught my eye. Now it's
(26:20):
not that she was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen,
but she was attractive, but there was something else about her.
Her name is Chrissy, And so I walked up. I
was waiting for a break in the conversation because I
wanted to talk to this girl. So as they're talking
and looking at him and looking at her, and I
noticed she has her notebook for school, a textbook for
(26:42):
a class. And then I see something that shocked me.
She had a Bible and I realized she's a Jesus freak.
I the oh, no, what a waste of a perfectly
cute girl. Why would she be a Jesus freak? So
finally there's a break in the conversation. I introduced myself.
Nothing came of that, No, oh, I'm Greg whatever. And
so a couple of days later, I'm I'm walking across
(27:06):
my high school campus and I'm kind of looking for Chrissy,
like where is she? Is she with those Christians? And
I see them on the front lawn and they're singing
songs about Jesus. I'd never seen them all together like that.
And there's a reason for that. I found out later
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after reading Lonnie Frisbee's autobiography, that they normally meant in
the science room for Bible studies, and Lonnie would come
from off campus. He was a pastor at Caffrey Chapelain
and teach them. But the air conditioning broke that day
and it was a hot day, so they decided to
meet outside. That's so amazing because I wouldn't have gone
into a room. I wouldn't even have known where to go.
(27:49):
But because around on the front lawn, I'm walking along
and I see them out there, and so I sat
down far enough away where I wouldn't be thought of
joining them, but close enough where I could eavesdrop, because
I always was an observer of people, you know, trying
to figure people out. And I looked around, and you know,
I wanted to dismiss them all as crazy people. But
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the problem was there were a couple of them that
I knew from before, a couple of them and I
used to party with, and I knew their life had changed.
I knew, in other words, they were normal people who
had become Jesus freaks. And that intrigued me. But there
was Chrissy too, and I'm sort of looking at Christy
and I'm looking at the other kids and taking it
(28:31):
in as they're singing songs about Jesus, and for the
first time it thought crossed my mind an alien thought,
and the thought was simply this, what if it's all true?
And what if what they believe is real? I thought
there's no way. And the reason I said there's no
way is because all the things I'd been exposed to
is a child made me so cynical and hard. I
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just thought, no, this is too good to be true.
And then that thought comes back, what if it's all true?
I thought, no, there's no way it could be true.
Then this guy gets up to speak. Lonnie Frisbee Off.
You saw the Jesus Revolution film. There was an amazing
portrayal of him by actor Jonathan Rumy, who pleads Jesus
on the chosen And so Lonnie, the real guy, stands
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up and he starts speaking. Now, the first thing that
strikes me about him is he looks like Jesus. His
hair is long, he's got the beard, and I'm going, wow, okay,
look at this guy. He kind of reminded me of
that portrait of Jesus on my grandmother's wall. I'm seventeen
years old at this point. And he begins to talk
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and I don't remember what he said except one statement.
Not often is the case, isn't it had so many
people say, Oh, I heard you preaching, and I came
to christ and I said, what was I talking about?
I don't know what the topic was, but you said
one thing. And it's always like this, one little thing
to get people so often, And that's how it was
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with me. Lonnie said, Jesus said, you're for me or
against me. So I looked around at the Christians at
Jesus Street. He said, thought there definitely for him. I'm
not one of them. Does that mean I'm against Jesus?
In fact, as much as I knew, I believed in Jesus,
you know, when I was in trouble, I called out
to Jesus. He was my god of choice. I didn't
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know anything about him, but I did believe he existed
somehow somewhere. I just didn't know how to come into
a relationship with him. So you're either for me or
against me, therefore him, Wait, does that mean that I'm
against him? Then I thought, I don't want to be
against Jesus. And then Lonnie said, and if you want
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to ask Jesus Christ to come into your life, get
up and walk up here, and I'll pray with you.
And a little bunch of kids got up and walked forward.
I hung my head down, thinking there's no way I
would ever do that in a million years. Next thing,
I knew I was up there. I don't even remember
walking up there, but I was there. And so there
I am standing with these other kids and he starts
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his prayer. I remember that a girl in my rye
I praise this prayer and she is weeping. Another person
on my left, after praying their prayer was laughing with joy,
and I felt absolutely nothing. And I thought, it figures
God skipped me. You know, God said no. And I thought,
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I don't think I'm the religious type. I don't even
think this would take with me. Well it took all right,
but it took a little time. So this is a Friday,
and we had plans for the weekend, and our plans
were to go into the Artica Mountains and smoke some
weed and take Lleste. So now I'm a Christian, I thought, okay, whatever,
(31:46):
let's go do what we're gonna do. So I have
my little baggy filled with marijuana, a little pipe, and
I felt like I wanted to be away from my friends.
I didn't want to be with them. I said, I'm
gonna go sit by myself. And I sat on a
rock and I'm filling my pipe with weed, getting ready
to smoke it. And that same still small voice I
(32:09):
had only heard hours before spoke to me again and say,
did you hear an audible voice? Greg? Not that I recall,
but as clear as day, something said to me, you
don't need that anymore. And I sensed God was talking
to me, and I thought, I said, God, if you're real,
(32:32):
I don't know how to come into a relationship with you.
I don't know what to do next, but I'm gonna try.
And I took my bag of weed and threw it,
and I took my pipe and I threw it. And
then I go back to school on Monday and some
guy sees me from a distance and he yells up,
Brother Greg. Who is this guy? Brother Greg's calling me
(32:52):
brother Greg. I don't even know him. He runs up
to me, Bro, Praise the Lord. I'm thinking, okay, whatever, Bro,
praise God. I didn't even know how to react to
language like that. Hey, Bro, I saw that you came
to Christ the other day. I'm kind of defensive. Yah yah,
what he goes, Bro? I got you a Bible listen,
(33:14):
I want to give you this Bible. And he gives
me this big bible, all beat up, very used, with
popsicle sticks glued together in the shape of a cross.
Now remember I'm a designer, I'm an artist. This is
like esthetically offensive. But I said, oh thanks, okay, yeah, bro,
(33:34):
read the Word of God, read it, okay. I just
wanted this guy to go. I thought, guy's crazy, And
now what do I do. I have this giant Bible.
So I had this coat, and I remember it was
a thick cordroy coat, sort of Dwardian style that was
popular back then. I tried to put it in my pocket,
but my pocket was too small, so I ripped my
(33:55):
pocket to put the Bible in there. I didn't want
to be seen carrying a Bible. See, I hadn't accepted Christ,
but I wasn't ready to be known for that yet.
So I go to my friend's house. Now my friend's
house is walking distance from our school and we would
literally go there every day at lunchtime and get high.
So I hadn't seen these guys since I made that
(34:17):
commitment to Christ. So I walk up to the house
and I think I can't walk into the Bible. So
I pulled the Bible out of my jacket pocket, and
he had a planner in front of his house, and
I kind of shove it in the bushes and I
walk in, Laurie, where are you been nowhere? What have
you been up to? Nothing? Hey man, we got some
(34:37):
acapulcal gold. You want to smoke it? Acapolca gold was
a strain of marijuana back in those days, and normally
I had have been like yes. And my reaction was no, no, No,
I don't know. I do not want to smoke anything.
What's wrong with you? Nothing's wrong with me? Why are
you acting so word? I'm not acting weird, very defensive.
(34:59):
So what was happening was I am now a child
of God, But I don't know how to react to
all these I know I don't want that stuff anymore.
And all of a sudden, the front door bursts open
and this guy's mother is holding my Bible with popsicle
sticks in the shape of a cross. She says, who
does this belong to? Every eye in the room went
(35:21):
to that Bible, and then they went to me. Somehow
they connected the dots. I said, that's mine. What is that?
Lourie it's a Bible. What it's a Bible? What it's
a Bible? And one of my friends actually said, oh,
Praise the Lord, brother, Greg, are we going to be
Christians now? And I said no, I'm going to hit
you in the mouth, so shut up. You know, I
(35:41):
hadn't read the Bible yet, so this is all new
to me, and so I take the Bible and they
start mocking me, making fun of me, and it was
actually a really good thing because I saw them for
what they were and I left. Okay, those are not
my friends anymore. But these Christians they're a little too extreme,
especially the guy that yelled at me and gave me
(36:03):
the Bible. I don't want to hang out with them either.
I'll just do this solo all by myself. But soon
I found myself going to their meetings because I was
drawn to it and I wanted to learn more. And
I'm starting to get a little more comfortable. And then
this guy comes out of the blue. Never met this guy,
never even saw this guy. His name was Mark. He goes, hey, Greg,
(36:24):
my name is Mark. Yeah, hi Mark, you know I
want to take you to church with me. I said,
oh no, that's okay. I go to the little Bible
study here at school. No, I want you to come
to church with me. It's called Calbrey Chopel. I said, no,
I don't really want to go. He goes, yeah, where
do you live? I need your address? So no, I
don't want you to take me to church. That's okay, No,
(36:44):
where do you live? The guy wouldn't take no for
an answer. He was persistent and the best way possible.
Next thing I know, Mark's in front of my house
and we're driving to church. So we get to church.
Now the discomfort I felt around this little group of
Christians is now multiplied one hundred times because Calbrey Chapel
is in the throes of the Jesus movement. Packed out,
(37:08):
kids sitting in the floor, kids sitting and overflow outside,
people everywhere. I literally walked up to the entrance and
I thought, I don't want to go in this place.
Let me explain. It was almost like there was too
much love there. In fact, some girl I didn't know
comes up to me, throws her arms around me, Praise
(37:29):
the Lord. I love you, brother. I'm thinking I don't
even know you. Now. Let me explain. My mother never
hugged me. She never said she loved me, so it
was alien for me to express anything loving to anybody.
I felt love for people. I loved my mom. I
took care of her, but I never verbalized it. So
(37:50):
they have a stranger saying I love you. I was like, oh,
And so I was relieved to find the place was
packed and there was no seat. There's no seats. And
someone in the front row who goes to my high
school recognized me and says, Grant, come on up here.
So the next thing, I know him in the front
row and okay, So I'm just standing there and they
(38:11):
start singing songs together, songs I'd never heard before, but
they were beautiful songs, and I was kind of caught
up in it, going wow, I've never seen anything like
this before. And then the preacher comes out and it's
not Lonnie, who I thought was cool and I kind
of related to him. It's this guy. They tell me
his name, Chuck Smith. He's actually the pastor of the church. Now,
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Chuck looks like wait, it looks like one of your
teachers at school, or maybe the principal. I had an
issue with authority figures. I resented them. I was always
defiant of them, and Chuck walks out, and I was
kind of like a brother, here we go an adult figure.
I don't want to hear what some adult has to say.
But there was something different about Chuck. He sat in
(38:54):
a stool and he opened his Bible up, read it,
and started teaching from the Bible. Next thing, I knew
it was really enjoying it. And I was hearing things
that never heard before. And the next week I was
at church on my own, and I was at church
as many times as I could go. I couldn't get enough.
Now I'm over that discomfort and now I'm like, I
(39:16):
want to know everything I can know about this. So
Mark would take me home to his family and they're
a very sweet Christian family, and I remember one night
after dinner, we're talking and they mentioned the rapture and
I said, what's a rapture? They said, oh, that's when
Christ comes to us. And they tell me about the rapture.
I couldn't believe this, well this could happen, and I'm
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hearing all these things for the first time. It was
so exciting for me and so exciting to me. And
now I can't get enough. And now I'm starting to
grow spiritually. So I'm still in high school and I'm
sitting in my art class and the teacher says, can
we have an assignment for you? You have to draw
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a comic book. Well, that's all I did was draw
comic books and create comic adventures, and I've done a
lot of that. But then I thought, well, now I'm
a Christian, maybe I should do a Christian comic book,
you know, and try to express my faith. Because back
in those days, they would give out little booklets called
tracks trcts, okay, and many of them were kind of
(40:21):
like these hellfire and brimstone tracks and meant to scare people.
And I even remember reading a couple of them before
I was a Christian and laughing at them and dismissing them.
I thought, I want to do a little track that
someone won't throw away when you give it to them.
It might be a little bit fun, but I want
to put the Gospel in it. And so I drew
(40:43):
this out and I turned it in and then I thought,
I'm going to go over to Chuck Smith's house and
see if he wants to print this. I don't know
where I got the audacity to go to Chuck Smith's
house and do this. But I did it. So I
walk over, I knock on his door. Chuck answers, hello, Hi,
I'm Greg Laurian. I go to your church and I'm
a cartoonist and I just did this drawing and it's
(41:07):
based on one of your sermons that you gave last
Sunday that we talked about the woman at the well
on John for and drinking of the living water. And
so the title of this little book that is living Water.
And I thought, I don't know, you might want to
print it. And Chuck looked at it and said, could
you reformat this? And he told me the size to
format it in. So I went back and readrew it
(41:28):
again to fit the size, and it was printed. And
I was so excited when it was first published. I
think we printed I don't know, maybe a thousand, maybe
ten thousand, and we started giving them out. They disappeared
so quickly. Then we went and printed more than it
was one hundred thousand, and then it became a million.
(41:49):
So I just got a letter now. Actually it was
a comment in my social media and a young lady
who was living in Guam, she was ten years old.
She said someone gave me one of your living water tracks,
and I read it as a ten year old, he
gave my life to the Lord. It is now fifty
five years later and they were still walking with Jesus.
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And I heard a lot of stories like that about
how God used this little track. So that was my
first entrance into sharing my faith. I never aspired to
be a public speaker. I was more I love to
do art. I like to work behind the scenes, so
this was not something I ever considered, like, maybe I'll
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become a preacher one day. As a matter of fact,
when I was a kid, we'd hang out a big
crona beach down in Newport Beach and there was some
preacher that would come down and yell at us kids.
I remember he was dressed head to toe in black.
He had a black brimmed hat, black coat, black pants,
and I remember he'd be sweating, telling us to repent
(42:54):
of our sins. And I thought, as I stood there,
my t shirt, my board shorts, why would anyone do this?
Why would you want to stand out in the sun
and yell about Jesus? You know, So the thought of
me becoming a preacher was not an appealing thought. But
one day when I was down at the beach, I
was given sort of a glimpse into my future. Okay,
(43:17):
so I'm a new Christian at this point, I've drawn
the living Water track. I've never preached a sermon. In fact,
I had the fear of preaching this sermon. I had
the fear that I might be in line at a
market and God would say, preach the Gospel, and that
was so terrifying to me. I was talking to people
about Jesus, I was sharing my faith out and about
(43:38):
wherever I went. But I think that calling was coming
on my life, and I wasn't quite aware of it yet.
So there was a baptism down there at Pirate's Cove,
and somehow I got my times mixed up and I
missed the baptism. And so there was some kids sort
of hanging around still in little groups. And there's one
(43:59):
little group of kids and they were singing and playing
guitar or someone had a guitar and they're singing. And
so I sat down with them and my heart starts beating,
like I need to share something from God's words, something
i'd read that day. Remember, I'm not a preacher, I'm
not a pastor. Not a teacher, just a Christian going
to church. But I thought I need to share what
I learned from Scripture. So when the song ended, I said, hey,
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I had something I wanted to share with you. And
I just shared my little thought from the Bible. And
after I was done, I remember thinking, Oh, Lord, I'm
so thankful I obeyed you. That's so great you let
me do that. Oh yes, Lord, use me in any
way you want to use me. And while I'm talking,
a couple of girls joined our group, and one of
them leaned over and said, hey, Pastor, could you baptize
(44:47):
these girls? They missed the baptist and I said, I'm
not a pastor. I I can't baptize someone. Oh okay,
And then I just sensed the Lord leading me to
do it. I thought why not. I said, well, I
guess I could baptize you. Okay, let's go. So we're
leaving Big Corona Beach. Now we're making a way over
the Pirates Club. You have to climb over these rocks
(45:08):
and then you go down these steep stairs and you're there.
So we're making our way over there. And so I
have this little group of like, I don't know, maybe
fifteen maybe twenty people following me, and I'm thinking to myself,
how did I get myself into this? Like what am
I doing? I don't even technically know how to baptize somebody.
And so we're walking along and we climb over the
(45:30):
rocks and we go down to the beach and the
kids are standing in front of me, and I look
up and people are up on the rocks and they're
looking like they're looking down at me. And I looked
up at him, and as clear as day, God spoke
to my heart and said, preach the gospel. The thing
I had feared was happening. The thing I did not
want to do, I was being asked to do. But
(45:52):
strangely I had a courage and a boldness to do it.
And so I just said, well, you're up there watching,
probably wondering what we're doing down here. We're going to
baptize these girls because they put their faith in Jeez.
This is the next thing, you know, I'm telling them
how to put their faith in Jesus Christ. And then
next thing, you know, I'm literally saying and if some
(46:13):
of you up there want to come down here and
give your life to Christ, come on down and some
people came and I prayed with them, and it's almost
like I stepped outside of myself and I was saying
to myself, what are you doing? Who do you think
you are? You're not Billy Graham. This is crazy, But
I'm still doing it well while I'm thinking these thoughts.
(46:33):
And so I take the girls into the water, and
literally I didn't know how to baptize a person. I
never stopped and you know, really looked at the technique
of it. But I managed to baptize them and the
others that had prayed. And I left the beach that
day thinking Wow, God, thank you so much for all
(46:54):
of that. And I remember thinking, I wonder if I'll
ever do that one day. I was sort of like
giving a glimpse into my future. You know, like when
you go to a movie and you watch a trailer,
and a lot of times the best parts of the
film are in the trailer. In other words, a trailer
is better than the movie. It's sort of like I've
was shown a trailer of my future, like this is
(47:15):
what you're going to do one day. But it didn't
happen immediately. In fact, it didn't happen for a little
bit of time, but I was given a glimpse into
what I would ultimately end up doing, which was preaching
the Gospel and teaching the Bible. So listen, God wants
to use all of us. Some of us are called
(47:37):
to be preachers, others are not. But we're all called
to share our faith. We're all called to discover, cultivate,
and develop the spiritual gifts that God has given us
and use them for His glory. And everyone has something
to do. And I want to encourage you to say, Lord,
use me. You know there's a great evangelist from days
(48:02):
gone by and his name was Dial Moody and said
this to him, and it really challenged him. The guy said, Moody,
the world has yet to see what God can do
in and with and through the man who is totally
committed to him. And Moody said, I want to be
that man. Would you be that man or that woman
(48:23):
and say, Lord, here I am, send me here, I am.
Use me. If you're faithful in the little things, God
will open up greater opportunities for you. I remember early
on when I was getting in a taste of preaching
and was very anxious to get started. I went into
Chuck Smith's office, and I said, Pastor Chuck, I want
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to do whatever I can here at church, however you
can use me. I want to serve the Lord. And
Chuck said, okay, Greg, well go see Pastor Romayne. And
I was hoping Chuck might say, oh, preach on Sunday morning.
I don't know what I was thinking, but so I
met Pastor Romayne. Pastor Romayne used to be in the
Marine Corps and his job was to get recruits into
(49:09):
shape to proper marines. And so I said, hi, Romayne.
Chuck sent me to see you, and I told him
I want to serve the Lord and do whatever I
can for God's glory. And said, okay, here, give me
a broom. Start sweeping under that tree, and when you're done,
go over into the bathroom and clean those toilets. And
(49:31):
I think Romayne knew exactly what Chuck was doing. And
basically I did free janitorial work for them for a
little while. But I was okay with that because I
just like hanging around the church. But what they were
looking for was will this kid be faithful in little things?
Because if you won't be faithful in little things, why
would God give you greater things to do. So I
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remember sometimes they would leave for lunch. The pastors are
all go to lunch, and they would allow me to
sit in the office and answer the phones and offer
a counsel and prayer. I'm probably around twenty years old
at this point, nineteen or twenty. So someone would call
and Hi, this is Calvid Choppel, and yes I have
(50:15):
a question, and I would do my best to answer
their questions, and then the pastors would come back and
get off the phone. Greg. You know, so I just
literally hung around waiting for something to do. And one day,
I don't remember if it was Romayne said to me, Greg,
we need a new doorknob for the church, for the
front door of the office. Go and get a doorknob.
Here's some petty cash. I felt like there was an
(50:38):
omission from God. I went down to the hardware store
and to understand, I'm not a mechanical person. I'm not
good with the most basic things. Remember, I didn't have
a dad growing up, so I didn't know anything about
common things that guys learned about from their dads. And
I never knew there were so many doorknobs one could buy.
I didn't take the time to measure the whole or
(50:59):
what kind of hardware I needed to buy. I'm literally,
God give me wisdom, which doorknob do I buy? You know?
And I finally bought one. I went back. It was
a wrong doorknob. But you know, it was just being
willing to do whatever needed to be done. So when
someone would call and say, yeah, we need somebody to
do a Bible study and a convalescent home like three
(51:20):
hours from here, can you send someone? Those are the
jobs I got. I got the jobs the pastors didn't
want to do. Another time, someone said, someone wants one
of the pastors to come and speak at this mental
institution to the people there, and so I got that job.
And there was this little Bible study happening up in Riverside. Now.
(51:43):
It was started by Lonnie Frisbee when he was still
with Calvin Choppel, but he had left at this point,
and this study was quite big. It was at Episcopalian
church called All Saints Episcopalian Church, and it was being
passed off from pastor to pastor. One pastor would do
it one week and then another would do it the
next week, and it was shrinking and getting smaller. And smaller.
(52:06):
So one day the pastors are talking in the room
and I was in the back room with them. I
was not on staff. I just hung around. In fact,
i'd set up my drawing board and I was doing
freelance graphics to support myself, giving new meaning to the
term starving artists. But I would do whatever needed to
be done. And one of them said, well, who's going
to All Saints this week? And one said, well I
(52:27):
went there last week, and the other said I'm going
there next week. Well who's going to go? Well, Greg,
why don't you go? I was like okay. So I
got in my car, my trusty little Corvert, not Corvette Corvert.
Corvets were cars that a guy named Ralph Nader wanted
taken off the road because they were so dangerous. They
(52:50):
put the engine in the back and they crumpled up
in a collision. I knew the shrim experience when I
rented a car and pretty much crumpled up the front
of my Corvert. But anyway, I would drive my Corvet
with retread tires, you know, would retread tire. That's when
you take a tire that's going bald and you put
a tread on the outside, you glue it on and
(53:11):
these retreads would come off my tires. Console anyway, driving
my little corvet up to Riverside and I show up
and I go up to some older gentleman and I said, Hi,
I'm from Calviy Chupple. I'm here to speak tonight. My
name is Greg Loory said, no one told me someone
was coming from Calviy named Greg Lory. Yeah, well, no,
(53:34):
I'm the guy, and I'm going to speak. And he says, well, no,
I don't think so you're not going to speak. No
I'm supposed to speak. Why don't you just go sit there?
I sat there as a little humiliating, and he realized
nobody else was coming, because indeed I was the guy.
Says okay, you can speak this one time. So I
(53:55):
got up and I spoke. It went quite well, and
so well in fact, that he said one should come
back next week. And then I went back next week.
And none of the other guys wanted to take this
thing over. So I just kept going, and before I
knew it, it was growing from a Bible study into
(54:15):
what really was a church. I didn't go to planet
a church. It was never my hope to become a
pastor of a church. In fact, I thought my calling
would be to be an evangelist and to travel around
and speak, because I was doing that already at this
point with some of these Christian bands. They would play
and I'd speak, So I thought that's what I'll do,
(54:36):
And to be a pastor of a church was not
something I really aspired to, but people were calling me pastor.
So I started looking for someone to take this new
church over, and I couldn't find anybody, and it just
dawned to me that God is calling me to be
a pastor and an evangelist. So that became the church,
(54:56):
and I'm still pastoring today fifty years later, called Harvest
Christian Fellowship in Riverside. So I didn't start church intentionally,
but it was indeed one of the first startup churches
out there. But if you look at my life, as
I said earlier, that passage that says the lines have
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fallen in familiar places, one thing led to another. God
was directing me from the earliest days of my childhood
when I sat on my grandmother's home and stared at
that portrait of Jesus, to the day when I was
called to preach the Gospel of Jesus. So I hope
this encourages you, and I hope that you will pray
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that God will use you, and that you'll discover His
plan for your life.
Life audio, and as clear as day, God spoke to
my heart and said, preach the Gospel. The thing I
had feared was happening. The thing I did not want
to do, I was being asked to do. But strangely
I had a courage and a boldness to do it.
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You know, the Bible says, we live our lives like
a story that's been told. Our life is like a movie.
Of course, we're the main character, and it has its
ups and downs, it has its highs and lows. And
as you look back, as you get older, you realize
that often there is a pattern to what happened to
you in your life. As scripture says, the lines have
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fallen in pleasant places. And I can certainly see that myself.
As I look back in my own life, I can
see how God it has handed me the earliest days
of my life. So some of you know my story,
some of you know parts of my story. I want
to tell it to you in the proper sequence and
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sort of explain how God worked in my life. So
I was born in nineteen fifty two. Doesn't that sound
long ago? Yes, I was born in the fifties. Elvis
was king, Marilyn Monroe was the number one movie star
and Dwight Eisenhower was the President of the United States.
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I wasn't planned. My mother, a beautiful lady named Charlene,
had me out of wedlock. She couldn't wait to get
out of her home. She was raised by her parents
Stella in Charles McDaniel in Arkansas, and my mother was
a beautiful young girl and couldn't wait to escape her childhood,
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even though it was a very nice childhood. According to
my other aunts, they went to church every Sunday. They
went to church Sunday night, they went to church Wednesday night.
You might say my mother had a drug problem. She
was drug to church, drug here, drug there, and she
didn't like it. My mom was a rebel, so her sister, Willie,
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my aunt Willie, helped her packer suitcase and she escaped
and entered into her first marriage. I wasn't born yet.
And sometime after that first marriage, she had a fleet
with some sailor in Long Beach, California, and she got pregnant.
I'm so thankful she didn't abort me. That could have
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happened very easily. But she carried me to Termine. I
was born and on my birth certificate was the name
of my biological father, or who I thought was my
biological father and later found out was not at all.
Get to that later. So my mother was going from
marriage to marriage, from relationship to relationship, if you want
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to call them that. And she was a men magnet.
I remember, even as a little boy, wherever I went,
men were drawn to my mother. They would even come
up to me and say, is that your mom introduced
me to her, which is kind of weird actually. And
so I lived for a time with my aunts and uncles.
I did a couple of stints in military school, Southern
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California Military Academy. It no longer is there. It used
to be in Signal Hill and Long Beach, California. The
reason that's not there is I burned it to the ground.
Not really, it just was torn down eventually. But I
spent a good part of my childhood living with my grandparents,
the very parents my mother was rebelling against. Actually it
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was a very stable environment. My grandmother was the greatest
cook of all time, as she did Southern cooking like
there was no tomorrow. You know, you have all the
great things that Southerners loved to eat, like fried chicken,
and the black eyed peas, and collared greens, greens and okra,
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and she would make cornbread from scratch, and then what else?
She made so many other things, mashed potatoes, of course,
But the crown jewel of Mama Stella's cooking was her biscuit.
I don't know what she did how she did it.
In fact, when she was getting older, I had my
wife Kathy watched her. I said, watch mam Sella make
the biscuit, so we don't lose the secret of this biscuit.
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But no one could make them quite like she did.
My grandfather was a very strict disciplinarian. He'd use the
belt on me. I don't remember being exceptionally rebellious, but
they made sure that I had a lot of respect.
Funny little things you remember from your childhood. They would
go to bed at night and my grandmother would take
her teeth out, her false teeth and put them in
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a little glass of water. And I'd look at that
and I was slightly traumatized by it. I remember playing
with those little Tonka trucks. They were made out of
metal in those days. Now they're made out plastic. But
I remember that there was a portrait of Jesus hanging
on the wall of our front room, and I would
often find myself just looking at it, thinking about it.
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I was drawn to Jesus at an early age. Also
below that portrait of Christ was a floor furnace, and
it had a grate on the top, and I remember
putting my little green army men. They would come in
little bags, a whole bunch of them, and I would
set them there and let them melt. I'd get in trouble.
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That's probably when my grandfather would use this built on me.
But another interesting thing living there, I was very lonely.
I really missed my mother, But I didn't really like
living with my grandparents that much. I wanted to be
with my mom, and I'll tell you why in a moment.
But at night I would pull the covers over my
head and I would talk to an imaginary character that
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I made up on my little kid and his name
was mister Nobody. Or I got this idea, I don't know,
but I would talk to mister Nobody and I would
pour out my heart to him. I would tell him
what was scaring me, what I was hoping for, And
in reality, I think in my way without knowing how
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I was trying to talk to God. Coming back to
my mother, the reason I wanted to be with her
was not because I wanted her to take care of me,
but more because I felt like I needed to take
care of her effectively. I was the only consistent man
in my mother's life. All these other men came through
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a revolving door. They came, they left her. But I
was always there for my mom. And even though I
was a little boy, in some ways, I was more
like the parent in the relationship than she was. She
was parental at times and would take care of me,
but many times she was not. She was an alcoholic
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I would call a raging alcoholic. She would drink to
excess every single night and either pass out or get
into a fight with one of the guys she was
with at the time. And when I see a fight,
I don't just mean an argument. I mean it would
come to blows, things thrown around. She would slap these guys,
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some of them would slap her right back. And that
was pretty much every night at my house. I would
be laying in bed, she was gone. She would come home.
I would hear the eyes dropped into the little glasses,
some boozebean poured, talking maybe quietly, then the voices get raised,
Then the argument starts, then the screaming starts, and finally
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it stops. And I would always go and check on
her and make sure she was okay, make sure she
got into bed. And it was a tumultuous and honestly
an awful childhood. But I had this weird I want
to call it weird, because it was great, really optimism
that things were going to get better. And I think
that was put in my heart by God. You know,
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the Bible says God has placed eternity in our hearts.
Here's a story that illustrates that optimism. One morning I
got up for Christmas. We had this artificial white tree
and it had one of those slowly turning color wheels
you ever see those, you know, putting the color on
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the tree. The room smelled of booze and smoke. So
a little boy walked out. You know, you're generally excited
on Christmas morning, and I saw my mom passed out
from drinking all night on the couch, and I looked
at that funky little tree in my drunken mother, and
I just thought, it's got to get better than this,
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and it did, it did, but it was a hard life.
She had this one bachelor guy that she would go
to in between her husband, so whenever she broke up
with a husband, she would go stay with him. And
I remember going to his house and I'd sleep out
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on the couch. And let's just say, to put it delicately,
I was exposed to things a little child shouldn't be
exposed to. I saw things a little boys shouldn't see.
And all of this was a part of growing up.
And weirdly enough, this was normal to me. Now there
were some pluses. I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted.
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So my favorite go to me and at that time
was Hamburger, French fries, Vanilla mall. I still actually like
a Hamburger, French fries and a Vanila mall. So every
night I would get a Hamburger, French fries and Vanila Mall. Now,
no responsible parent would ever let their child eat that
every night, but because nobody cared, I ate what I wanted.
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There was a little restaurant near our house that was
called a snack shop. Later it came to be called Cocoas.
Now they've turned it into a place called rubies. But
every night I would get the hamburger, French fries, vanilla malt.
Sometimes I didn't have money, so I'd scrounged around the house,
find a cord of there, find a dime over there,
over here, get it all together, cobble my finances together,
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and then go buy my hamburger, French fries and vanilla malt.
But I had friends that, you know, they would eat
with their parents every night, and they envied me, and
I envied them. They would say, oh, Greg, we wished
to could eat what you eat. That sounds so amazing.
But I kind of wanted their life. And I had
this one friend. I would go and visit him and
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his family and I would eat with his family. And
I didn't even like the food they ate, but I
would do it just because a family was such an
unusual thing to me. And this is what I really
longed for. I longed for a family for myself. So
these are some little glimpses of my childhood. Here's something
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I find interesting. My mother effectively always seemed to marry
the same guy. Now, they were different guys with different names,
but they were so similar. They hung out in bars,
they were wanna be rat pack guys. You know what
I mean by the rat pack Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,
Sammy Davis Junior. That was their vibe. And my mom
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was drawn to that kind of guy, and they all
let her down. But in the midst of it all,
she met a guy that wasn't like any of them,
and his name was Oscar Lourie. Instead of having his
shirt unbuttoned a few too many buttons, he was more
buttoned down. He was more East Coast preppy. He was conservative.
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He was a moral man. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke.
I don't know what my mother saw on him. I
remember my mother getting Oscar to start drinking and smoking,
and and remember, even though a little boy, I thought
she was corrupting him. But here was what was unique
about Oscar. He's the only man of all the guys
my mom married and actually treated me like a father
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she'd treat his son. He loved me, He disciplined me,
he taught me things. He put me on an allowance
which I had to earn by doing chores. He also
was an attorney by trade, so he was a hands on,
responsible father. He would get down and play with me.
I remember I had this one little slot car set.
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It was so cool, and you know, you have the
little controls that were very popular in my childhood, and
I remember the cars had little lights that lit up,
and he'd play it with me. All the other guys
my mom was married to never had any interest in me.
They didn't want to talk with me, they didn't want
to hang out with me. But he was like a dad,
and I called him Dad. And he's the only man
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of all the men my mother married that adopted me,
and he gave me his last name, Glori, which I
still carry very proudly to this day. So you can
imagine the shock when I got out of school in
New Jersey one day. It was brisk, as I remember,
and our family car was loaded up with luggage and
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my mom says, get in the car. We're leaving. And
I said, where are we going. She said, we're going
to Hawaii. I said, where's Dad. She said he's not coming.
And I didn't see my father oscar for the rest
of my childhood. So we get on this plane. It's
a long flight, obviously, from the East coast all the
way over to Hawaii, and we'd land there on the
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island of o Wahoo. What a contrast from New Jersey
to o Wahoo, the blazing bright sun. And here's another
guy that she has found and is going to marry.
And he was like all the other guys she had
married in the past, but maybe he was an elevated
version in a way, because he was quite wealthy. He
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owned a little bar called Davy Jones Locker underneath a
hotel there right there on Waikiki Beach. And in this
bar was a large plate glass window that looked into
the swimming pool, and it was one of those old
school kind of tiki bars, very dark. I remember he
had a fish tank with seahorse in it, of all things,
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and some very interesting characters. They weren't really worried about
enforcing the laws back then. I would sit at the
bar talk to all the patrons. I would go and
swim in the pool, and when it was lunchtime, they
would put a note up against the window, your lunch
is ready, and I would dry up and come down
and guess what I ate? Hamburger, French fries, vanilla malt So.
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In many ways, that was a pretty happy part of
my childhood living there in Waikiki Beach. All the celebrities
would come in. If there were somebody, they would show
up at Davy Jones Locker. I remember Johnny Weismuller, who
played Tarzan, came in. I remember him picking me up
and holding me in the air. The Duke was also
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someone who was a familiar face. Any celebrities if they
were in town, they would come to Davy Jones Locker.
So there was the husband who walked called Eddie, and
the beautiful Charlene at his side. Pretty good life all
things considered. I would hang out on Waikiki Beach and
there were the beach boys there. I don't mean the band,
but that's what they called, the local Hawaiian guys who
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would take the tourists out in the outrigger. So I
became friends with all of them, and I remember they
would give me free rides on the outriggers where the
tourists did all the paddling. So I enjoyed that part
of my childhood. So remember going to school barefoot? You
can do that over there, and I like that too.
But things turned ugly because Eddie was a big drinker
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along with my mother, and they would get in the
biggest of all her fights. One time we were living
in a beautiful home with a huge plate glass window,
and I don't remember what they threw through it, but
they smashed the entire window. The police were there, all
the neighbors were watching. I was kind of embarrassed, you know,
by all these things that were happening. But one little
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ray of light in the middle of it was my
little dog, Nicki, a little black poodle that I had
in New Jersey and I brought her with me to Hawaii.
So I love this little dog. I always had Nikki
the little poodle to talk to, and she had sort
of replaced mister Noboddy. And so at night when there
was fighting and screaming, I have my little dog. And
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I remember one night they woke me up, like it's
really late. They wake me up and someone says, drunkenly, Greg,
Nicky is dead. And I thought they said, Micky. That
was a friend of my mother, And I said, oh, no,
that's so sad. They said, no, Nicki, your dog is dead.
And I was devastated because it kind of felt like
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she was the only friend I had at that time.
And one of the drunk people left the door open.
You said, great, don't say drunk people. No, I'll say
drunk people. I was raised around alcoholics, and I think
a lot of times people want to say, oh, this
is a disease and people have no control over it.
I'm sorry, I don't buy that line of thinking. These
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are people that choose to drink, they choose to live
this life, and I've seen the worst elements of it.
That's one of the reasons I don't drink at all today.
I don't drink alcohol. I've only seen the destructive power
of it in the lives of so many people. But
I digress back to what happened. So Nicky, my dog
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died and I was devastated by that. And so one
night my mother got into a fight with Eddie. And
he was a big dude, very large. He said that
when he was in World War Two, he was in
a tank and a grenade exploded and he had shrapnel
in his leg, and that's why he was angry all
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the time. I don't know if that story was true
or not, but he said it. And so one night
he got into a fight with my mother and I
was in the other room and I heard a loud
thud and I came out my mother was lying on
the floor in a pool of blood, and I remember
he was holding a wooden statue of Don Quixote. Those
are very popular back then. I don't know why, but
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he hit her with this heavy wooden statue. She was
lying on the floor unconscious, and I remember what he
said to me. He said, go to bed. It's only ketchup,
ketch up. I knew what blood looked like. So I
climbed out the window and went over to a neighbor
and the police were called, and so we left Eddie.
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We returned to California. And so now I'm a young,
younger man. I'm getting ready to enter my middle years
and soon my teen years, and all of this upbringing
is starting to affect me, and I'm becoming cynical and
I'm becoming hard. And then I turned into just a
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a little juvenile delinquent. So we moved to Newport Beach, California.
That's where I spent most of my childhood. I went
to elementary school there, middle school, in high school. Now,
at this phase of my life, in the fifth grade,
the sixth grade, I'm kind of a troublemaker. Now when
I say juvenile delinquent, I'm not hurting anybody, but I
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just I create chaos. I became quite the jokester, the prankster.
I like to make people laugh. I was starting to
draw cartoons at this point, a lot more, creating my
little cartoon adventures. And I had one teacher. He was
a really good guy. His name was John Robinson, and
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he really liked his class. He really taught us well.
But I wanted to see how far I could push
the envelope with him, so I made up a nickname
for him. I started calling him toilethead. I'm not proud
of this, get it, John, toilet toilet heead. It's very bad.
So he'd be like writing something on the blackboard and
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we would say toilet head. He'd turn around. Who said
that would I'll just sit there. He'd go back to
writing on the blackboard, toilet head. This just went on
and on, and you know what that guy did. One day,
he took me in front of the class, pulled me
over his leg, and spanked me. It was the best
thing he could have possibly done. I was so humiliated.
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I never called him toilet heead again. And then I
actually became closer to him. But anyway, I digress. So,
hearing of my antics in this classroom, the principal called
me into his office and said, you know, you've got
to stop. And I just kept doing it. And then
they decided they were going to expel me from this school.
And my mother showed up and said, if you expelled him,
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I'll sue you. So I stayed at the school. There
was one teacher that had a classroom right next to
mister Robinson, and hearing of the abuse that I would
hurl at him and the way I would misbehave, she
once said to her entire class, I'd like to take
Greg Glory, bury him up to his neck in the sand,
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out on the blazing sun, and have ants eat him alive.
All the kids told me this after class. Actually, when
I heard that, I kind of thought that was cool.
I thought, well, wow, that's quite a compliment. In a way,
it wasn't a compliment. But so I graduated from middle
school and then I went to high school, and still
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I was a problem, spending a lot of time in
the vice principal's office for discipline issues. Now at this point,
I'm fully into art. In fact, I was a cartoonist
for the school paper, and I have one cartoon where
there's somebody waiting to see the vice principal and they're
a skeleton with cobwebs hanging off of them, and someone says,
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the vice principal will see you. Now, that was my life,
sitting outside waiting to see the vice prince getting in
trouble again. Well, this is the sixties, and so my
friends would drink and party. So I started partying with
my friends. I remember we'd drink six packs of beer,
and I would drink vodka and orange juice. It's called
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a screwdriver. That's what my mother drank. And I remember
hanging out with them in Palm Springs partying, and I
was realizing, I'm living my mother's life, and I don't
want to live this life. I knew that was not
the right way to live. But the drug things coming now.
I Now you have to understand, drug culture is quite
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different than it is today. Today. People take drugs to escape,
they take drugs to numb their senses. But back then,
we thought drugs had the answers, and we were following
the pipe pipers of our generation, people like the Beatles
and others who are saying, you know, turn on, you know,
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Timothy Leary, sort of this self made guru of the
day would say turn on, tune in, drop out, and
we believe this stuff. We didn't know any better. So
I started experimenting with marijuana and smoking it, and I
started doing it every now and then. Then I started
doing it a couple times a week. Then I started
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doing it five days a week, and so I became
fully committed to becoming a hippie and a druggie because
I thought I was going to find the answers I
was looking for. Interestingly, all my art was going downhill.
You can even see it reflected in the drawings they did.
At that time, it felt like my personality was disappearing.
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And the people I was hanging around, they were a
bunch of low lives. I thought these but I didn't
care because I wanted to change my identity. So I
literally transferred from cronodom Or High School. And this is
a school with a lot of affluent young kids attending there.
Actually there would be porsches in the parking lot. You
know that some of these kids would drive because they
(24:12):
had rich parents. So I transferred from Crono TOMR High
School over to Harbor High School, and the reason I
did this was because I heard they were really lenient
over there, and no one knew me and I wasn't
being sent to the vice principal's office over there. So
I made friends with a bunch of low lives and
I thought, I'm going to become a new person. So
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understand I transferred from one school to another school to
become a different person. I wanted to change. I had
the right idea, I was going about it in the
wrong way. But God had a better plan. So when
I get to Harbor High, my friends said, Greg, we
got to tell you we have a lot of Jesus
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freaks on this campus. My reaction was, what Jesus freaks?
Oh yeah, these weird Christians. They talk about Jesus all
the time and stay away from them. And I remember saying,
the last thing you'll ever see is Greg Glory becoming
a Jesus freak. And I meant it. And so I
was just hanging out with my friends. I was getting
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high every single day, and I was taking LSD now
on the weekends. Coming back to LSD, I had a
bad trip. If you saw the Jesus Revolution film, you
remember that scene where my characters in that vanity runs
down the street screaming and he's hallucinating. That actually happened
to me. And when I was hallucinating, I looked up
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my face in the mirror and I saw my face
melting off, and I saw a skull, my skull, this
is what I thought I was seeing. And I heard
a voice saying, you're going to die. So that really
scared me, and I knew I didn't want to live
that drug life. It's weird. It was sort of like
finding my way to christ was like process of elimination.
Even before I became a Christian, I knew what I
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didn't want to do anymore. I didn't want to live
the life of my mother and drinking and smoking and
all that. Now I'm discovering I don't want to live
this drug life either, because I'm seeing what it's doing
to me and what it's done to others. And so
one day I'm walking across my high school campus and
I see one of my friends talking to this girl,
and something about this girl caught my eye. Now it's
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not that she was the most beautiful girl I've ever seen,
but she was attractive, but there was something else about her.
Her name is Chrissy, And so I walked up. I
was waiting for a break in the conversation because I
wanted to talk to this girl. So as they're talking
and looking at him and looking at her, and I
noticed she has her notebook for school, a textbook for
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a class. And then I see something that shocked me.
She had a Bible and I realized she's a Jesus freak.
I the oh, no, what a waste of a perfectly
cute girl. Why would she be a Jesus freak? So
finally there's a break in the conversation. I introduced myself.
Nothing came of that, No, oh, I'm Greg whatever. And
so a couple of days later, I'm I'm walking across
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my high school campus and I'm kind of looking for Chrissy,
like where is she? Is she with those Christians? And
I see them on the front lawn and they're singing
songs about Jesus. I'd never seen them all together like that.
And there's a reason for that. I found out later
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after reading Lonnie Frisbee's autobiography, that they normally meant in
the science room for Bible studies, and Lonnie would come
from off campus. He was a pastor at Caffrey Chapelain
and teach them. But the air conditioning broke that day
and it was a hot day, so they decided to
meet outside. That's so amazing because I wouldn't have gone
into a room. I wouldn't even have known where to go.
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But because around on the front lawn, I'm walking along
and I see them out there, and so I sat
down far enough away where I wouldn't be thought of
joining them, but close enough where I could eavesdrop, because
I always was an observer of people, you know, trying
to figure people out. And I looked around, and you know,
I wanted to dismiss them all as crazy people. But
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the problem was there were a couple of them that
I knew from before, a couple of them and I
used to party with, and I knew their life had changed.
I knew, in other words, they were normal people who
had become Jesus freaks. And that intrigued me. But there
was Chrissy too, and I'm sort of looking at Christy
and I'm looking at the other kids and taking it
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in as they're singing songs about Jesus, and for the
first time it thought crossed my mind an alien thought,
and the thought was simply this, what if it's all true?
And what if what they believe is real? I thought
there's no way. And the reason I said there's no
way is because all the things I'd been exposed to
is a child made me so cynical and hard. I
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just thought, no, this is too good to be true.
And then that thought comes back, what if it's all true?
I thought, no, there's no way it could be true.
Then this guy gets up to speak. Lonnie Frisbee Off.
You saw the Jesus Revolution film. There was an amazing
portrayal of him by actor Jonathan Rumy, who pleads Jesus
on the chosen And so Lonnie, the real guy, stands
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up and he starts speaking. Now, the first thing that
strikes me about him is he looks like Jesus. His
hair is long, he's got the beard, and I'm going, wow, okay,
look at this guy. He kind of reminded me of
that portrait of Jesus on my grandmother's wall. I'm seventeen
years old at this point. And he begins to talk
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and I don't remember what he said except one statement.
Not often is the case, isn't it had so many
people say, Oh, I heard you preaching, and I came
to christ and I said, what was I talking about?
I don't know what the topic was, but you said
one thing. And it's always like this, one little thing
to get people so often, And that's how it was
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with me. Lonnie said, Jesus said, you're for me or
against me. So I looked around at the Christians at
Jesus Street. He said, thought there definitely for him. I'm
not one of them. Does that mean I'm against Jesus?
In fact, as much as I knew, I believed in Jesus,
you know, when I was in trouble, I called out
to Jesus. He was my god of choice. I didn't
(30:19):
know anything about him, but I did believe he existed
somehow somewhere. I just didn't know how to come into
a relationship with him. So you're either for me or
against me, therefore him, Wait, does that mean that I'm
against him? Then I thought, I don't want to be
against Jesus. And then Lonnie said, and if you want
(30:40):
to ask Jesus Christ to come into your life, get
up and walk up here, and I'll pray with you.
And a little bunch of kids got up and walked forward.
I hung my head down, thinking there's no way I
would ever do that in a million years. Next thing,
I knew I was up there. I don't even remember
walking up there, but I was there. And so there
I am standing with these other kids and he starts
(31:01):
his prayer. I remember that a girl in my rye
I praise this prayer and she is weeping. Another person
on my left, after praying their prayer was laughing with joy,
and I felt absolutely nothing. And I thought, it figures
God skipped me. You know, God said no. And I thought,
(31:23):
I don't think I'm the religious type. I don't even
think this would take with me. Well it took all right,
but it took a little time. So this is a Friday,
and we had plans for the weekend, and our plans
were to go into the Artica Mountains and smoke some
weed and take Lleste. So now I'm a Christian, I thought, okay, whatever,
(31:46):
let's go do what we're gonna do. So I have
my little baggy filled with marijuana, a little pipe, and
I felt like I wanted to be away from my friends.
I didn't want to be with them. I said, I'm
gonna go sit by myself. And I sat on a
rock and I'm filling my pipe with weed, getting ready
to smoke it. And that same still small voice I
(32:09):
had only heard hours before spoke to me again and say,
did you hear an audible voice? Greg? Not that I recall,
but as clear as day, something said to me, you
don't need that anymore. And I sensed God was talking
to me, and I thought, I said, God, if you're real,
(32:32):
I don't know how to come into a relationship with you.
I don't know what to do next, but I'm gonna try.
And I took my bag of weed and threw it,
and I took my pipe and I threw it. And
then I go back to school on Monday and some
guy sees me from a distance and he yells up,
Brother Greg. Who is this guy? Brother Greg's calling me
(32:52):
brother Greg. I don't even know him. He runs up
to me, Bro, Praise the Lord. I'm thinking, okay, whatever, Bro,
praise God. I didn't even know how to react to
language like that. Hey, Bro, I saw that you came
to Christ the other day. I'm kind of defensive. Yah yah,
what he goes, Bro? I got you a Bible listen,
(33:14):
I want to give you this Bible. And he gives
me this big bible, all beat up, very used, with
popsicle sticks glued together in the shape of a cross.
Now remember I'm a designer, I'm an artist. This is
like esthetically offensive. But I said, oh thanks, okay, yeah, bro,
(33:34):
read the Word of God, read it, okay. I just
wanted this guy to go. I thought, guy's crazy, And
now what do I do. I have this giant Bible.
So I had this coat, and I remember it was
a thick cordroy coat, sort of Dwardian style that was
popular back then. I tried to put it in my pocket,
but my pocket was too small, so I ripped my
(33:55):
pocket to put the Bible in there. I didn't want
to be seen carrying a Bible. See, I hadn't accepted Christ,
but I wasn't ready to be known for that yet.
So I go to my friend's house. Now my friend's
house is walking distance from our school and we would
literally go there every day at lunchtime and get high.
So I hadn't seen these guys since I made that
(34:17):
commitment to Christ. So I walk up to the house
and I think I can't walk into the Bible. So
I pulled the Bible out of my jacket pocket, and
he had a planner in front of his house, and
I kind of shove it in the bushes and I
walk in, Laurie, where are you been nowhere? What have
you been up to? Nothing? Hey man, we got some
(34:37):
acapulcal gold. You want to smoke it? Acapolca gold was
a strain of marijuana back in those days, and normally
I had have been like yes. And my reaction was no, no, No,
I don't know. I do not want to smoke anything.
What's wrong with you? Nothing's wrong with me? Why are
you acting so word? I'm not acting weird, very defensive.
(34:59):
So what was happening was I am now a child
of God, But I don't know how to react to
all these I know I don't want that stuff anymore.
And all of a sudden, the front door bursts open
and this guy's mother is holding my Bible with popsicle
sticks in the shape of a cross. She says, who
does this belong to? Every eye in the room went
(35:21):
to that Bible, and then they went to me. Somehow
they connected the dots. I said, that's mine. What is that?
Lourie it's a Bible. What it's a Bible? What it's
a Bible? And one of my friends actually said, oh,
Praise the Lord, brother, Greg, are we going to be
Christians now? And I said no, I'm going to hit
you in the mouth, so shut up. You know, I
(35:41):
hadn't read the Bible yet, so this is all new
to me, and so I take the Bible and they
start mocking me, making fun of me, and it was
actually a really good thing because I saw them for
what they were and I left. Okay, those are not
my friends anymore. But these Christians they're a little too extreme,
especially the guy that yelled at me and gave me
(36:03):
the Bible. I don't want to hang out with them either.
I'll just do this solo all by myself. But soon
I found myself going to their meetings because I was
drawn to it and I wanted to learn more. And
I'm starting to get a little more comfortable. And then
this guy comes out of the blue. Never met this guy,
never even saw this guy. His name was Mark. He goes, hey, Greg,
(36:24):
my name is Mark. Yeah, hi Mark, you know I
want to take you to church with me. I said,
oh no, that's okay. I go to the little Bible
study here at school. No, I want you to come
to church with me. It's called Calbrey Chopel. I said, no,
I don't really want to go. He goes, yeah, where
do you live? I need your address? So no, I
don't want you to take me to church. That's okay, No,
(36:44):
where do you live? The guy wouldn't take no for
an answer. He was persistent and the best way possible.
Next thing I know, Mark's in front of my house
and we're driving to church. So we get to church.
Now the discomfort I felt around this little group of
Christians is now multiplied one hundred times because Calbrey Chapel
is in the throes of the Jesus movement. Packed out,
(37:08):
kids sitting in the floor, kids sitting and overflow outside,
people everywhere. I literally walked up to the entrance and
I thought, I don't want to go in this place.
Let me explain. It was almost like there was too
much love there. In fact, some girl I didn't know
comes up to me, throws her arms around me, Praise
(37:29):
the Lord. I love you, brother. I'm thinking I don't
even know you. Now. Let me explain. My mother never
hugged me. She never said she loved me, so it
was alien for me to express anything loving to anybody.
I felt love for people. I loved my mom. I
took care of her, but I never verbalized it. So
(37:50):
they have a stranger saying I love you. I was like, oh,
And so I was relieved to find the place was
packed and there was no seat. There's no seats. And
someone in the front row who goes to my high
school recognized me and says, Grant, come on up here.
So the next thing, I know him in the front
row and okay, So I'm just standing there and they
(38:11):
start singing songs together, songs I'd never heard before, but
they were beautiful songs, and I was kind of caught
up in it, going wow, I've never seen anything like
this before. And then the preacher comes out and it's
not Lonnie, who I thought was cool and I kind
of related to him. It's this guy. They tell me
his name, Chuck Smith. He's actually the pastor of the church. Now,
(38:33):
Chuck looks like wait, it looks like one of your
teachers at school, or maybe the principal. I had an
issue with authority figures. I resented them. I was always
defiant of them, and Chuck walks out, and I was
kind of like a brother, here we go an adult figure.
I don't want to hear what some adult has to say.
But there was something different about Chuck. He sat in
(38:54):
a stool and he opened his Bible up, read it,
and started teaching from the Bible. Next thing, I knew
it was really enjoying it. And I was hearing things
that never heard before. And the next week I was
at church on my own, and I was at church
as many times as I could go. I couldn't get enough.
Now I'm over that discomfort and now I'm like, I
(39:16):
want to know everything I can know about this. So
Mark would take me home to his family and they're
a very sweet Christian family, and I remember one night
after dinner, we're talking and they mentioned the rapture and
I said, what's a rapture? They said, oh, that's when
Christ comes to us. And they tell me about the rapture.
I couldn't believe this, well this could happen, and I'm
(39:37):
hearing all these things for the first time. It was
so exciting for me and so exciting to me. And
now I can't get enough. And now I'm starting to
grow spiritually. So I'm still in high school and I'm
sitting in my art class and the teacher says, can
we have an assignment for you? You have to draw
(39:58):
a comic book. Well, that's all I did was draw
comic books and create comic adventures, and I've done a
lot of that. But then I thought, well, now I'm
a Christian, maybe I should do a Christian comic book,
you know, and try to express my faith. Because back
in those days, they would give out little booklets called
tracks trcts, okay, and many of them were kind of
(40:21):
like these hellfire and brimstone tracks and meant to scare people.
And I even remember reading a couple of them before
I was a Christian and laughing at them and dismissing them.
I thought, I want to do a little track that
someone won't throw away when you give it to them.
It might be a little bit fun, but I want
to put the Gospel in it. And so I drew
(40:43):
this out and I turned it in and then I thought,
I'm going to go over to Chuck Smith's house and
see if he wants to print this. I don't know
where I got the audacity to go to Chuck Smith's
house and do this. But I did it. So I
walk over, I knock on his door. Chuck answers, hello, Hi,
I'm Greg Laurian. I go to your church and I'm
a cartoonist and I just did this drawing and it's
(41:07):
based on one of your sermons that you gave last
Sunday that we talked about the woman at the well
on John for and drinking of the living water. And
so the title of this little book that is living Water.
And I thought, I don't know, you might want to
print it. And Chuck looked at it and said, could
you reformat this? And he told me the size to
format it in. So I went back and readrew it
(41:28):
again to fit the size, and it was printed. And
I was so excited when it was first published. I
think we printed I don't know, maybe a thousand, maybe
ten thousand, and we started giving them out. They disappeared
so quickly. Then we went and printed more than it
was one hundred thousand, and then it became a million.
(41:49):
So I just got a letter now. Actually it was
a comment in my social media and a young lady
who was living in Guam, she was ten years old.
She said someone gave me one of your living water tracks,
and I read it as a ten year old, he
gave my life to the Lord. It is now fifty
five years later and they were still walking with Jesus.
(42:09):
And I heard a lot of stories like that about
how God used this little track. So that was my
first entrance into sharing my faith. I never aspired to
be a public speaker. I was more I love to
do art. I like to work behind the scenes, so
this was not something I ever considered, like, maybe I'll
(42:31):
become a preacher one day. As a matter of fact,
when I was a kid, we'd hang out a big
crona beach down in Newport Beach and there was some
preacher that would come down and yell at us kids.
I remember he was dressed head to toe in black.
He had a black brimmed hat, black coat, black pants,
and I remember he'd be sweating, telling us to repent
(42:54):
of our sins. And I thought, as I stood there,
my t shirt, my board shorts, why would anyone do this?
Why would you want to stand out in the sun
and yell about Jesus? You know, So the thought of
me becoming a preacher was not an appealing thought. But
one day when I was down at the beach, I
was given sort of a glimpse into my future. Okay,
(43:17):
so I'm a new Christian at this point, I've drawn
the living Water track. I've never preached a sermon. In fact,
I had the fear of preaching this sermon. I had
the fear that I might be in line at a
market and God would say, preach the Gospel, and that
was so terrifying to me. I was talking to people
about Jesus, I was sharing my faith out and about
(43:38):
wherever I went. But I think that calling was coming
on my life, and I wasn't quite aware of it yet.
So there was a baptism down there at Pirate's Cove,
and somehow I got my times mixed up and I
missed the baptism. And so there was some kids sort
of hanging around still in little groups. And there's one
(43:59):
little group of kids and they were singing and playing
guitar or someone had a guitar and they're singing. And
so I sat down with them and my heart starts beating,
like I need to share something from God's words, something
i'd read that day. Remember, I'm not a preacher, I'm
not a pastor. Not a teacher, just a Christian going
to church. But I thought I need to share what
I learned from Scripture. So when the song ended, I said, hey,
(44:23):
I had something I wanted to share with you. And
I just shared my little thought from the Bible. And
after I was done, I remember thinking, Oh, Lord, I'm
so thankful I obeyed you. That's so great you let
me do that. Oh yes, Lord, use me in any
way you want to use me. And while I'm talking,
a couple of girls joined our group, and one of
them leaned over and said, hey, Pastor, could you baptize
(44:47):
these girls? They missed the baptist and I said, I'm
not a pastor. I I can't baptize someone. Oh okay,
And then I just sensed the Lord leading me to
do it. I thought why not. I said, well, I
guess I could baptize you. Okay, let's go. So we're
leaving Big Corona Beach. Now we're making a way over
the Pirates Club. You have to climb over these rocks
(45:08):
and then you go down these steep stairs and you're there.
So we're making our way over there. And so I
have this little group of like, I don't know, maybe
fifteen maybe twenty people following me, and I'm thinking to myself,
how did I get myself into this? Like what am
I doing? I don't even technically know how to baptize somebody.
And so we're walking along and we climb over the
(45:30):
rocks and we go down to the beach and the
kids are standing in front of me, and I look
up and people are up on the rocks and they're
looking like they're looking down at me. And I looked
up at him, and as clear as day, God spoke
to my heart and said, preach the gospel. The thing
I had feared was happening. The thing I did not
want to do, I was being asked to do. But
(45:52):
strangely I had a courage and a boldness to do it.
And so I just said, well, you're up there watching,
probably wondering what we're doing down here. We're going to
baptize these girls because they put their faith in Jeez.
This is the next thing, you know, I'm telling them
how to put their faith in Jesus Christ. And then
next thing, you know, I'm literally saying and if some
(46:13):
of you up there want to come down here and
give your life to Christ, come on down and some
people came and I prayed with them, and it's almost
like I stepped outside of myself and I was saying
to myself, what are you doing? Who do you think
you are? You're not Billy Graham. This is crazy, But
I'm still doing it well while I'm thinking these thoughts.
(46:33):
And so I take the girls into the water, and
literally I didn't know how to baptize a person. I
never stopped and you know, really looked at the technique
of it. But I managed to baptize them and the
others that had prayed. And I left the beach that
day thinking Wow, God, thank you so much for all
(46:54):
of that. And I remember thinking, I wonder if I'll
ever do that one day. I was sort of like
giving a glimpse into my future. You know, like when
you go to a movie and you watch a trailer,
and a lot of times the best parts of the
film are in the trailer. In other words, a trailer
is better than the movie. It's sort of like I've
was shown a trailer of my future, like this is
(47:15):
what you're going to do one day. But it didn't
happen immediately. In fact, it didn't happen for a little
bit of time, but I was given a glimpse into
what I would ultimately end up doing, which was preaching
the Gospel and teaching the Bible. So listen, God wants
to use all of us. Some of us are called
(47:37):
to be preachers, others are not. But we're all called
to share our faith. We're all called to discover, cultivate,
and develop the spiritual gifts that God has given us
and use them for His glory. And everyone has something
to do. And I want to encourage you to say, Lord,
use me. You know there's a great evangelist from days
(48:02):
gone by and his name was Dial Moody and said
this to him, and it really challenged him. The guy said, Moody,
the world has yet to see what God can do
in and with and through the man who is totally
committed to him. And Moody said, I want to be
that man. Would you be that man or that woman
(48:23):
and say, Lord, here I am, send me here, I am.
Use me. If you're faithful in the little things, God
will open up greater opportunities for you. I remember early
on when I was getting in a taste of preaching
and was very anxious to get started. I went into
Chuck Smith's office, and I said, Pastor Chuck, I want
(48:45):
to do whatever I can here at church, however you
can use me. I want to serve the Lord. And
Chuck said, okay, Greg, well go see Pastor Romayne. And
I was hoping Chuck might say, oh, preach on Sunday morning.
I don't know what I was thinking, but so I
met Pastor Romayne. Pastor Romayne used to be in the
Marine Corps and his job was to get recruits into
(49:09):
shape to proper marines. And so I said, hi, Romayne.
Chuck sent me to see you, and I told him
I want to serve the Lord and do whatever I
can for God's glory. And said, okay, here, give me
a broom. Start sweeping under that tree, and when you're done,
go over into the bathroom and clean those toilets. And
(49:31):
I think Romayne knew exactly what Chuck was doing. And
basically I did free janitorial work for them for a
little while. But I was okay with that because I
just like hanging around the church. But what they were
looking for was will this kid be faithful in little things?
Because if you won't be faithful in little things, why
would God give you greater things to do. So I
(49:53):
remember sometimes they would leave for lunch. The pastors are
all go to lunch, and they would allow me to
sit in the office and answer the phones and offer
a counsel and prayer. I'm probably around twenty years old
at this point, nineteen or twenty. So someone would call
and Hi, this is Calvid Choppel, and yes I have
(50:15):
a question, and I would do my best to answer
their questions, and then the pastors would come back and
get off the phone. Greg. You know, so I just
literally hung around waiting for something to do. And one day,
I don't remember if it was Romayne said to me, Greg,
we need a new doorknob for the church, for the
front door of the office. Go and get a doorknob.
Here's some petty cash. I felt like there was an
(50:38):
omission from God. I went down to the hardware store
and to understand, I'm not a mechanical person. I'm not
good with the most basic things. Remember, I didn't have
a dad growing up, so I didn't know anything about
common things that guys learned about from their dads. And
I never knew there were so many doorknobs one could buy.
I didn't take the time to measure the whole or
(50:59):
what kind of hardware I needed to buy. I'm literally,
God give me wisdom, which doorknob do I buy? You know?
And I finally bought one. I went back. It was
a wrong doorknob. But you know, it was just being
willing to do whatever needed to be done. So when
someone would call and say, yeah, we need somebody to
do a Bible study and a convalescent home like three
(51:20):
hours from here, can you send someone? Those are the
jobs I got. I got the jobs the pastors didn't
want to do. Another time, someone said, someone wants one
of the pastors to come and speak at this mental
institution to the people there, and so I got that job.
And there was this little Bible study happening up in Riverside. Now.
(51:43):
It was started by Lonnie Frisbee when he was still
with Calvin Choppel, but he had left at this point,
and this study was quite big. It was at Episcopalian
church called All Saints Episcopalian Church, and it was being
passed off from pastor to pastor. One pastor would do
it one week and then another would do it the
next week, and it was shrinking and getting smaller. And smaller.
(52:06):
So one day the pastors are talking in the room
and I was in the back room with them. I
was not on staff. I just hung around. In fact,
i'd set up my drawing board and I was doing
freelance graphics to support myself, giving new meaning to the
term starving artists. But I would do whatever needed to
be done. And one of them said, well, who's going
to All Saints this week? And one said, well I
(52:27):
went there last week, and the other said I'm going
there next week. Well who's going to go? Well, Greg,
why don't you go? I was like okay. So I
got in my car, my trusty little Corvert, not Corvette Corvert.
Corvets were cars that a guy named Ralph Nader wanted
taken off the road because they were so dangerous. They
(52:50):
put the engine in the back and they crumpled up
in a collision. I knew the shrim experience when I
rented a car and pretty much crumpled up the front
of my Corvert. But anyway, I would drive my Corvet
with retread tires, you know, would retread tire. That's when
you take a tire that's going bald and you put
a tread on the outside, you glue it on and
(53:11):
these retreads would come off my tires. Console anyway, driving
my little corvet up to Riverside and I show up
and I go up to some older gentleman and I said, Hi,
I'm from Calviy Chupple. I'm here to speak tonight. My
name is Greg Loory said, no one told me someone
was coming from Calviy named Greg Lory. Yeah, well, no,
(53:34):
I'm the guy, and I'm going to speak. And he says, well, no,
I don't think so you're not going to speak. No
I'm supposed to speak. Why don't you just go sit there?
I sat there as a little humiliating, and he realized
nobody else was coming, because indeed I was the guy.
Says okay, you can speak this one time. So I
(53:55):
got up and I spoke. It went quite well, and
so well in fact, that he said one should come
back next week. And then I went back next week.
And none of the other guys wanted to take this
thing over. So I just kept going, and before I
knew it, it was growing from a Bible study into
(54:15):
what really was a church. I didn't go to planet
a church. It was never my hope to become a
pastor of a church. In fact, I thought my calling
would be to be an evangelist and to travel around
and speak, because I was doing that already at this
point with some of these Christian bands. They would play
and I'd speak, So I thought that's what I'll do,
(54:36):
And to be a pastor of a church was not
something I really aspired to, but people were calling me pastor.
So I started looking for someone to take this new
church over, and I couldn't find anybody, and it just
dawned to me that God is calling me to be
a pastor and an evangelist. So that became the church,
(54:56):
and I'm still pastoring today fifty years later, called Harvest
Christian Fellowship in Riverside. So I didn't start church intentionally,
but it was indeed one of the first startup churches
out there. But if you look at my life, as
I said earlier, that passage that says the lines have
(55:17):
fallen in familiar places, one thing led to another. God
was directing me from the earliest days of my childhood
when I sat on my grandmother's home and stared at
that portrait of Jesus, to the day when I was
called to preach the Gospel of Jesus. So I hope
this encourages you, and I hope that you will pray
(55:40):
that God will use you, and that you'll discover His
plan for your life.
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