You’re Closer Than You Think

• I thought I’d tell you a little story. I couldn’t  remember if I shared it. My oldest son said he had never heard it. When I was in high school, right  after I got really fired up for Jesus Christ, I was running around telling everybody they  needed to be saved and they were going to hell and I wasn’t. So be like me.
• I was burning all my  Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses CDs and listening to Stryper. I burned my Pantera and went  over to Petra. If you’re in the subculture, you know. If you don’t know, you  don’t know. You don’t need to know. I would just tell people all the time… I was very,  very bold. Some would say zeal without knowledge, but I was excited, fired up. My dad wasn’t  in church at the time.
• He had been in church when I was a little boy. My mom always took us to  church, but my dad wasn’t in church at the time. He would go out and play golf on Sundays at  a little par 3 golf course and get drunk with my uncle. I think as sort of an atonement,  when I was getting ready to go to church, he would wake up early and cook us breakfast.
• So,  he’d be over there making some scrambled eggs and grits. If you don’t like grits, I don’t  need you as a member of Elevation Church. Then he would make, on occasion, some corned  beef hash, some fried bologna, but it was all because he felt bad because he wasn’t going to  church. So, he’d wake up early and cook for us, and then he’d go off to the golf course and  we’d go to church.
• That was going on for a little while. One Sunday morning…I remember  it really clearly…whatever came over me, I looked at him and said, “Dad, this breakfast  is great. Thank you for making it. But I want to tell you something.” I was only 16  or 17 years old, something like that. I said, “It’s not going to be long before God  is going to get ahold of your life.
• I’ve been praying for you, and God answers my prayers.  Pretty soon, you’re going to turn to the Lord, and it’s going to be crazy. You’re going to  be reading the Bible all the time and going to church. You’re not going to be just  cooking breakfast and going off. You can cook this breakfast today, but eventually, soon  and very soon, you’ll be going to church with us.
• ” I don’t remember if he said anything. He didn’t go  to church that day. He kept cooking, and I ate and went to church. It was about a year or more later,  when I had gone off to college, and I came back home to preach at Santee Circle Community Church  for a weekend. After I preached the sermon, my dad came down for the altar call. When I went down  to pray with him, he said, “Never stop preaching.