Greg Laurie: The Jesus Revolution

Takeaways: Kirk Cameron is joined by Pastor Greg Laurie to discuss revival and the Jesus Movement from the 1960s to the 1970s.

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Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

So I think in the church restoration revival revolution for us is getting back to God’s original template of the early church that turned the world upside down.
Greg. Uh I love what we’re talking about today.
We’re gonna talk about revival. We’re gonna talk about the Jesus revolution and you were a part of that back in the day.
And we so desperately need a revival today within the church, within the country. Uh People need personal revival.
But before we talk about revival, I would love to hear your personal story of faith.
How did you come to Jesus? And what was the background behind that? Right.
Well, I was uh born in 1952. My mother was beautiful.
She literally was a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe. She was married and divorced seven times.
Uh She was a raging alcoholic and when I say alcoholic, she passed out every night.
Uh she would get in big drunken brawls with her husbands and boyfriends in between.
So I had to grow up really quick. You know, I live with my mom for a time.
I lived with my grandparents. I was sent to military school.
So it was a very unusual upbringing but it got me searching for answers at a very early age where some kids are just probably wondering if they’ll make the football team.
I’m sitting around wondering about life. Like, what is the meaning of life?
It has to be better than this fast forward.
Now, it’s late sixties, the drug culture is coming on strong and like many people in my generation, we believe the lie that drugs would expand our consciousness and make us more aware in one sense.
They made us more aware of how miserable we were.
So I started smoking marijuana pretty much every day, taking LSD and that went on for maybe a year and a half.
And, and I had what is called a bad trip, which means you kind of flip out.
You, you, I was running down the street screaming because I heard a voice saying to me you’re gonna die.
I’m just like a 16 year old kid at this point.
And I looked in the mirror and I saw my face melting and I saw my skull exposed and I was so scared.
And so I thought I don’t wanna do drugs anymore. I hate this. I hate this life. I’ve chosen.
So I, I was on a high school campus at Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California.
And so the Jesus movement was happening.
So I transferred from high school, another school in, in the Newport area over to Harbor and I was warned when I got to the campus by my friends watch out.
There’s a lot of Jesus freaks on this uh on this uh campus.
And I said to them, the last thing you’ll ever see is Greg glory becoming a Jesus freak.
Famous last words. So one day I’m walking across the campus and I see this girl that’s kind of attractive and a friend of mine was talking to her and I thought I’d walk over and talk to them.
I wanted to meet her and I was waiting for a break in the conversation.
She had a textbook for class and a notebook.
Then I saw she had one of those black books with gold pages and ribbons.
I went, oh no, she’s a Jesus freak. And I literally thought what a waste of a perfectly cute girl.
Right. So the next day at lunch time, I’m walking across the campus looking for this girl and I realized now it wasn’t that she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, but I saw Jesus in her and it was like a light to me and I saw her sitting with the Christians on the front lawn of our high school campus.
So I sat down close enough where I could sort of eavesdrop on their conversation, but not like as a part of the group.
And I watched him singing these songs about God.
And that was very cynical because of the life I had lived but yet I wanted something more and I looked at them, I thought these people are crazy.
But the problem was I knew a couple of them and I used to party with them and I’d seen the change that had happened in their life, so I couldn’t dismiss them and say that they’re all crazy.
So then this new thought occurred to me. What if they’re right and what if it’s all true?
And what if you can have a relationship with God? I quickly dismissed it. There’s no way that’s not possible.
The life I’ve seen the life I’ve lived now. That’s like a fairy tale.
Then I tried the thought on one more time. But what if it is true?
And I’m sort of contemplating this and this guy named Lonnie Frisbee is like this hippie evangelist.
Honestly, he looked like Jesus, his hair was parted in the middle.
He had a beard, he stands up and he begins to speak and he really got my attention.
And it was one statement that jumped out at me when he said Jesus said you’re for me or against me.
I looked around at the Christians, I thought, well, they’re definitely for him. I’m not one of them.
Does that mean I’m against Jesus. You know, Kirk. I always believe in Jesus.
I mean, I believed he was there somewhere. Uh, I’d seen all of his movies.
I admired him as a figure, but I never thought of him in a personal way.
And then this guy Lonnie says, if you want you ask Christ to come into your life, get up and walk forward and some kids walk forward.
I thought there’s no way I would ever do that. Next thing I knew I was standing up there.
I don’t even remember getting up and walking there.
Just boom, I was there and I prayed this prayer and I asked Christ to come into my life and that was 1970.
And that was the day that my life changed radically from that moment forward, that hasn’t changed.
And I can, I can relate to, to some of the things that you’re saying when I came to faith in Christ and my understanding of my need for him grew and deepened as I read the Bible and as I began to respond in faith, uh One of the things that happened to me as well was I began to be more interested in evangelism and obviously, evangelism is at the center of your heart.
What drew you into that realm of ministry?
Well, I think um I, I can’t explain it exactly because I wasn’t the person in class who liked to be in front of the class.
I wasn’t a person who liked to give speeches.
I was more of a troublemaker, a joker and a mocker and, and a cartoonist.
And my sole aspiration in life was to become a professional cartoonist.
I wanted a comic strip in the paper and I wanted that probably from when I was around 11 or 12 years old and was working at it already.
So when I became a Christian, I saw these like, uh the what are called tracks.
But, you know, things that would be handed out in the day and they were all just to me, they didn’t connect because I even read some of them as a non Christian when I was getting high and laughed at them.
So I thought I wanna draw something that will connect with people.
So I drew this little booklet called Living Water.
And I went to Chuck Smith who was a pastor of Calvey Chapel said, Chuck, I was listening to one of your sermons the other day at church.
And I drew this little cartoon booklet that shares the gospel and he liked it so much.
He had me redraw it in a proper format to be printed and that was printed.
And so that was my first step into evangelism.
And so I thought great, I’m just gonna do uh drawings and give these out to people and, and you know, live that way.
But then I began to realize that God was giving me a gift to communicate and to speak.
And I found I was finding more joy in talking with people than sitting behind a drawing board all day and, and trying to come up with a new idea.
So this is when I, you know, God gives us gifts, we he gives us talents and he gives us gifts, supernatural gifts aren’t always related to who we are as a personality.
God may call the most unexpected person to do the most unexpected thing like me, being a preacher and being a teacher, I, I’m a bible teacher and I yet I was the worst student.
But at the same time, this is something God called me to do. So that’s how it started.
You mentioned earlier when you were sharing your faith story uh about the Jesus movement and uh some, some call it the Jesus revolution.
Those who aren’t familiar with that. Can you explain what is the Jesus revolution?
Well, there’s this time magazine cover, um the Time Time magazine dubbed it the Jesus revolution back in the day we called it the Jesus movement.
And I think actually Time magazine understood something even we didn’t understand this was a revolution.
You know, back in the late sixties, there was a lot of talk of revolution.
The Beatles even had a song revolution.
And the idea was, you know, overthrow the government, young people have all the answers, let’s change everything.
And so when things are really dark, God sent a spiritual awakening, there was a time magazine cover in the late sixties, it was a black cover with reversed out red letters with an ominous statement.
Is God dead question mark. A few years later that cover comes up Jesus revolution.
What a difference a few years make and what a difference a spiritual awakening means. And that’s what happened.
God sent this awakening this revival.
So when I became a Christian in 1970 I didn’t know what an awakening was.
I didn’t know what a revival was. I didn’t even know what church was.
And so when I went to church for the first time at Calvey Chapel in Costa Mesa, which was in the throes of the Jesus movement.
I walked smack dab into the middle of a spiritual awakening and it wasn’t until later I realized it.
But Time magazine very astutely described it as a revolution.
So I think in the church restoration revival revolution for us is getting back to God’s original template of the early church that turned the world upside down.
And, and that Jesus revolution was really taking place strongly here in Southern California.
And you were a part of that?
Do you have any favorite memories of what was going on during that time that you think back to? Yeah.
Well, you know, to me, it was like there was just a very special feeling when you walked into it.
Um No one was ever late for church.
Everyone was early because there were no seats and he walked into this tiny little sanctuary that was overflowing with a lot of young people.
But people of all ages, there was sense of uh of anticipation excitement, uh contemporary worship music was being born right there because it really didn’t exist prior to this time.
It was like, you know, your basic hymns and maybe your occasional sort of sing along song, like you would do it at camp.
But we didn’t have what we would call worship music as we know it today.
Like, what we would sing a song by Chris Tomlin or Phil Wickham or, or all these songs we sing today that didn’t exist yet.
Uh For that fact, contemporary Christian music did not exist.
Most churches would have a key uh piano on one side, an organ on the other and the occasional odd acoustic guitar, you know, but all of a sudden we have electric guitars, amplifiers, drum kits.
And I watched this happen before my eyes.
So it was very exciting to us and, and it’s the, the memories are very strong still and, and I pray that this happens again.
I know it would feel different because we’re in a different time culturally.
Yet I do find parallels between the time we’re in right now and the early seventies really strong parallels.
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