It’s Already Waiting

0:00:00 – (Steve Gray): Hey, have you ever had anybody steal from you? Or maybe they just treated you wrong and feel like they stole your innocence or they stole your childhood? Whatever. I’m going to teach you how to get over that and make everything that’s happened in your life a gift to everyone else. So when it’s a gift, then you get the blessing of the Lord for being a giver. On the next More Faith, More Life.

0:00:20 – (Steve Gray): Podcast, you were made for more than the status quo. I’m Pastor Steve Gray, and this is the More Faith, More Life podcast. This podcast is for Christians with an ambitious heart who want to be more for their family, do more with their career, and see more of God’s promises in their life. I’ve spent many years as a worship artist, minister, nonprofit leader, bold truth speaker, and most importantly, father and spouse.

0:00:45 – (Steve Gray): When I was in my early 40s, I was craving more from God and more from life. I’d done everything I was supposed to do. My life was good, but it wasn’t good enough. So I spent the following years diving into the Word of God and searching for the biblical principles that would bring me closer to God and help my purpose and life flourish. That’s what I want to share with you. In every episode, you’ll get practical tools based on real life experiences that you can put into action to redefine your faith and ultimately your life.

0:01:20 – (Steve Gray): So if you’re ready to do more, subscribe to More Faith, More Life and hear an unfiltered biblical truth every week. It’s time to be and experience more.

0:01:32 – (Steve Gray): Hello everyone and welcome to another More Faith, More Life podcast. I’m Steve Gray. Here’s Kathy with me and we’ve been just visiting with each other, getting kind of warmed up with what we want to share with you today as Kathy is putting together stories and history. Legacy, I guess it’s a real popular. Legacy is a popular word today. I see it around. And so she’s been putting together some legacy ideas, some stories and that. So she’s going to help guide me through this so that I can build your faith on many, many stories and experiences that I’ve had. And I’m used to teaching the Bible. I like talking about the Bible, but I also know I’ve had so many people tell me stories, not just mine, but every stories are so important. And Jesus was a storyteller because sometimes he’d do a parable, sometimes he’d just tell a story and then sometimes he would be in between. He’d quote some scripture in between there.

0:02:22 – (Steve Gray): But most of what he said, he said, let me tell you a story. Or it’s a story now, like the, the kid with the two fish and loaves of bread and they fed the 5,000. Okay, that happened, but now it’s a story. So stories are important. So what do you want to talk about today?

0:02:38 – (Kathy Gray): Well, what I want to do is continue to use these podcasts now to build on your legacy and the way first I started out going, you know, you’re a great preacher and how you’ve changed the world and the churches literally with your preaching of the word and how God formed you over the years with that. Then I started realizing, but you can’t just bring a great sermon and changed lives. And it’s because you have great character and you have great faith and I’ve watched you develop it for so many years.

0:03:12 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, I’ve changed, continue to change over the years.

0:03:15 – (Kathy Gray): You constantly, I mean, you’re still constantly changing. And I thought what a great challenge to bring to people. So I’m actually believing God’s going to help me write a book from these stories. But then as I’m working on the book, in each chapter I go, I think of so much else. So it’ll be a full book, just as your life is a full book.

0:03:38 – (Steve Gray): Isn’t it funny too, even that we sit down and you talked about this the last couple of days to me again. And even in our discussion I’ll think of another story that I thought I forgot all about this story. And they’re miraculous, they’re supernatural and they’re.

0:03:53 – (Kathy Gray): Natural and they’re natural, natural stories too. So many wonderful stories.

0:03:56 – (Steve Gray): So where do you want to start today?

0:03:57 – (Kathy Gray): It’s fun to sit with you and do that because finally I say quit telling me any more stories. I want to focus on these. Well, I want to start, I want to talk about living by faith on the road as a full time ministry. And I’m remembering the very first time other people actually saw and acknowledged our entire family.

0:04:17 – (Steve Gray): Our faith walk.

0:04:18 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, our faith walk. So they acknowledged it. And I thought maybe today you could start with that story and explain that and where our picture ended up and also then flow on into some of the ways. And a big thing that was really traumatic to me back then that you helped me through, you know, an experience at, at a church.

0:04:37 – (Steve Gray): At a church. Yeah, I can get there. Yeah, that’s an offering story. Well, of course we, we were school teachers in the same school. I mean she was in kindergarten teacher and I’m the music teacher in high school. But it was a connected building. So we got to go to work every day and it was a wonderful life. And then I got saved and filled with the spirit still. We stayed another year. Yeah, and another wonderful life.

0:05:03 – (Steve Gray): But then God began to direct us into preaching. And I had no idea I was ever going to do that. Why did I go to school four years? Well, you went four, I went five. Took me five to get mine, but I got that extra degree.

0:05:16 – (Kathy Gray): You had that extra degree?

0:05:18 – (Steve Gray): Yeah.

0:05:18 – (Kathy Gray): So anyway, so it took you an extra year.

0:05:20 – (Steve Gray): I. God began to stir us and I began to make phone calls to my family. They were all musical. We were musical. Obviously we weren’t preachers yet, but musical and talk about maybe God wants to do something with us. So we ended up moving back to my hometown and we started singing together as a family. Including you, of course, and including my mother, who’s a singer too, for years. And so all of us in there and then everybody that married somebody was in the group, right?

0:05:46 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:05:47 – (Steve Gray): And so we started that and we sang around the area and different things. Okay, so we did that for a year. You taught one more year. I worked in the Methodist church for a year. And then we started getting like so busy enough that we couldn’t hardly go to work. Especially you, like on Monday morning we’d be out late Sunday night because we go minister in some church and we travel in our own cars and then get back so late and all of a sudden we can’t do this anymore.

0:06:14 – (Steve Gray): So on September 1st of that year, my whole family, two sisters, two husbands, right? Two brother in law, two sisters, brother, wife, mother, you and me, all of us at the same time. We all resigned from our jobs at the same time. The same day, the same time. Well, first that made news in the Sedalia newspaper where we lived it. They said they wrote a whole article on our family. And then later we actually went into the full time ministry.

0:06:48 – (Steve Gray): We started booking churches and going places. We were still driving our own cars. We didn’t have transportation yet, but. And then we were voted our family, my family. Our family was voted the Missouri family Outstanding, Outstanding family. Missouri Family of the year. Yeah, right. We got of the year because we walked by faith, we were singing, we do our jobs, and it was a great story. And so we were the number one family of the year in the state of Missouri for whole year.

0:07:17 – (Steve Gray): So that got us going and we worked hard to try to just send things to churches and churches would invite us and then we’d sing at this church. And minister, and then another church would hear about us. And we just kept as busy as we could.

0:07:32 – (Kathy Gray): And our income was dependent on most churches.

0:07:35 – (Steve Gray): Yes. And get this. We had no money when we started. So how are we supposed to set a budget? Well, there were 10 of us, right?

0:07:44 – (Kathy Gray): Six households.

0:07:46 – (Steve Gray): What?

0:07:46 – (Kathy Gray): Six households?

0:07:47 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, six households. So everybody, no matter their age or experience, we all got the same amount of money. Do you remember what it was?

0:07:56 – (Kathy Gray): Like, zero.

0:07:57 – (Steve Gray): No. Everybody got $100 a week. Yes, that was our goal, $100 a week. So you and I would get 200 a week together. My mom got only 100, but we didn’t know how else to divide it up. And that was our $100 a week, I think. Or every two weeks. I can’t remember. But anyway, it was. It was challenging.

0:08:15 – (Kathy Gray): It was meager.

0:08:15 – (Steve Gray): Yes. And we owned a home by that time, too, in. In Smithton. Then we had moved to Smithton. Then after about that same time, we went full time anyway, so. Yeah. So we would go and we do what they used to call love offerings. And you always knew you were in trouble when a love offering came. When the pastor comes out and hand you an envelope and says, I wish it. Remember that, though. I go, this is not good, is it? I won’t. I’m not going to even open this.

0:08:43 – (Kathy Gray): Or when they would get up to take the offering, and they’d say, all right, we’re going to take an offering now for this wonderful music group. But the first part of the offering, you know, the lump sum that comes in, we will take off the top to pay for all of our expenses.

0:08:59 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And they take. And they pay for their expenses and give us leftovers. And we had a big group, you know, it’s a big group lot, you know, drums and sound. We brought our own sound system. Drums, guitars, everything. Microphone.

0:09:12 – (Kathy Gray): Just fueling up a Greyhound bus was quite expensive.

0:09:15 – (Steve Gray): Yes, for then. It was more now, but it was even expensive then. Okay, so we. So what? She was visiting with me before that. She got so upset. So we went to minister someplace. I don’t remember where I should. I probably could remember because I can still see us leaving the church, but I can’t quite remember where it was. But anyway, we had some friends showed up to wherever we were ministering, and they did the offering. Everything was fine. It was a good service, I guess. And we probably did several days. We usually did several days at a church. Not sometimes one service.

0:09:48 – (Kathy Gray): We would do, like, two or three.

0:09:50 – (Steve Gray): Services a lot of times, and then they give us the offering for Two or three services, you know, but sometimes one. But anyway, we had some friends afterwards come up to us and say, oh, we love it so much. We love you guys so much. And then they whisper to us, we. We just want you to know we put $2,000 in the offering for you tonight. Oh, great. So then we pack up. It took an hour to set, two hours to set up, and an hour to pack up.

0:10:12 – (Steve Gray): So it was three hours just for that, without the service. And so we packed up, packed up the bus. We’re leaving, and now it’s time, you know, we open the envelope up. And it was $250 for three days. I think it was three days, whatever, 200.

0:10:26 – (Kathy Gray): We really needed that money. And we’d gone into that church praying, you know, and thank you, God. We know you’re going to meet our need here using this church.

0:10:36 – (Steve Gray): So we got $250, and we opened it. And there our faces. And Kathy’s face expressed it.

0:10:42 – (Kathy Gray): Yes. And you and I, we saw the check.

0:10:44 – (Steve Gray): We saw it first.

0:10:46 – (Kathy Gray): So, you know, my face, Kathy is.

0:10:50 – (Steve Gray): Expressing quite a bit of emotion at the front of the bus. Like, this is not right. And it wasn’t right. And they stole from us, really, because how many other times does that happen? We didn’t know what the offering was, but friends let us know.

0:11:03 – (Kathy Gray): Well, that guy would say, this whole offering is going to jubilation.

0:11:06 – (Steve Gray): And it didn’t.

0:11:07 – (Kathy Gray): And these friends had driven for miles around. They were not congregants of that church. They were friends that were learning our ministry and loved it. And they drove miles and miles to get there.

0:11:19 – (Steve Gray): So Kathy’s pretty upset. We needed the money, and we knew we’d been robbed, basically. And so we’re on the bus, we’re traveling. We hadn’t gone very far yet. And I can just see myself sitting there with you, and you’re upset. I don’t know what you wanted me to do. I don’t know if you wanted us to turn around and go punch him in the nose or what.

0:11:36 – (Kathy Gray): I’m not sure. That’s what I kind of wanted you to do, something like that.

0:11:40 – (Steve Gray): Here’s our lesson of faith that we guided ourselves from that moment on. I said, Kathy, we can’t do this. We can’t. They said they took it, but we cannot live with them being thieves and robbers. We can’t live with it.

0:11:54 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:11:54 – (Steve Gray): We can’t live and let it eat at us.

0:11:56 – (Kathy Gray): Right?

0:11:56 – (Steve Gray): So I said, here’s what we’re going to do right now. We did it right there. On that spot, I said, so in the name of Jesus, I give them that offering. It’s my gift. I said, I give it away. And I said, you know what just happened? I said, not only are they free of their crime, I guess they’re free. Yeah, we’re free.

0:12:15 – (Kathy Gray): Right.

0:12:15 – (Steve Gray): But we just blessed somebody. We turned it. We blessed them. Yeah. We turned it into a blessing. And when you. When you. When you give, you get a. You’ll be blessed.

0:12:26 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:12:27 – (Steve Gray): So I said, we’re going. It was not stolen. We give it away. It’s our gift to that church.

0:12:32 – (Kathy Gray): Right. And you know, I was thinking of that when Jesus talked about if. If someone comes to you and says, you know, walk. Walk one mile with me. Well, then you walk two. Or they force you and they say, take here, I’m going to take your cloak. Well, then, I don’t know. Jesus said, give them your sandals. Or.

0:12:50 – (Steve Gray): No, give them. Yeah, give them. Give them another one.

0:12:53 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, and just give back. When they’re trying to force you and trying to rob from you, then you. You take the upper hand.

0:13:02 – (Steve Gray): So we turned it into. So it just lifted off of us, didn’t it? Like, you know what? We just blessed that church.

0:13:08 – (Kathy Gray): I was mad no longer.

0:13:10 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. Although you still remember it today.

0:13:12 – (Kathy Gray): I’ll never forget that you.

0:13:14 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, she forgave, but she didn’t forget. Okay. So. So. But that. That started. That’s going to happen. It happened other times to us, too. We knew it happened.

0:13:22 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:13:23 – (Steve Gray): And when. And like you said, they would tell us when we arrived, the whole offering is for you. But then when they got it in front of the church, like, maybe they advertised on the radio or a newspaper or something. Well, they take money out for advertising. They take money out for food that they provide. They said they’d say, we’ll feed you. What? They took money out of the offering to feed us. So we actually fed ourselves.

0:13:44 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, we were feeding themselves. Kind of funny.

0:13:47 – (Steve Gray): We learned.

0:13:47 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah. But do you know, I remember then, after that, released off of us, and at least, you know, I was loving that guy. Anyway, then we went down the road, maybe to the next state or something, to the next church. And that church was more than generous. They were obedient to God. They were extravagant in their giving to us. And I see God made up the difference.

0:14:13 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. That might have been that wonderful church outside of Louisville. I can’t remember the name, but wherever Colonel Sanders lived, his house was there. The original chicken place was there. And you could. He was famous then. And. And by the way. We ministered with Colonel Sanders, too. We met him and ministered with him, and he. He used RPA because it was set up. And we ministered and told stories, and then he told stories and. And. But he was from the little town that was. We were. We were at the Louisville Symbol of God Church then.

0:14:45 – (Kathy Gray): And do you remember Colonel Sanders after we sang? He said, you sing like angels.

0:14:53 – (Steve Gray): I don’t remember.

0:14:54 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, he said, you sing like angels.

0:14:56 – (Steve Gray): And he wore his white suit and his bow tie and everything. He was just as cute. Yeah. And we spent time and visited with him, and that was in the Louisville assembly of God Church. The other assembly of God church. I can almost say the name is outside. But they were wonderful, wonderful people to us.

0:15:10 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, they were. And so God uses people along the way, and he’s done it for so many years now. And you’ve lived by that principle. And there’s been other times over the years when it’s been a lot bigger thievery from us.

0:15:24 – (Steve Gray): Yeah.

0:15:25 – (Kathy Gray): And I.

0:15:25 – (Steve Gray): That seemed big.

0:15:26 – (Kathy Gray): That seemed humongous.

0:15:28 – (Steve Gray): It was not big. Now we know now it’s not big. What we do with now, you know.

0:15:31 – (Kathy Gray): A lot of robbery now.

0:15:33 – (Steve Gray): Oh, you know, that is Some of God Church where Colonel Sanders grew up, his hometown. I’ll think of it in a second. That’s the church where I went and I told the pastor that Kathy had a puppet ministry, and she was really shy. I said, she’s so shy, though. But if you coax her, she’ll do her puppet.

0:15:50 – (Kathy Gray): I can’t believe this.

0:15:51 – (Steve Gray): And he did. He got up during the service. Kathy has no idea what’s happening.

0:15:54 – (Kathy Gray): I told you once, never say that again.

0:15:57 – (Steve Gray): I thought it was another story. I was never to say it again. I thought it was stories about old girlfriends and stuff. I was never forced.

0:16:04 – (Kathy Gray): No, it was this. I told you.

0:16:07 – (Steve Gray): No, the one you said, never say again is when we were in Utah and I went down the mountain and took the break off and just coasted.

0:16:14 – (Kathy Gray): A hundred miles, moving and living.

0:16:16 – (Steve Gray): She said, never say that story again.

0:16:18 – (Kathy Gray): And all the wonderful.

0:16:20 – (Steve Gray): Well, anyway, the pastor got up, but the pastor got up during the service and began to coax her to do her puppet ministry. Till I finally had to say Kathy’s face. Said it all.

0:16:30 – (Kathy Gray): Said, sorry, says it again.

0:16:32 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, okay. So anyway, she doesn’t have a puppet ministry, but I convinced the pastor she did, and he introduced her as the puppeteer.

0:16:39 – (Kathy Gray): And my son in law, J.D. king, remembers hearing that story over and over. And now he’s going to repeat that to me. Also. Okay, I forgive you.

0:16:48 – (Steve Gray): All right. What do you want to talk about?

0:16:49 – (Kathy Gray): So I just want to say, even, you know, we learned in those days to, to trust God in the big and in the little things. And he. We kept seeing and you kept believing for even in the small areas. And I remember one story probably around that time when, when God had been so good to us that we were all making our $100 every other week and we were able to stop at a Dairy Queen at a DQ out in the middle of nowhere, and we said, yay.

0:17:22 – (Steve Gray): I can still see it. I can still see it.

0:17:23 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah, can you see? I can see it.

0:17:24 – (Steve Gray): It was out in the middle of.

0:17:25 – (Kathy Gray): Nowhere, and we just wanted. We were craving Dairy Queen and we were craving a blizzard and things like that. But when we got out, we all checked our little pockets and each one of us had just enough cash to reasonably, and according to our conscience, purchase a small cone soft serve, you know, like the one dip. But, you know, we never felt cheated. We didn’t feel like, oh, man, I really could be using a blizzard. How about I just have take everyone else’s dollars? And by this blizzard, we were so thrilled. And in fact, I remember your sister Nancy and I, every once in a while we talk about it.

0:18:05 – (Kathy Gray): We say, remember that day? And we were so happy. We were so thankful. We felt so blessed. But that’s, you know, you taught us, if, you know, live, be thankful, look for God in the big things, in the little blessings, and be thankful. So I remember that was one of our on the road faith trip examples that I remember. I don’t know if you remember that.

0:18:30 – (Steve Gray): Oh, yeah, I remember that. Well, how about we. You had to apply your faith when you and my sister accidentally took showers in the men’s restroom.

0:18:39 – (Kathy Gray): See, that’s another thing I asked you never to tell.

0:18:42 – (Steve Gray): They were in there and they didn’t know it. My other sister goes up and says, you too. You two get out of there. You’re showering in the men’s restroom.

0:18:50 – (Kathy Gray): While we were at one of those.

0:18:51 – (Steve Gray): KOH campers, the door flew open and out they came. Kathy’s kicking a suitcase in. That’s a fact.

0:18:57 – (Kathy Gray): Well, we were so thankful because we’d traveled all night. We finally, in the middle of the night, we pulled into a KOA campground.

0:19:02 – (Steve Gray): The blessing here, though. What great memories we have.

0:19:05 – (Kathy Gray): I know. What great memories of living by faith.

0:19:07 – (Steve Gray): Yeah, and that was faith, too, because we. We had to go to these cheap.

0:19:10 – (Kathy Gray): Camps while we were in there taking a shower.

0:19:14 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. And I didn’t get in trouble either, because I got in the pool and it was closed.

0:19:20 – (Kathy Gray): I climbed over the stories, all kinds of stories.

0:19:22 – (Steve Gray): Okay, what’s next? What’s on your mind?

0:19:24 – (Kathy Gray): So good. And, you know, I think I’d like you to just share again and kind of recap those lessons that you have learned over the years you have not taken from me. We give. I give to you. And what kind of lessons in your character have you learned with having that.

0:19:45 – (Steve Gray): Attitude when I still have that attitude?

0:19:49 – (Kathy Gray): Yes. Yeah, you have.

0:19:51 – (Steve Gray): Because when we were ministering in the small town and it made such a hit, you know, it made world news. Newsweek and Time crowds came and more money came. But I was so careful.

0:20:07 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:20:07 – (Steve Gray): I stayed on the country pastor salary.

0:20:11 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:20:12 – (Steve Gray): I didn’t raise my salary because I noticed other people were growing and stuff, and their money kept coming up and they kept making more money. And I thought, well, if we’re going to be in the newspapers, which we were, and reporters were there all the time, they’re going to. They’re going to think it’s a. They’re not going to understand. They’re going to think it’s a money. So in a way, all that money came in. We used it for revival, and that’s good.

0:20:33 – (Steve Gray): But I kept my salary, the country preacher salary, and it wasn’t that much for the sake of the Lord, but it also, in my brain, I’m going like, I give it to you. I give it. I’m not saying I’m being cheated. I should be making more money. This isn’t right. I’ll try to. I didn’t. I had no grudge. I said, I had that attitude. I’m going to give this to the kingdom of God for the sake of the reputation of the revival, which was called, People know, maybe the Smithton outpouring, which I was so thankful when I typed on in chat. I typed revivals of the last hundred years.

0:21:08 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:21:08 – (Steve Gray): And Wells came up, Azusa street came up, and I kept going. And then there was the Smithton outpouring, and then there was the Kansas City Revival of 2008. We were there twice in chat, did that. That was a wonderful moment. But we kept it clean and good. We got good press. We very seldom got criticized. I mean, every revival was criticized somewhat, but it was that attitude is the money. We can’t. I can’t put the money first because money is a master.

0:21:36 – (Kathy Gray): Yes, it is.

0:21:37 – (Steve Gray): So. So we’ve. We’ve operated that way still. At our church. We, you know, when we built the church, we wanted to not go into debt. Okay, but, you know, I don’t. I guess I can tell this story quickly. We were so new in Kansas City that no one would loan us money anyway, right? Nobody would give me a cent. And, and I bought the land with every penny we had, right? 62, 63 acres, had horses on it and all that kind of stuff. I got the land, but then we didn’t have any money to raise the building up. So I thought, well, you just go, you go. Everybody gets loans, you know, you just go to a bank. I went bank after bank.

0:22:15 – (Steve Gray): Nobody in Kansas City would loan me a penny because they didn’t know me.

0:22:18 – (Kathy Gray): You were from the country.

0:22:19 – (Steve Gray): So I went back to the country, guys, and there was a country where we used to have our checking account. Told them what we wanted to do. They went and had a big board meeting and they loaned it. I think I told the wrong number last time. I think eight, but it was actually 600,000. I might have said eight last time that somebody asked me. They loaned us the biggest loan they’d ever made in that bank.

0:22:39 – (Steve Gray): $600,000 to me, who had nothing. And yet I had to be by faith because I had to sign a life insurance. I had to take out a million dollar life insurance policy on myself or they wouldn’t loan me the money. Our house, our home, my cars, every penny, everything I had to sign over to the income of the church. If anything, you know, they wanted to make sure they got their $600,000 back.

0:23:10 – (Steve Gray): So I did it. So nobody else paid for it. I, I did it all on my own. And. But yet we were able to pay the $600,000 back in 18 months and we were able to raise up the building, the shell and all that and get going. All it did is buy the metal. We had to put it up ourselves and we hired some people to help us. But anyway, paid it off in 18, 18 months, if I remember right.

0:23:31 – (Kathy Gray): Amazing.

0:23:33 – (Steve Gray): But I was willing to put my fortune, my life, into building a church. Nobody else did it. I did it and I put everything. But, you know, we got it back. And that was a faith move.

0:23:44 – (Kathy Gray): That was a faith move.

0:23:45 – (Steve Gray): And you know, even though I did that, Kathy, I had no fear. You know me, right?

0:23:51 – (Kathy Gray): You didn’t.

0:23:51 – (Steve Gray): I had no fear that we were going to fail. No fear. What if we don’t pay it back? No fear. What if it takes us 10 years to pay 600 nothing? And since then. So we paid off the $600,000 and since then. That was in 2001. Wow. Since then. Revive church. Now the name we have paid. We never borrow. We never owed any. We never owed a debt to anybody. Since then, that was. The only debt we had was 600,000. And that’s the last time we.

0:24:17 – (Steve Gray): We borrowed money. Never borrowed since. And built buildings and did things by faith.

0:24:22 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:24:23 – (Steve Gray): And. And. And realize that sometimes it goes easy. Sometimes it doesn’t go so easy because you’re at the mercy. How. How would everybody listening like to have your income at the mercy of volunteers? You know, they give or they don’t give.

0:24:37 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:24:37 – (Steve Gray): That’s the life we live.

0:24:38 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:24:39 – (Steve Gray): That’s why we. That’s why we live by faith.

0:24:41 – (Kathy Gray): That’s why we live by faith.

0:24:41 – (Steve Gray): But everybody should live by faith.

0:24:43 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:24:43 – (Steve Gray): And don’t put your trust in money or in your wealth. Don’t put it in horses is the Bible. I don’t trust in chariots or horses, but I remember the name of the Lord our God. So we traveled all those years. We traveled in a Greyhound bus for about over seven years. We made that our second home. We had a home, but we back and forth and we traveled around the United States and we did pretty well. We did pretty well. We never made much money.

0:25:09 – (Steve Gray): You know what? I don’t think we ever changed. $100.

0:25:15 – (Kathy Gray): Maybe in our Jubilation days.

0:25:16 – (Steve Gray): Yeah. Maybe the last few years, we. Well, actually, Kathy and I, then we left. We started traveling in a car then because we were just the two of us.

0:25:26 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:25:26 – (Steve Gray): And we would drive places, just the two of us. So I have no idea what happened there.

0:25:30 – (Kathy Gray): And there’s. There’s more. Many more stories from that era, too.

0:25:33 – (Steve Gray): Yes.

0:25:34 – (Kathy Gray): Okay.

0:25:34 – (Steve Gray): Yeah.

0:25:35 – (Kathy Gray): So maybe we need to say that what I admire as the legacy of your faith is from this one portion of our lives was that you learned how to live by faith. Trust God in every circumstance. Be a giver. Release if you think you’ve been being stolen from and give to people as you’ve been given to and keep going on with the Lord.

0:26:03 – (Steve Gray): And the same thing. It doesn’t have to just be money. It can be people listening to things. That was unfair. People. That’s not fair. That’s a word that everybody likes. That’s not fair. Okay.

0:26:13 – (Kathy Gray): Yeah.

0:26:13 – (Steve Gray): Give it away. Let loose of it. Say that doesn’t matter. Whatever they took, whatever they did, whatever they said, whatever happened, I let it loose. I give it to you. I give it away. I give it to the Lord by faith. And then it’s your gift to release people.

0:26:27 – (Kathy Gray): That’s right.

0:26:28 – (Steve Gray): And forgiveness is so powerful because you’re releasing people. You’re giving them the gift. You’re forgiving, but you’re giving them the gift of forgiveness.

0:26:35 – (Kathy Gray): Right.

0:26:35 – (Steve Gray): So I give you the gift of forgiveness.

0:26:37 – (Kathy Gray): Yes.

0:26:37 – (Steve Gray): So now, now I’ve been generous. And when you’re generous with your life, God always pays back.

0:26:44 – (Kathy Gray): Amen.

0:26:45 – (Steve Gray): That a good way to end today?

0:26:46 – (Kathy Gray): Shall we end now and say, see you next week?

0:26:49 – (Steve Gray): Next week we’re going to tell some more stories and move along in the life a little bit farther along and in the legacy I guess you’re writing. Yeah. Okay. Till next time. Bye. Bye.