From Poverty To Purpose, Pastor Steve Gray’s Transformation Journey

About the host: 

Steve Gray is the founding and senior pastor of Revive Church  KC. He has been in the full time ministry for over 40 years and  was launched into national and international recognition in the late 1990’s as the leader of the historic Smithton Outpouring, and again in 2009 when he lead the Kansas City Revival which was televised nationally on the Daystar television network. Steve is also a veteran musician, songwriter, recording artist and published author. His books include When The Kingdom Comes, Follow The Fire, and My Absurd Religion.

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Transcript:

TRANSCRIPT:

[0:00:00]  Steve Gray: Hey, have you ever felt like an ant in a giant’s world?

[0:00:03]  Steve Gray: Well, keep listening because I want to.

[0:00:04]  Steve Gray: Turn your small world into success.

[0:00:08]  Steve Gray: 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.

[0:00:33]  Steve Gray: When I was in my early forty s, I was craving more. 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.

[0:01:07]  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.

[0:01:20]  Steve Gray: Hello everyone. I’m so glad you decided to join me for more faith and more life. Well, have you ever wanted to be somebody else? You just thought, I want to be somebody else. I don’t want to be me, I don’t want to be me anymore. Well, you need to listen to everything I’m going to say today because we have an amazing story about somebody that said just those same words and something great happened that transformed that person forever.

[0:01:51]  Steve Gray: So here’s this amazing story and we love amazing stories in America. We like the American dream, right? We like the rags to riches or poor boy makes good. Well, this could be your story too. Listen carefully. Well, I knew a young man, he was 17 years old and senior in high school and he had to go begging for food at 17 years old and from his other classmates. And even though he was underage, he felt he found work in bars and nightclubs and he used that money as he got lowly, saved it up and put himself through college in bars and nightclubs and then finally graduated.

[0:02:30]  Steve Gray: He didn’t have a lot of money, but he did make it and he graduated from college and then he got married. He got married like everybody and he became a high school teacher. Well, that was a big accomplishment for him. Imagine that. And at that point he felt like, well, I’m doing okay. And as a newlywed, they’re a cute little couple. But you know what happened? Their marriage began to tumble. Just things began to go wrong and tumble. And even to the point where the word divorce came out. All of a sudden, the word divorce happened and came out and was being considered.

[0:03:05]  Steve Gray: And you know how that feels. You should never say the word divorce. We put that out since that time. But you know what? It turned out to be good news because this couple, they felt so bad about things as a young couple that they decided, maybe we need something else. Maybe we need God. And they turned to God and they turned to Jesus. And you know what happened after that? They decided, you know what?

[0:03:29]  Steve Gray: We’re going to serve Jesus the rest of our lives. And so they were teaching, but they said, we’re going to turn to Jesus and we’re going to go into the ministry the rest of our lives. So they did. And you know what? Because of that decision, life became really, really good for them. And they found success and they began to tour and they be, you know, around the country and they sang and they preached, you know how it is, a touring bus. And wow, they got to do all those things. But after a number of years of touring and on the road, you can imagine they wanted to settle down.

[0:04:01]  Steve Gray: So they did. They settled down. And they settled down in a little country town, a little country town that was so small that the town wasn’t even on most maps. If you’re old enough to read a map to know there was such a thing as a map, well, the town was not even on a map. You couldn’t even find it on a map. And that’s where they decided to settle down, in this small town. And in that small town was a church that was empty.

[0:04:27]  Steve Gray: And they started opened up the church. It had been closed for years. And they opened up the church and they decided to be pastors of that church. And boy, what a challenge it was because the town was only just a little bit over 500 people. How can you be a pastor? Closed church, just over 500 people. But they decided they would, and they were going to make it and they weren’t going to go get jobs anyplace else. And so they were there and they did it. They did it.

[0:04:54]  Steve Gray: They were able to have a family income. They had their house and they had car payments and family, and they did it. And the church grew, and it became pretty good in church. And wow, you could just stop right there. You could just stop right there and say, wow, that’s pretty good for a kid that grew up in his high school years begging. He was a beggar for food. And now he’s in a small town and he’s a respected church leader. And we could just say, good, that’s the end of the story. That’s pretty good.

[0:05:28]  Steve Gray: Respected church leader, after all that, end of story. But guess what? That wasn’t the end of the story. In fact, it’s just the beginning because some years went by and some things in a small town, if you’ve ever lived in a real small town, guess what can happen? Yeah, you probably already know. Small town politics, rumors and division took over just out of nowhere. Where does it come from? But finally it got so bad that lawyers had to be called in to try to settle these things. And it was bad that settle these whisperers in small town, there’s so much whispering. Settle the whisperers.

[0:06:07]  Steve Gray: And it was. It got settled. It was taken care of. And the church was unfazed. And they just went on like nothing ever happened or anything like that. But you know what? The pastor didn’t go on like nothing happened. The church was unfazed. But I could say that preacher was phased. It affected him a lot because he was starting to think, you know, is this the way it’s going to be? Publicly, this preacher, he got up there and he continued to preach and put on a good face. You know how it is. But privately, he start going downhill. He’s dying on the inside, thinking, is this what I’m going to give my life to?

[0:06:42]  Steve Gray: There I was begging for food and thinking, this is the worst it could get. But now this is even worse. You’ve given your life to something and you gave it to God. And you’re being good and you’re trying to help people, and then this happens. Whisperers and politics, and you got to call attorneys in to fix what? Maybe this isn’t what I want to do after all. In fact, that pastor began to think, maybe this is a sign from God.

[0:07:11]  Steve Gray: Maybe it’s a sign from God that he’s finished with me and maybe it’s time for me to do something else. And suddenly then everything about his life began to crash in on him. He’s thinking, like, maybe this church, maybe the church is my fault. Maybe if I was a better pastor, these rumors or these gossipers or the whispers wouldn’t have happened and the lawyers wouldn’t have had to be called in. Maybe I just wasn’t good enough pastor. And then he’s thinking like, well, maybe I’m not that great of dad or maybe I’m not that great of husband.

[0:07:43]  Steve Gray: Maybe I’m not that good at all. And maybe I’ve kind of just turned into a failure. People do that and they start thinking, what do I do? And he start thinking, oh, maybe I just need to escape. If I could just escape. If I could just run away, if I could just disappear. Have you ever felt like that life got so bad that, oh, if I just could fly out of here. Well, one Sunday he’d had enough. He thought, I can’t do this anymore. So he got up and he preached that Sunday a very short amount of time.

[0:08:14]  Steve Gray: And guess what he did right in the middle of his sermon. He walked out. He walked out of the building, got in the car and left. He didn’t know where he was going. He did not know where he was going. But he also didn’t know that a transformation, remember, he said, I don’t want to be me anymore. A transformation that would be heard around the world was about to happen. Well, you may have already guessed by now that the man in the story yeah, you probably guessed it. How would I know so much, right? Yep. Because that young man that begged for bread was me.

[0:08:54]  Steve Gray: And now let me tell you the rest of this most amazing story. When I left, I headed south. I headed south because I’d heard about a church down towards the Gulf of Mexico. It was having these great services almost every night, and I thought, well, that’ll keep me busy. I can go to that. And I checked into a hotel, and I stayed in the hotel every day and went to the services at night. I didn’t eat. I didn’t talk to anybody.

[0:09:20]  Steve Gray: I felt nothing. Life went out of me. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t feel. I couldn’t laugh. When I went to the church services, I couldn’t sing. I sat there a total empty nothing. I felt nothing. Have you ever been there? That’s pretty bad. Pretty bad. And I would pray during the day, but I didn’t just pray with my head bowed and my hands folded. No. I prayed like a tortured man, like I was being tortured by something, pleading with God for mercy.

[0:09:49]  Steve Gray: Finally, two weeks passed, and after going, I felt like I’d been through the valley of the shadow of death. But two weeks passed and something gave way. Something gave way, and I started feeling like, Go back, go back. Something was, you know, go back. And so so I thought, I’ll go back. But I wasn’t going to go back and start over. I’m not going to go back and start over. Just go back, whatever that means. I’m going to go back.

[0:10:17]  Steve Gray: And what happened next would change my life and thousands and thousands around the world. I walked into that crowded little church, country church, and the music was playing. I felt nothing. I expected nothing. I thought, Why am I even doing this? It’s the same old church. And I’m not going to just go in and start over and pull myself up and go ahead and push yourself through. No, but I did walk in the building.

[0:10:46]  Steve Gray: And when I walked into the building, I took about eight steps, and suddenly, without warning and without any expectation, I was struck with a lightning bolt. It was so unexpected. I was struck like lightning from heaven. And it jolted me, and it shot me up in the air, and I jumped in the air, and I twirled around. And I’m not a twirler, I’ll tell you that right now. And it twirled me around. And you know what?

[0:11:11]  Steve Gray: I became a different person. I know that because the whole church saw me. My wife saw me, my kids saw me. I became a different person. And everybody knew because it didn’t take long, I looked different, I acted different, I preached different, I even being a musician, I even sang different. Everything about me was different. It was still me, but it wasn’t me. It seemed like all the me that I wanted to be was there, and all the me I didn’t want went away. But it was still me.

[0:11:42]  Steve Gray: Hard to explain, but it did happen, and everybody saw it happen. And what happened also was I became an effective person. I wasn’t just a preacher. Now I’m an effective person. What I’m saying is helping people and what people all of a sudden they wanted to hear what I had to say. I was a country preacher. Nobody wanted to hear me preach. Just this little group. All of a sudden people want to hear.

[0:12:04]  Steve Gray: They said, this man has been changed. He’s been changed drastically. God did something in his life. And people’s prayers were being answered quickly, and people were inviting me to go places and wanting to hear me. And all of a sudden, thousands, you can read about it, thousands started coming to this country church. Thousands would line up through the years just to get in the building. They wanted to hear me preaching. All of a sudden I’m launched from a nobody, nobody, just life was gone out of me. And suddenly I became a different person.

[0:12:37]  Steve Gray: And I’m launched into a national ministry. I’m on all the TV shows you’d be on. I’m launched into a national and then an international ministry. And then Time magazine shows up, and Newsweek magazine shows up and runs an art. How could this be? How could this be? And yet it didn’t happen. You see, I knew I needed to change. I knew that. And I knew that something was off, but I thought everything else around me had to change. And so I did what most you know, what most people do, I think, I don’t want to be me anymore, but things around me need to change.

[0:13:18]  Steve Gray: And so I’ll change jobs. That’s what people do. Like, I know something needs to change and I don’t know what to do. I’ll change jobs. I’ll change marriage partners, I’ll get a divorce and get another wife or get another husband, right? Change jobs, change town, change church. I’ll find another pastor. I’ll change something around me and hope that that’s the change I need. Certainly that’ll be it. And what happens is all the things that are inside you just go somewhere else with you because you don’t become a different person. You just get some freshness of other things.

[0:13:53]  Steve Gray: And so what happened to me though is I changed. And when I changed, I became a world changer. I became different. I became another person. That’s possible. And I want you to learn this so that you can be transformed, because you know this about yourself. You can try to be good, and it only lasts a little while. You can try to do better, and that’s good. Try to do better. That’s a good choice. I’m going to tell your family, disappointed them or whatever, even yourself or your boss or whatever.

[0:14:26]  Steve Gray: Okay? I’m going to do better. I’m going to try to do better. Okay. A little risky, but a good choice. Maybe you will. The old saying, I’m going to turn over a new leaf. I did that hundreds of times. I’m going to turn over a new leaf. And guess what I found? I was still a leaf. On the other side it’s still a leaf, but on the other side of my life, when I found this, I found there was an option that I did not have.

[0:14:53]  Steve Gray: I did not give this option. Change jobs, run away. Oh, you might want to know this. I had a plan, too, that I was going to run away to the jungles of Guatemala. Nobody would find me. I thought, don’t use your credit card. I’ve seen enough TV shows. They’ll trace it. So I’ll give cash. And I had a friend down there in the jungle. I’ll just go to the crazy things. I would have been the same me in the jungle, just less people or less things to worry about, right?

[0:15:21]  Steve Gray: So the thing I didn’t do is I did not put God in it that God could do. So I didn’t turn to God Bible, none of that. I did not. Even though I’m in the ministry, I’m a pastor. I’ve never seen anybody really change, not like that. And somehow, through God’s grace and mercy, I was transformed into another person. Well, it’s not so strange, really, that it’s just like, oh, it’s just him. Or maybe I don’t even know if I should believe this because I don’t think it really happens.

[0:15:51]  Steve Gray: Let’s go to the Bible real quick. There was a man in the Bible, whether you know your Bible or not, and his name was Saul. There’s a King Saul, and then there’s a Saul, a Jewish Saul in the New Testament. What a character. If you see the far out character, this man being me, begging bread, not having any money. I’m in bars, nightclubs, there’s fights. There’s all the lifestyle that goes with it. I’m living it well. Here’s Saul.

[0:16:17]  Steve Gray: He’s a good Jew, if you can say that. And he knew the law. He was so educated. But how this fit in? But he’s going around persecuting Christians, making sure they get thrown into prison, not caring. He didn’t mind if they even got killed. Some of them did. He was right there at the stoning of Stephen approving of the death of a Christian, and he’s on his way to get more Christians arrested and maybe thrown in prison. And maybe even killed. He’s on his way there.

[0:16:49]  Steve Gray: And as he’s walking along, suddenly a flash of lightning comes out of heaven, knocks him to the ground, and he becomes another person. I don’t think he even thought you could do that, that it could even happen to him. He had great education in God, but he didn’t know God could transform a life. Bang. Like a lightning bolt from heaven. And guess what? Days later, he’s recovering from this experience.

[0:17:17]  Steve Gray: And that persecutor that wanted to throw people in prison became the preacher who wrote most of our New Testament. One more Bible story that you know, if you know any, you probably know this one. There’s one of the Good Samaritan. I read in the newspaper. Somebody was stranded on the highway and somebody stopped to help him. They said they called him a Good Samaritan. So most of us know the story of the Good Samaritan. That a Jewish person got beat up on a road and thrown into a ditch in bad shape, maybe would even die.

[0:17:52]  Steve Gray: And a priest walked by and didn’t help him. And a man of the law, Levi, walks and didn’t help him. So he didn’t get any help from the people he should have got help from. Right? Some of the Jewish people didn’t want to help him, and there’s reasons for that. He was probably bleeding and in a bad shape. And if they helped him, then they’d probably get blood on themselves and then they have to go cleanse themselves.

[0:18:22]  Steve Gray: And just a lot of reasons that are going on probably in them. But either way, the people that should have helped him in spite of all that didn’t help him, right? So then a Samaritan comes, and the Samaritan and the Jews did not get along at all. There was a lot of hate and discord among them. And so the Samaritan comes and helps him and picks him up and fixes him up and puts him up in the hotel and says, I’ll pay for him and I’ll take care of him and all that. So the story is and so we get the Good Samaritan. So go be a good Samaritan, right? Go pick people up. Don’t walk by and not see them, right?

[0:18:58]  Steve Gray: And so that’s the story, and we get that out of it. I need to be a good person. I need to go help people. But we miss the other side of the story, which is true for so many people, because we should be good people and help people. But here’s the other side that might be for you today, if you’re ever in that position. I’m not that satisfied with who I am. I want to be more. I want to do more. I feel so stuck. I don’t want to be me because there’s a lot about me that’s stopping me being who I want to be.

[0:19:29]  Steve Gray: And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to change. I keep going back to my old ways. Listen to this. So the story of the good Samaritan, yeah, go do good. Go help people. Okay? That’s a big part of it. But there’s another part of it, you see, because my Sunday school teacher did that, taught me. They said, Go be the good Samaritan. My church teaches. My churches that I went to, they go be the good Samaritan.

[0:19:54]  Steve Gray: Okay? But one thing I didn’t realize before I can be the good Samaritan, I had to realize I was not the Good Samaritan. I was the man left for dead. See, that’s what I wouldn’t admit. I knew I had troubles. I knew I had to change. I knew something was missing. I was a pretty beat up person, but I wouldn’t allow myself to be the man in the ditch left for dead. And the moral of the story from that point of view is all the ways that I thought I would get help, which should have been like the priest should have helped, the Levite should have helped, the natural ways people should have helped. My religion should have helped. My church should have helped. All the ways that a normal person beat up, left in a ditch, should have got help, didn’t help.

[0:20:42]  Steve Gray: So all the ways I thought I was going to get help didn’t help. I didn’t get help that way. The lesson is this the Samaritan came and helped him. Yes, but the lesson is help came from an unexpected place and an unexpected person. Nobody would expect a Samaritan to help that Jewish person. The Samaritan should have walked on the other side of the road, and it should have been the Jews that helped him. Right?

[0:21:06]  Steve Gray: And that’s the lesson you need to get. You might be that person in the ditch, beat up. You don’t know how to change. You don’t know how to get well. You don’t know how to get to another place in life. You’d like to be more, more and more. You’d like to be better, better, but you don’t know how to do it. And you just feel like, I want to be somebody else. I need so much help. I need to improve. Just see yourself now, okay? Maybe you’re the person in the ditch because I was.

[0:21:31]  Steve Gray: And then open yourself up and say, maybe I need to let help come from an unexpected place. And for most people, that’s God, oh, they’ll pray a short prayer, but not a transforming prayer. It’s Jesus, the Bible church. They open yourself up because that happened to me, and I did not give myself that option. It came totally unexpected. And I want to encourage you. You can become another person. You don’t have to like yourself that much, and you don’t have to prove that you’re not that bad. I quit it. I quit.

[0:22:06]  Steve Gray: I’m not going to try to prove I’m not that bad. I’m just going to be that bad. I’m pretty beat up. And so I need help. I need help. And all the places I went to get help and all the things I thought that would help didn’t help. But help came from an unexpected place. And that’s the story of me being launched from nothing to something, from nobody wanting me. Nobody wanted to hear me preach to a national and international ministry till I was known all over the world an author, a singer, a writer, all those things.

[0:22:41]  Steve Gray: Who are you right now? Can you get where you are to another place? Absolutely. That’s why I want to help you be transformed, put more life into you, teach a faith that leads to more life, that leads to success, and help you understand you’re not where you have to be. You’re on a journey to become who you want to be, and you might even become somebody else. Right. So next week we’re going to talk about a whole lot of other good things. Have you ever felt like an ant in the world of giants?

[0:23:14]  Steve Gray: Yeah, kind of like we’re talking today. If you feel like an ant in the world of giants, you might just be in perfect position to be helped by God. We’ll talk about that next week. And so I want you to join me. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and I know I’m never going to back down, and I’m never going to change my mind. Till next time. Bye bye.