Ignite with Barry Meguiar Podcast

00:03
Well, I guess for me,

00:05
I wasn’t always somebody who shared my faith, because for a long time in my life, I didn’t have any faith. I didn’t understand that the world or that there was a God who had anything positive for me,

00:18
I was, I was sleeping under a bridge for quite a few years, in parks. I would go from garage to garage, and it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t, I didn’t do anything. I was 12 years old, and I had brothers and sisters, and I was looking out for them. Make a long story store. My parents were drug dealers and, and that was the life we lived. And I remember that I was probably around 14 years old, and my pastor was preaching like pastors do, and he said, If and he was preaching to the congregation, but it was one of those times where, you know, he was preaching to you and, and he said, If you want what these people have, it’s Jesus. It’s not money, because we certainly didn’t have money. It’s not

00:59
cars. We didn’t have cars. It’s not a nice home. We didn’t have that. It’s Jesus. And so I knew immediately that I needed Jesus. All of the sudden, I had a faith that I can now share. And so from then on, I decided that I was going to live for the Lord, and I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know I didn’t know what it meant to that I was going to, all of a sudden, share my faith every day, or when I met somebody who was in a situation that I was that I can give them a hope or give them a joy that I used to not have, I didn’t know what that looked like, but as I began to read in the word and I began to meet people on a daily basis, I understood how those two can go hand to hand. One of my favorite stories, one of the my favorite memories of sharing my faith was with this woman. Her name was Eleanor, and she had been about 87 years old, and we were in San Francisco in a park, and we saw her. It was me and a couple of my friends. We saw her sitting on a bench by herself, and she looked so depressed. But at the time, I was probably about 20 years old, and that’s quite a big age difference from 20 to 87

02:03
but I couldn’t believe that this is how somebody of an old age is supposed to look. I couldn’t believe that it had to be something more than old age that made her look so depressed as she was sitting on that bench. And so we went up to her, and we sat down with her, and I asked her what her name was. I just said, you know, what is? What’s your name? Can I ask you your name? And she said, It’s Eleanor, and I’ll never forget she was so sweet, but so broken. And we began to have conversations. And, and she was waiting for her husband at the time, who was inside of this science building, and he worked there, and she was waiting for him to get off work, and he is not he wasn’t retired yet, she explained, and I couldn’t help but to notice that she was just so down, so depressed. And so we began to talk and and we began to talk about the Lord, and it amazed me to know that she had never, ever heard about who Jesus was. At 87 years old, she had no idea. And this is in San Francisco. She had no idea who Jesus was, and so I began to explain who he was and what he’d done in my life, and how He’s changed me and he’s given me a joy. And I could see her just kind of nodding as she was understanding and she was contemplating, do I think I want that? But I’ve never heard about this. And so I asked her if she would like to accept Jesus in her heart and the joy that he would like to fill her with and she says, Yeah, well, I think I would, and that’s perfect. Let’s pray. And so I prayed over her, and I explained to her that, that Jesus had died on a cross, and it was for her, and that if she believed in and confessed it, that she could have this joy, that that that that he had for her. And so she did that, and immediately her eyes lit up. It was like for the first time she could breathe again, or for the first time she saw color around her. It was an amazing experience, and I’ll never forget it. Eleanor, who was 87, if you’re a believer, go out there and share your faith. Anybody could do it. If I could do it, I was a kid living under a bridge who had no faith, and I could do that, then surely you can do it too.