Thoughts From Kyle Idleman

Dear Friends,

As a pastor I do enjoy hearing people’s conversion stories. Therefore, I thought I would share one I came across this week. It comes out of Kyle Idleman’s book, “Not a Fan.” That is, no just a church goer, or someone who claims to believe, or an admirer of Jesus – but someone who has been changed, by the Spirit of God, into a devoted servant and committed follower of Jesus. This is the story of a man who thought he had it all, till it was all taken from him. His name is Gary Polsgrove. This is his story. Enjoy.

NOT A FAN
"Guilty." Sitting in front of the judge's stand, I started to cry. I heard the judge say something about jail time, and I sobbed even harder. An officer handcuffed me and took me to jail. I spent a few days there, trying to figure out what had happened to my life.

How did it come to this? I had reached the pinnacle of my career as a pilot for UPS. I had everything going for me. Having left my wife in 1993, I didn't have anyone weighing me down. I had money, girls, friends, a great job - everything a guy could want. My life was all about saying yes to myself.

But then I got caught at work stealing airline tickets. I didn't know how much my job had meant to me until the night I was fired. When I went in that night, they didn't just take my badge - they took away my entire identity. All these years, I had let my job define me. Losing that job felt like I was dying.

But just because I had lost my job didn't mean I was giving up my lifestyle. Hard-headed guys like me don't go down easily. Without a job, I started missing child support payments. They gave some warnings that I better pay up, but before being Sentenced, I still thought I was untouchable. That day in court was a major wakeup call.

After my jail time, l stayed in a halfway home. I lived out of a duffle bag. I was allowed to work, but I wasn't allowed to drive. I rode the bus all around. I ended up working at a bagel shop. Some days, l'd run into co-workers from UPS. I can't describe the shame l felt.

I know what I’m about to say doesn't make any sense, but it was during this time when everything I had worked for was dead, and my old life had died, that I started to finally discover true life. With nowhere else to turn, I returned to the faith of my youth. I began praying honestly and searching for comfort in the Bible.

For the first time Jesus became real to me. I started saying no to me and started saying yes to Jesus. Soon after leaving the halfway home, I got a great job and started climbing the corporate ladder. My success was back. But I was afraid the old me would come back, too. I wanted to make sure that the old me stayed dead. I got on my knees and asked God to guide me and I committed to living completely for him.

These days that continues to be my prayer. Now I mentor young men at church who are looking for spiritual guidance. God managed to take my mistakes and turn them into a priceless tool for keeping the young men I mentor from making the mistakes I made. I am also working with incarcerated men. It has become my passion to bring God's hope and healing into the broken lives of these men. Only God could take that kind of mess and turn it into a message about grace and redemption. My name is Gary Polsgrove, and I am not a fan.”

Gary Polsgrove

I find it interesting that so many people come to Christ as a result of a traumatic crisis. I guess our pride has to be humbled. We need to see our need. We must get to the end of our rope. We need to realize we don’t have the resources to overcome the sin that drives us within. We need a Savior. Something many will not admit until they are forced to by the circumstances of their life. But if that is what it will take, that is what God will bring into our lives – for our good. As one friend once called it, “The Brutality of Grace.”

It’s an odd way of bringing us to our senses. You would “think” that when God blesses a person and everything goes their way, their response out of gratitude would be to love and follow Him. But in my experience with people, it’s usually just the opposite. It is pain, defeat, trial, trauma, and life somehow falling apart as we do it our way, that brings people to their senses. As St. Augustine once prayed, “Lord, give me no rest until I rest in you.”

I have prayed that prayer for others so often: “If that’s what it takes Lord, to get them to see their need for you, then be merciful and give them no rest until they rest in you.”

Living in His All-sufficient Grace, Pastor Jeff