Willow Creek Church, a huge church in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, hosted three services on February 12th with Dave Ramsey as the key speaker. Over 20,000 people heard him tell his story (did I mention it’s a huge church?).
This was Part 6 in a series titled “The Family Series”.
To watch the video
To watch video of the entire message to go http://media.willowcreek.org/
You can also download the audio via their website, iTunes, and other media outlets.
The first 7 minutes of his message
Below is a summary of what was said in the first 7 minutes:
Did you guys see that? That’s what it looks like when a hillbilly hugs a viking (after Dave gave Bill Hybels a bro-hug).
Guys, I’m standing up here where Bill Hybels was just standing. This is a little intimidating. You see, I didn’t grow up in church. I got saved about 25 years ago, I met God and am still walking with him but I’m the guy who’s still grateful they put the words on the screen.
I didn’t know this stuff. The Preacher would saying stuff like “You know when they put Joseph in the hole” and I’d be goin’ “Who’s Joseph and where’s the hole”? I don’t know, I didn’t grow up like this. And here I am in Willow Creek. Wow. I feel like a wiener in a steakhouse.
(Dave leads in a prayer and invited God to be present while he speaks)
I grew up just outside of Nashville, TN where I still live now in a little suburb of Nashville called Antioch, TN. Back in Antioch in the 1966 I was 6 years old and at that time that little suburban community was ideally. It was perfect. It was 10 years removed from “Leave It To Beaver”. It was like a perfect little street with perfect little houses with not-so-perfect people – you know that kind of neighborhood. It was a great little neighborhood. Now it’s become “the hood? but back then it was “the neighborhood”. You know what I’m talking about, those kinds of days
When I got up and drove here this morning, even though it’s like 50,000 degrees below zero I noticed that along the side of the road people are running. Now, we run in Tennessee but we don’t have to dress like Nanook to run. People run nowadays but when I was growing up in those days no one ran unless someone was chasing you. You just didn’t do that in 1966, you know what I’m saying?
One morning around 7:00 I was getting ready to go to the bus stop and there is a man running up our street. A full-grown man! And he’s running! And nothing was chasing him.
Now picture this, this guy has got on the gray sweatpants, remember those? No emblem or anything, this is before they were cool. A gray sweat hoodie from Kmart, you got this? I mean, it looks like a bad Rocky movie. And there weren’t running shoes, we didn’t have running equipment because no one ran! So he’s running in his Converse basketball shoes!
His ol boy was 300 lbs, he was a big ol boy. Here he goes running up the street in his gray sweatpants. We had never seen anything like this, the kids are all talking about it. “There’s a grown man running up the street”.
We told our parents and they looked out the window the next morning. 7:00, sure enough here’s this man running up the street again. It becomes the talk of the neighborhood so the 3rd or 4th morning these the rednecks are out there with their coffee cups watching this spectacle of this man running up the street. It was a great mystery.
One of the neighbors ventured to his house to ask him why this man was running when nothing was chasing him. And he explained a very simple thing. He said “I had a heart attack, and the doctor said if I didn’t lose some weight I’m going to die”.
This man was running for his life! That’s what he was running for.
You know, when you have a big enough reason to do something, a big enough “why”, why you are doing something is big enough you can do almost anything and you don’t care what people say. You can go places you’ve never gone, you can do things you’ve never done, you can be a different person than you’ve ever been if you are running for your life.
We watched that ol boy as he went from 300 to 250 lbs to 200 lbs to 175 lbs, and exercise literally saved his life. Regardless of what his neighbors said, regardless of his fashion look, exercise saved his life.
Have you ever had a big enough “why” that you would run for your life?
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Cigarettes. I used to buy them on a credit card