Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep 187 | The American Dream - Pastor Greg Laurie Is Living His...

Episode Date: August 31, 2019

Joanne Cash Yates: "A lot of books have been written about my brother Johnny, but I think he might have liked this one the best." Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon by Greg Laurie Harvest Ministries Leader and 70-time author Greg Laurie released Johnny Cash: The Redemption of an American Icon yesterday, revealing 70 never-before-seen photos of "The Man in Black" and portraying a side of Johnny that few know. Greg offers an inside scoop on the life of the superstar and a spiritual insight only a pastor can provide.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to it. That's right. Saturday, Labor Day weekend. Yay. Hey, I just wanted to give you a little American dream segment here on Chewing the Fat with Pastor Greg Moore. I wanted to talk to him originally just about his new Johnny Cash book. I just found fascinating. He had some great pictures in it, old Johnny Cash.

I talked about his life and his biography. And we'll get into that as I talk to him. but as I started reading about him, he is a fascinating man himself. I mean, he's living his own American dream. Amazing. And I wanted to talk to him about that as well. So we got into that. And I hope you enjoyed.

He's a fascinating man. Don't forget to subscribe to chewing the fat. Rate and review. If you have an opportunity, I've made it easy for you. All you have to do is, you know, rate at 20 stars and review it. Best podcast ever. You're good to go. after you subscribe to chewing the fat

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You might make it to the show. So, I mean, I don't know what you're doing with your life, but we need to be a part of it. So thank you. Have a great weekend. I got a hard event coming up on Monday, too since it's a holiday, and I'm not coming in. You're not coming into work. I'm not coming in.

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So enjoy that. And have a safe weekend. And we'll see you back on chewing the fat. Brand spanking new, Tuesday. For years, we heard Johnny Cash sing songs and travel the globe, and the man in black was telling us that the world was kind of a dark place. And he was, it felt like he was the leader of the dark place. But really, the underlying current of Johnny Cash was his,

faith and when you watch the the movie Walk the Line it kind of stops at when his faith was probably the most powerful now Pastor Greg Lorry has a new book Johnny Cash the redemption of an American icon and Greg thank you for joining us on Chewing the Fat our American Dream segment I appreciate it. Thanks, you coming along for the ride today. Nice to have you on board.

Thank you, Jeff, for having me. What prompted your, I mean, was it the, you know, you obviously lead a huge congregation and are a strong believer in the Lord. And was it that

that prompted you to write about the redemption of Johnny Cash? Well, I would say my aunt just, Jeff, goes back to another book I wrote called Steve

McQueen, the salvation of an American icon. And I'd heard the story of McQueen, who was the top actor in the 70s. In fact, there's a film out right now called Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and there's a character that plays Steve McQueen. That's pretty much the time frame of Steve McQueen when that movie was done. So I heard this rumor that McQueen had become a Christian, and I didn't know if that was true. So it started with the Google search, Steve McQueen, comma, Christian. And it led me to some articles that wasn't a lot about him,

but some names started bubbling up, one most notably, the name of the man who was his pastor, who was still living. So it started with a conversation with him. Ultimately, I met Steve's widow, Barbara McQueen, and other people that knew him well. And we piece this story together, unearthed the recording, where McQueen, in his own voice, talked about his faith in Christ, and I wanted to tell that story.

Well, that became a book and it became a documentary film that did quite well. And a lot of people were asking me, are you going to do any more of these, like, kind of spiritual biographies? And I said, well, if I did, I would do one of Johnny Cash. And so that's how this book came about. I've always been a fan of Cash. And I think the reason I'm drawn to a story like the Queen or Cash is because these are people that are sort of off the grid when it comes to being thought of as Christian.

But, you know, we know that McQueen was a motorcycle car guy, movie star, fashion icon. We know Cash was the man in black. And he's been described as the voice of America. He's been described as a godfather of cool. He's, you know, transcendent generation. So to me, it was the juxtapositioning of the man in black who was actually a man of faith. And I thought, that's a fascinating story. and like you said, in the film story in Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon,

that aspect of the story was really not included. And I wanted to take up where that leaves off. And to be fair, you're not going to get that inclusion coming out of Hollywood very often. So, I mean, I can understand why they, you know, why they would cut that off. As good as the movie was, you know, they would have been hard pressed to have put that in. So throughout his life, You talk a little bit about throughout his life how he kept coming back to faith prior to, you know, the all-out redemption and I'm back, you know, in the last, what, the last 20 years anyway of his life, something like that? Yeah, I think it'd be, you know, I'm not going to suggest that he didn't have stumbled during that time, but I would say largely that's true, the last 20 years.

And certainly the last 10 years, especially when it's helpful. was beginning to fail him, and his body was breaking down because of years of abuse. The fact is he produced his best art, I think, of his entire career. I think the recordings he did in the last 10 years with producer Rick Rubin for the finest recordings he did, and I'm including Walk the Line and Ring of Fire and a boy named Sue and all those classic chash hits that we think of, to me that music toward the end was amazing. and there were a lot of songs that were overt songs about faith and redemption and the Bible and much more. So when you talk about stumbles, most of the stumbles, though, were really throughout the early years, right?

I mean, he, you know, those, those were some, and stumble is a nice way to put it. Well, yeah, I mean, you know, Johnny, when he went out on the road, his career blew up when he, you know, he went to send, Phillips and Sun Records and got a recording deal. Sam Phillips, of course, is the guy who basically broke the, open the career of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins. And so those four, Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis, and Cash were referred to as the millionaire quartet. Heck, yeah, those guys were great.

They changed the face of music, especially, I would say, Cash and Elvis. But so, you know, he went out the road and he was fatigued and tired. you go from city to city. They didn't fly around a jet. They didn't even have tour buses. They just threw the gear in the back of the car and went to the next gig. Right. So as he was exhausted, being on the road, some musicians turned him on, for lack of a better word, to infenemy,

which cash thought were the greatest invention of all time, even thinking that they were from God because they gave him energy. And of course, this became a problem. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, and I must say that at one point in my life, I agreed with that, but go ahead. Well, hey, at one point of my life, I never used amphetamine, but, you know, I smoked pot, I took LSD.

I thought drugs were fantastic for, you know, maybe a year and a half. Right. Until I started seeing the repercussions of what they do in your life. Yeah. And so, you know, Johnny was enamored with the effects and loved it, but then this became a cycle of addiction that he did struggle with throughout his life. He also went on, you know, intense drinking. been just destroyed pretty much by his own admission, every car he ever owned, you know,

trashy the hotel room, predictable rock star behavior. But I would suggest, you know, coming back to the walk the line film, if Cash didn't have his faith, he would have joined the pantheon of those that are no longer with us, you know. Yeah. Like Jimmy Hendricks, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Chris Cornell, you know, the list goes on. Yeah, and that's a pretty good argument for, you know, the list of having faith and not having faith.

I'll tell you that. That's right, because, you know, Johnny, you know, he messed up, but he always knew where to go. And you don't care of the interesting thing. He never doubted his faith. He never doubted the Bible. He just, well, here's the way he put it. He says, there are two people and they're always fighting here.

He said, Johnny's a nice guy. and cash gives me all the trouble. So that, you know, that was sort of a summation of his own life. You know, he kind of bounced back and forth. You know, and the book I describe him as having an angel on his shoulder and the devil at his back and got him speed dial. Yeah. There's no question.

So when you, as you started digging into a little bit deeper into the Johnny Cash world and, you know, obviously the book, The Redemption of an American icon. Did he, the redemption, I kind of feel like America gave that to him as well. I kind of feel like once he offered himself up to his, you know, came out and really showed his Christian faith, I kind of feel like America said, wow, that makes Johnny Cash even better. Oh yeah, I think so. And you know, here's the thing with Johnny. He always believed,

coming back to his beginning, when he went to Sam Phillips Sobreds on Records, he initially wanted to record gospel songs. He wanted to record a song, Were you there when they crucified by Lord? Sam Phillips basically said, people don't want to hear gospel songs. So Johnny came out with other songs like Kay Porter,

and ultimately I walked the line in songs that became huge hits. But at the peak of his success, in the 70s when he had his TV show, Johnny would perform gospel songs. He had Billy Graham on as a guest, and it was during this time that he was actually making appearances at Billy Graham Crusade. So even when Johnny was getting in trouble, like he was still very out front about his faith. So it wasn't like there's a phase where you would say Johnny wasn't a Christian and Johnny was a Christian. In contrast to McQueen, who clearly just lived a very hedonistic lifestyle, raised without any faith, his mother was an alcoholic, he never knew his biological father.

You know, Steve lived the American dream, had the ultimate motorcycle collection, car collection, saw the emptiness of it, went on a search in King to Faith. Johnny's story is different. He was raised in the Christian home. He always believed he would have a relapse. he'd get back up again relapsed get back up again and that cycle went on for a good part of his life so i thought this is an important story to tell because it is a story of a lot of people today well in johnny cash's case i mean he uh um had so many ups and downs just that would drive a lot

of people into the ground uh you know i mean even as a at a young age uh you know with the death of his brother and then i and we you know, it goes on and on and on, but I mean, some of his problems were created of his own doing, no question. But it was definitely coming back to his faith that was most important and kept him ahead, no problem. Yeah, I would also say, Jeff, that it was a combination of the depth of his brother and the austere nature of his father, you know, because Johnny had an older brother named Jack,

who was just an outstanding young. man. He had very deep faith, carried his Bible with them everywhere, memorized huge sections of scripture, and actually wanted to be a preacher one day. And Johnny, you know, just idolized his brother. And his brother and he would go fishing all the time. And one day to earn a little extra money for the family that was basically dirt poor literally out on the cotton field, picking cotton every day. Jack went to a sawmill to make some extra money and do a tragic accident was pulled into the saw and died not long after that. And it devastated Johnny. But then Johnny's father, Ray Cash was very harsh, very austere. And he actually said to Johnny, God took the wrong son.

So, you know, Johnny lived under this cloud of wanting to please his father and missing his brother. But, you know, as you said, he made a lot of really bad choices that, you know, and he would be the to admit it. That's one of the reasons people love Johnny. Johnny was real. Johnny was authentic. When he messed up, he owned it. You know, he wasn't trying to portray himself as some perfect man. He was the first to admit his shortcomings, and he had them, as all people do. But I think it was that authenticity that drew people to him like you were talking about earlier. So the book, we're talking with Pastor Greg Lorry, the book Johnny Cash, The Redemption of an American icon, definitely worth your time if you're a Johnny Cash fan.

And even if you're not a Johnny Cash fan, you get an idea of what that redemption looked like and felt like in this book. Greg, I want to talk a little bit with you about your own American dream, as long as I've got you here a little bit. You know, right now, I was looking at a little bit of your bio, and it talks about you've authored over 70 books, and you talked about starting out with your, you know, the Steve McQueen, the Salvation of an American icon, you know, as a child, and it said that, you know, we talked a lot about a lot of people who were young in faith and, you know, stuck with it.

It looks as though, you know, you came to faith in your teenage years, correct? Yes, 17. And when, after that, you saw how powerful that was. Did you have any idea? Before I get to writing, you know, your authoring, but did you have any idea? You've created this huge following at the, you know, the Harvest Christian Fellowship.

You now have your Harvest Crusades. You have millions of people who trust in you. Did you ever think? I mean, you're living your own American dream. Did you ever think at any time that something this big and great was going to happen? Well, you know, it's a funny thing because you would expect me to say no. But I don't know where this came from, but when I was a kid, you know, my mother was an alcoholic. She was raped and married and divorced seven times.

And that's one of the reasons they're really connected to McQueen's story because his mother was married and divorced many times as well. And he was sent to a reform school. I was sent to military school. And that kind of brings me back to Cash. It reminded me of my grandparents, who I spent a lot of time with, all from Arkansas. So I connected in different ways. But tell me back to my story,

one of my ways to escape my misery was I was an artist. I was a cartoonist. So I created his little cartoon adventures. And in my little cartoon world, I had characters. And I would write my name on the bottom when I did a drawing. I was like eight years old, and I would put my name with a seat with a circle around it, like the copyright symbol. Right.

Because I think I thought Charles Schultz did that, who I really admired. He was the author of Peanuts. And I even corresponded with him for a time. So, you know, someone called that visions of grandeur, but here's how I would describe it. I had a dream, and I had a hope that I would get out of the middle. miserable life I was in one day and find something better. And you know, the Bible says that God has placed eternity in our heart. And I always felt like I wanted my life to matter, and I wanted to have some meaning to my life.

And, of course, I found that at the age of 17 when I heard about having a relationship with God through Jesus Christ in my high school campus. I mentioned I'd experimented with drugs and drinking and other things. And I saw the course of my own mother's life had taken. And so it wasn't at that point that it said, now I want to become a preacher. In fact, all I wanted to do at that point was, oh, now I'll just continue to do my heart, but I'll have sort of a Christian emphasis in it. But God, he had different plans for me. And then now as these other things that happened and I became a public speaker,

that all came as a shock to me because I was always more of a behind-the-scenes guy wanting to make people laugh more than give them profound truth. But as I began to grow spiritually, I wanted to share what I was learning, but I wanted to do it, for lack of a better way to say it, in a fun way, even in an entertaining way, certainly in an engaging way, and most importantly, in an understandable way. Right. And so, you know, I kind of connected Johnny in the way that I've never presented myself with some perfect person. I like to throw myself into the bus, as I say on my own jokes. I think self-deprecating humor is very effective, and I think it's important to not take ourselves too seriously,

but I do take my message very seriously. Pastor Greg Lurie joining us here on Chewing the Fat American Dream segment. Now, it says that you've authored 70 books, or over 70 books. Now, a lot of those, are, well, really all of them are faith-based, although now you've done some biography stories. Did you, that was that just luck of the draw falling into the biography stories

where you thought, well, you know what, that's a good way to show faith and yet use the people that would be surprising to other people? Yeah, well, to me back to the 70 books, you know, I've written 70 books. I didn't say anyone's read them. I've written.

You know, I used them to prop things up in the way in my house. But coming back to the biography, it's a funny thing I never set out to be a biographer, but I had a great co-writer or have a great co-writer in a man named Marshall Terrell, who is a biographer. And we ended up working on the first book together because he had written five books. I'm the queen already.

Wow. And so he really was an expert on the subject. Well, I thought, well, if I'm going to tell the story, I need someone who knows how to navigate these waters. Yeah. But at the same time, I can bring my emphasis to it. So it was not my desire to write a series of a spiritual biography, but as I said earlier, one just led to another.

And I found it's a very effective way to communicate because, you know, Christians, we call this the personal testimony. Another way to put it is just your personal story of what happened to you. And people love story. Yeah, they do. And, you know, and for me personally, I love, you know, biographies because I like to see what really happened to people. You know, because sometimes in a movie they gloss over certain things and you read the real story and you see, oh, they went to the same highs and lows and ups and downs that I face. It's maybe even worse.

And so I'd love to tell these stories And I have an idea for one more Maybe more than one more But it'll probably be a trilogy But so far it's the Queen and Cash And you're not going to tell us what it is, are you? Oh, I'll tell you I don't know if you'd be as interested in my third one

But I'm planning on writing a biography of Billy Grant Oh, of course to be interested My gosh, that man was a giant Well, he was but, you know, people kind of think of him as merely a religious figure, and he certainly was, you know, the Christian leader, but Billy, the story that people don't know about Billy, he's sort of the glue and the cash story.

You know, he was a good friend of Johnny Cash, and as I mentioned, Johnny's thinking many of Billy's crusade, and also Billy played a key role in the life of Steve McQueen as well. But it was my point to get to know Billy very well personally for two decades. spending time with him. And I was sort of helping him as he was sort of ending his crusade ministry. I was starting mine, so I spent a lot of time with him. And I thought, I want to tell a more human story about Billy Graham.

One that shows, I think, how innovative he was, how creative he was, how outside of the lines he would paint sometimes. He was a real trendsetter, groundbreaker. So I want to tell a different kind of a story about Billy, but I think one that people really love. Fascinating. Good luck with that. I'll be fascinated to,

we'll talk to you about that when that comes out, no problem. So a couple years ago, as we're talking to Pastor Greg Loria, a couple years ago, you were part of a movement called the Year of Good News. Now, I kind of feel like, I hope that's kind of ongoing

instead of just, you know, the year of 2017, because I feel like since 2010, 2010, 2011, maybe even before, we've needed good news more than ever. And it seems like it's piling on every year and every day that we need good news more than ever. So I hope that's kind of ongoing. How's that going? No, we pretty much are done with good news.

That ended in 2007. No, even, like you said, even more so. And, you know, I just read an interesting article. You've probably read it as well that said, you know, millennials, are less patriotic and less religious than generations that preceded them. Yeah, they're taking the beat. Yeah, so I was writing a column just now, right before I told you, kind of offering a different point of view,

because we just had an event at the Angel Stadium in Southern California. This past weekend, right? This past weekend, we had 100,000 people come out over three nights, and 65% of them are what we would call millennials and Generation Z. and probably 70% of those that came to make a profession of faith out of maybe 8,500 were generation Zia millennial. So I would call that people, some might call that becoming more religious. And on Friday night, at our event, we had a gigantic American flag that was unfurled that filled most of the field. And then we all think God bless America.

Well, someone called that patriotism. So here's my point. We read an article like that, and we, well, there is truth to that article, but it's not the complete truth. And, you know, this young generation, Generation Z has been described as the hopeless generation. So I find it interesting that we've come from the greatest generation, those folks that came out of World War II, to now what we call the hopeless generation. And the millennials are described as the loneliest generation. and they also have the highest suicide rates. Oh, you know.

So did they, go ahead. No, I was just, you know, I was thinking about that. You know, the greatest generation and the boomers from the greatest, you know, kind of have did a little disservice to these, you know, the millennials and the Zs, because we, as they're, you know, you're finding that they're coming, and I'll say coming back to because I don't know that they ever, it was ever there. coming back to faith and patriotism because so much of the time that they were young and growing and soaking things in, they were being told that those things were, don't worry about it. That's nothing. If they were told that at all, it just didn't exist. So now that they see it, I have a feeling that, you know, once those doors open, it's going

to be tough to close them. Yeah, very good point. Sure, because my generation, the boomers, you know, we were, you know, we were rebelling against the greatest generation. And, you know, we had the Vietnam War and we had the drug revolution and the central revolution and all that crap. And so, you know, now we pass those values, or maybe I might describe it as a lot of values, to a younger generation. Here's another thing. So many of these kids today are coming from homes where the mom and dad broke up. And in many cases, there was no dad or there was never an intact family.

So, and then we add all of this technology to the men. And, you know, like here's a great example. You see strollers now that have built in places for iPad. Okay. Right. So now with the baby here, watch this and be quiet where these kids are being raised at the earliest age with all this tech. And there's no question they've found that there's a direct connection to stress

and in fear and worry and the excessive use of electronic devices. So it's just sort of like a bad mix, a lack of family, a lack of values, throwing check where it puts it on your doorstep every weeky moment of every day. As another example of that, and I know it does kind of sound like, you know, okay, calm down, grandpa, we got it. But as another example of that, you know, we just did it. We talked to us, I'm sure you read the same story I did about the, you know, the adults now wanting their recess time and their play time. Well, I mean, that's only because they didn't have it, right? I mean, they're not good.

They don't have their recess time when they were a kid, and now they're realizing, hey, there's something to it. Well, yeah. Yes. You know, it's a funny thing the Bible says, after the old old. ways and walk their end and you'll find rest for your souls. I think we always want everything to be new, shiny and new. And I think we sort of think sometimes, oh, if it's old, it's lame. Well, some things that are old are lame, but then there are time-tested things, things that have stood, have come through centuries. And, you know, the family is always going to be an essential

to God created the family. And of course, the Lord himself is always the one that every generation, needs. And the Bible says that these truths are true for every generation that embraces them. So that's why I feel like we want to just keep bringing this message. You know, when I started up with these evangelicals, think of Ben, 30 years ago, you know, the generation then was Generation X. Well, they're adults now, and they've raised family. And so now it's millennials. Now it's Generation Z. Fast forward 10 years to have some new, you know, name for the next generation. but really when it comes down to the bottom line, people don't change all that much, and their needs are the same.

I think we'll leave it at that. Pastor Greg Lurie, thank you for joining us on Chewing the Fat Today. Is there any special word that you want to leave people with as far as can they contact you a special place? Can they find you a special place, or is it just Greg Lurie? Of course, we started out talking to you about your latest book, Johnny Cash, The Redemption of an American icon. which is well worth your time,

or do we send people where? Okay, thanks for asking. Yeah, you can find me while I'm on Facebook, just Greg Lorry, Facebook, on Instagram, Greg Lory, on Instagram, Twitter. Also, you can go to our website, Harvest.org. And if you want a copy of Johnny Cash,

the redemption of an American icon, you can get them in stores near you, but it's out there on Amazon as well. Pastor Greg Lurie, thank you very much, living your American dream. I appreciate it. Thank you, sir.