The Promise of Hope: Faith

Hi. I’m Edward Grinnan, editor-in-chief of Guideposts and author of the new Guideposts book “The Promise of Hope, How True Stories of Hope and Inspiration Changed My Life and How They Can Help Transform Yours.” 

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You may not be familiar with the name Richard Stearns, but I’m pretty sure you know the incredible organization that he heads up as CEO. It’s a faith-based organization, but Richard Stearns was anything but a faith-based person when he started out in life trying to be a CEO of a company. When he was a student at Cornell University, he was the campus atheist. I mean, he would argue with anybody about religion and what little use he had for it. 

Then he met Renee, who was known as the campus Jesus freak. And he fell madly in love with his future wife. And they spent a lot of their time arguing about religion and about faith, because Richard Stearns was his own man. 

In this chapter of my book, I tell about the moment that Richard Stearns had to make the most important decision of his life. It came when he said to Renee, look, Renee, it’s either me or it’s God. He was shocked by the answer that he got and the incredible and lasting effect it would eventually have on his life. 

You don’t necessarily need faith in order to change your life, but it certainly helps. It means you don’t have to do it in a spiritual vacuum. I think that any real important change in your life requires the help of a power greater than yourself, a power to whom you can turn in those times when you can’t do it alone. 

What I tried to do in my life was to do it alone for so many years, until I found myself in a rehab in Michigan battling drugs and alcohol. And even then– even then, I was reluctant to reach out and accept faith as the real anchor in my life. I had a friend from Michigan, an old friend of my parents, named John Kavanaugh. And he came up to visit me one day. And he brought some candy and some magazines. He was always bringing me care packages in the rehab. 

And as he was leaving, he looked at my shoes on the floor. And almost with a little bit of anger, he kicked them under the bed. And I said, John, what are you doing? And he says, now when you get down on your knees to find your shoes, maybe it won’t be so hard for you to say a prayer. And that’s how it started for me.