DONNA: Hello everyone. Welcome to Something More. I’m Donna Chavis, your host. And our guest today is pastor of Gateway Church in Austin, Texas. And we’re going to talk to him a little bit about God’s Unshockable Love. Please welcome John Burke. Hi John.
JOHN: Donna, thanks for having me here today.
DONNA: Absolutely. Thanks for being here. Now, John, you pastor Gateway Church in Austin, Texas, but you’ve told us that there was, actually, a supernatural encounter that led you to Austin.
JOHN: That’s right. Twenty years ago, or a little more, my wife and I were living in Chicago. Two little babies. And I was on the way to a retreat that I was hosting for about three hundred people, and a friend of mine was in the car and asked me, You know. How long do you think you’ll be in Chicago – and at this church, I was working at? And I said, I don’t know. I know God clearly led me here. And when He gives me a vision and tells me its time, I’ll go. But I know I’ll be here through the year 2000. I confidently said. That was 1997. And that day in worship I had this overwhelming, clear, Its time, from the Lord. And it wasn’t just two words. It was this complete communication of reminding me of all the times we had stepped out in faith
DONNA: Mm. Yes. Yes.
JOHN: And followed Him into the unknown, and how He had come through. And He was saying its time again. And I went home, and I told my wife. And she said, Did you forget we just had a baby? [Laughs]
DONNA: [Laughs]
JOHN: Like three months ago. And I was like, If this is from the Lord, He’ll show you, too. And we started to pray and realized that what was on Gods heart was a generation of people who were hurting, addicted, broken, far from God and didn’t know that God cared, didn’t know that He had compassion and mercy and that He wanted us to start a church, and, actually, churches, that would go into the world with His compassion and mercy for a hurting world.
DONNA: Uh-huh
JOHN: And that led us to Austin, and to start gateway Church in Austin.
DONNA: And, as you said, as you were getting this download from God speaking to you about moving, it sounds like He was birthing that compassion for this group of people in your heart. I mean, you were already feeling it.
JOHN: Yeah. He, I would be driving along, and I would hear secular songs on the radio, and through every lyric, He was showing me the cries of a generation.
DONNA: Ah.
JOHN: It was like I could feel what He felt. And I’d be driving along, listening, in tears. And I’m like, What’s going on with me?
DONNA: Yeah. Yeah.
JOHN: But He had compassion for people I didn’t even know. And, you know, Donna, what is so amazing is, we just celebrated twenty years. And we filled up one of the biggest event centers in Austin. And I asked people to, you know, light up their phone if they had found faith, or overcome an addiction, or seen a marriage healed, and the whole place lit up.
DONNA: Wow. Wow.
