On Sunday March 15, 2009 a great man passed from this life to the next. Richard Large is his name, and I say “is” because while he may not be here on this planet any longer, he is in the presence of Jesus very much alive and well.
I met Richard on an Easter Sunday in 1987 at Hillcrest Christian Fellowship in Muskogee, Oklahoma. I had decided to go to church that Easter because of a girl that I was dating at the time. (Okay, so God uses foolish things.) I remember thinking that if I was going to go to church, I had better buy some dress clothes and a Bible, so I did just that, and on that Easter Sunday, I marched right into that church full of bravado and arrogance, finding a seat that was right in front of the podium, thinking to myself, “I bet this guy doesn’t know anything more than I know about God, so we’ll just see what he has to say.”
You must understand, I grew up in the Methodist church learning all the mechanics of what Jesus did by dieing on the cross and being raised from the dead on the third day. What I didn’t learn was at the heart of why Jesus did that for us through His sacrifice. It was precisely that which Richard spoke about that day.
I must have looked pretty silly when my chin hit my chest that morning, because he did show me things that I had never seen before. I continued going to church after that every time the doors were open, and it wasn’t too many weeks later while we were at an after church fellowship that he did something which completely changed my mind about Christianity forever. While we were fellowshipping around the dining room table that night, I asked if anyone would mind if I lit up a cigarette. (I was a two pack smoker then.) Richard and his wife Ducky looked right at me, and with love in their eyes said, “No, not at all.”
That one sentence was the beginning of what changed my life. It so shocked me that I forgot to light up. I did ask Richard however, “What is this born again thing that you are always talking about?” And he instructed me to go get my Bible out of my car and he would show me. I’m pretty sure that they all began to pray for me as I left the room.
When I returned he had me to turn to Romans 10:9-10 and read it to the group, which I did. He then began to explain what these scriptures meant. I didn’t ask Jesus to be my Lord right then, but that night as I sat cross legged on my bed, I re-read those scriptures over and over until I finally decided that this was for me. I confessed Jesus as my Lord and Saviour right there on my bed and was catapulted from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light.
I continued to serve at Hillcrest Christian Fellowship for many more years working on the praise and worship team, in children’s ministry and with the youth. I met my wife Cheryl there and it was Richard who performed our wedding ceremony. There are two things that I remember vividly about Richard Large, and they are 1) whenever listening to a teacher, or studying the Bible never take anyone’s word for anything, always find at least two or three witnesses for everything (this is something that has kept me from trouble on more than one occasion) and 2) Plod on, Plod on, Plod on. (This was a poem that Richard wrote. It had only six words in the stanza, but you could repeat as many stanzas as you needed until the situation you were in was resolved.)
Richard Large was a great man, one without whom I probably would have never accepted Jesus. He is the first Pastor I ever had, and has always had a special place in my heart. I will miss him, even though we haven’t spoken in years. I look forward to the day when I will be able to sit with him and share once more how grateful I am for all he did for me.
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