Jesse Gibson - Embracing my path helps me share about Jesus

Jesse is a life coach - passionate about skateboarding and Jesus. We talked to him about his story and how he uses his past to change people’s future.

Jesse:

So, growing up out in Western Sydney was a bit rough. After going through a miscarriage, a meth addiction and my best mate committing suicide—going from absolutely nothing to finally having Jesus is incredible! I've gotta share that with others.

Experiencing living in ‘nothingness’ is a scary place. The place that I've come from provides relatability with other people that have gone through such turmoil and hardships—that relatability provides empathy, not just sympathy. There are definitely divine appointments where the Holy Spirit prompts you to reach out and share the gospel with someone. But there are also those moments where you can just see that someone's heart is so broken, and they need to experience that joy that I experienced, right?

I love going down to the skate park and seeing an opportunity to share about Jesus and jumping on it. I've got a really unique way of doing it. I've always got some chalk sitting in the back of my car and often it's young guys down at the skate park that I will speak with. I will just say to them, “Hey, do you guys know what the meaning of life is?” and they're like, “No, of course, I don't know what the meaning of life is,” And I say, “Well, would you like to know?” [often I catch one person’s attention] then their friends sort of congregate and you end up with three or four guys standing there and with the chalk I say, “Hey in five years time, what do you want to have done [with your life]?” And they give me a bunch of things. And then I ask, “What about in ten years?” and then in their lifetime and we get this list of things in chalk. And I then say, “You live your life in one of two ways. You either live your life with purpose or without purpose. And if there’s purpose, then there has to be a purpose creator [Jesus] and I don't know about you guys, but if there's a purpose creator I want to know who that is.”

I'll then go on and essentially say, “because of all the bad things I've done, like the meth addiction, the hardships that I have been through, I'm not able to get to him. There's only one possible way, and that's if that purpose creator comes for us, and he did”, and they're like "Woah are you serious?" I'm like, “Yeah, his name is Jesus and he died on the cross so that you could be reconciled with him.” They can sometimes be really, really open. Like “yeah, that's awesome”. They can also sometimes have great questions and I always try to have a Bible as well just to be able to give it to them and say, “Hey take this, it will open up doors for you.”

Understanding where I've come from and not being shameful of that, has enabled me to be able to share about Jesus. I know that if we as Christians can embrace those things then the gospel can be shared with many people.