“God Can”
by Tom Goodman
March 23, 2005

Howard Stern once shook his head after listening to her radio program and said, “Liz, you’ve got to clean up your act!”

Liz Curtis Higgs had shocked the king of “shock jocks”!  As she admits now, though, “It wasn't my on-air show that was in trouble; it was my risky off-air escapades.”

You may know Higgs as the best-selling author of twenty-two books.  Many have been introduced to her through a study called Bad Girls of the Bible, with over half-a-million copies in print.

She knows something about the subject of bad girls.  In her devotional book, Rise and Shine, she wrote, “By my twentieth birthday, I was spending four and five nights a week on a bar stool, Southern Comfort in my glass and longing in my eyes.  Like the country song says, I was ‘looking for love in all the wrong places.’  I found companionship in many but comfort in none.”

She was a radio personality at various stations and formats, including Howard Stern’s Detroit station.  It was at an oldies station in Louisville, Kentucky, that things changed.  She had reached the lowest point of self-destruction, “playing dangerous games with marijuana, speed, cocaine, alcohol, and a promiscuous lifestyle,” she wrote.  “I'm one of those people who had to fall all the way down to the bottom of the pit before I was forced to look up for help.”

“Leaning over my pit of despair and extending a hand of friendship was a husband-and-wife team who had just arrived in town to do the morning show at my radio station.   Although they had enjoyed much worldly success, what these two talked about most was Jesus Christ.  Even more amazing, they seemed to like and accept me, ‘as is.’  Simply put, they loved me with a love so compelling that I was powerless to resist it.”

Higgs made her commitment to Christ on the seventh Sunday attending at a friend’s church.  She was one of the THEMs Jesus talked about in Matthew 28:19-20.  She now impacts hundreds of thousands for the cause of Christ.

We ask, “Can God still love me after what I’ve done?  Can God still use me in his work?  Can God accept me into his eternal joy after I die?”

God can.

This Easter Sunday at 10:45 a.m., that’s the simple title and the simple truth I’ll be teaching.  Bring a friend to Hillcrest and let’s celebrate the Resurrection together!

—Tom