By Mark Ellis —
If you were gripped by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s bold declaration of the gospel at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, you will be even more impressed by his recent sit-down interview with Pastor Greg Laurie.
Laurie, the well-known evangelist and founder of Harvest Christian Fellowship, met with Rubio at the State Department the day after Kirk’s memorial service for an episode of The Greg Laurie Show, later broadcast December 7th.
It was less about politics and more about Secretary Rubio’s deeply held faith and the way it is lived out in his political role and family life.
In the interview Secretary Rubio revealed that his impassioned preaching at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service was delivered without notes. “It works out better that way,” Secretary Rubio told Laurie. “When you don’t write things out you might forget to say something. But I think what you lose sometimes is the authenticity of it. There are speeches you have to give that are written, and often I’ll do an outline or just notes of reminders. But I think these things always come best from the heart.”
“I think you did a better job presenting the gospel than some preachers I’ve heard,” Laurie told Rubio. “It was theologically accurate, it was passionate, and it was also understandable. We were so impressed. It was such a great moment.”
Laurie and Rubio met and became friends – along with their wives – when then Senator Rubio attended a couples conference led by Laurie, two years in a row!
Laurie had no idea Senator Rubio would be coming to the conference, but was impressed he would take the time to invest in his marriage. “It was so great just to see you there,” Laurie said, “because that says a lot about you, that your marriage matters to you, that you would take that time to be with your wife and to strengthen your own marriage.”
Rubio is a Roman Catholic and attends Mass at Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables, Florida. His wife influenced him to attend Christ Fellowship, a Southern Baptist Church in The Hammocks, Florida during the early years of their marriage. He seems to be completely comfortable in both worlds.
“The most important thing that happens in our country is not what happens in the White House; it’s what happens in your house,” Rubio declared. “What is the basic structure of a society and of a country? It’s actually communities built by families and homes.”
Secretary Rubio discussed the importance of marriage in biblical terms. “If you look at the Bible, repeatedly in the gospels, and even in the Old Testament, when it describes God’s love for His people, it’s always discussed in marital terms. It’s never described as a parent’s love for a child. It’s almost always described in (terms of) the bridegroom, so it tells you the importance that marriage has to God. How, in many cases, marriage is, in fact, a sacramental union that really reflects God’s love for people.”
“You can almost take every social ill in America today and directly relate it to the breakdown of the family, and specifically to a lack of fathers. I’ve looked at statistics of people who are incarcerated, people who turn to drugs, girls who get pregnant outside of wedlock. The list goes on, and in almost every instance, they come from a broken home, and specifically, they had no father growing up. I’ve heard it said that a family can survive without a nation, but a nation cannot survive without the family.”
Laurie admitted to his own struggles growing up. “My mom was married and divorced seven times. I never had a father growing up, but when I became a Christian, I found father figures. I found mentors, older men who were godly, who could fill that role in my life,” he said.
Laurie observed that Rubio is undoubtedly exposed to information that could cause alarm and possibly keep him up at night. “I think fear is an enemy,” Rubio replied. “It’s a paralytic. I think fear is the wrong terminology. Certainly, we all worry. We all have things to worry about…Christianity…of all the faiths in the world, the ones who should never live in fear, or the ones who should never live in worry that becomes paralyzing are Christians, because we know how it ends.
“It reminds me a little bit of watching a scary movie. You’ve seen it 10 times. You know how it ends. You know the lead character survives, but nonetheless, you still get nervous every time you see it, even though you know what the outcome of it’s going to be.
“And I think that’s our story, right? We know that at the end of time, there’ll be a new heaven and a new earth, and Jesus will return. We also know that between now and then, there’ll come a period of great tribulation, of great challenges. The world’s never been free of them, but this will be specifically extra. And so we already know that. And so for us to somehow aspire to live in a world free of problems and free of challenges and free of worry is not realistic. It’s also not biblical. It’s not true to our faith.
“We know how the story ends. We don’t know when it ends. We can’t, we can’t detail exactly how that’s going to play out, but we know, generally, the thematic of it, and the thematic of it is victory and the restoration of what we should have been from the very beginning.”
“Death is not natural…it entered into the world through sin. But we were never meant to die. We were not created to die…And now we’re in a process of overcoming that. Jesus did that, and now we’re in the process as mortals, as a result of the consequence of sin, of living through that, but we know how the story ends.”
As Pastor Laurie listened to Rubio’s deft unfolding of biblical truth, he said, “I think if the Secretary of State thing doesn’t work out, you can consider being a pastor.”
“It’s much harder than being Secretary of State,” Rubio replied.
Laurie asked Rubio if he believes Jesus will return soon. “Well, I’m sure…I do…But I also believe that if you look at the 2000 years of Christianity, every generation has believed they lived in the End Times. They couldn’t imagine things getting any worse than they were. I imagine if you lived in the 1940s and saw the growth of Nazi Germany and particularly early on, the progress that they had made and the successes they were having in the battlefield. That was a very scary time. So I think it’s almost a trap. We’re basically told, you know, whether it’s death or the second coming, I’ll come as a thief in the night. I mean, people will be out there basically doing normal life activities. So rather than try to predict it or anticipate it, I think you just sort of understand that’s how the story ends and in the meantime, this is what we’re called to do, to live our faith.
Secretary Rubio bemoaned the rise of the “ancient poison” of antisemitism, and the continued appeal of socialism and communism among young people on college campuses. He said he admired the way Charlie Kirk addressed and debated these subjects head-on, even at the cost of his life.
Pastor Laurie asked if Secretary Rubio faced opposition due to his Christian faith. “The gospel is clear, you’ll be hated for it,” he replied. “I think people go into this understanding that ours is the faith of the cross. It’s not the faith of winning the lottery and there’s nothing wrong with wealth, there’s nothing wrong with success, there’s nothing wrong with happiness. But I think it’s a misunderstanding of Christianity to believe that it leads to happiness and prosperity. These are things that God may bless you with, but our faith is the faith of the cross.”
“And in fact, if you look at the era of Christianity, where Christianity has been strongest and most vibrant, it’s when it’s counter cultural. When it’s been strong and most vibrant is when it’s been oppressed. Now I don’t seek oppression. We don’t seek to be hated, but it’s going to happen.”
Secretary Rubio also spoke about the uniqueness of America. “Our rights don’t come from the law, they don’t come from the government, they don’t come from your leaders. Your rights come from your Creator, and the job of government is to protect your rights, not to decide them or to bestow them. That’s a very unique thought, and that’s a very unique belief, and it’s a foundational principle of the country.”
Pastor Laurie asked how Secretary Rubio would like to be remembered. “I’m 54… I don’t think too much about that. Yet, I think ultimately, there’s two ways how I’d like to be remembered professionally, as someone who made a difference and had an impact, and obviously had the opportunity to do that in the United States Senate, representing Florida, and now this new opportunity under President Trump, that I was effective at the job that I was given, and that we made an impact, that we made a difference.”
“I think, as a person, I’d like to be remembered as someone who was a good husband and a good father and who tried the best he could imperfectly to live out the teachings and tenets of his faith and to model that behavior as much as anything else. And that’s an ongoing project. You know. That’s the one thing about life, is you can blow it all in one moment. It’s a daily reminder of how difficult it is to walk on that path, but when it’s all said and done…But in the end, you hope that when you come face to face with your Creator, he’ll say well done.”
