By Justin Cooper/ Photo courtesy of Rev. B.J. Wilmoth
Jacob Pereida has a favorite story he likes to tell.
The story is almost 2000 years old and it concerns a group of Galilean fishermen. They are fighting valiantly to keep their ship afloat in spite of the torrential rains and harsh waves. Upon the windswept waters appears Jesus whom the disciples believe to be a ghost. Peter, ever the unconventional member of the disciples, tells Jesus “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water."
To him Jesus, says, “Come.”
Jacob said that Jesus’ invitation to Peter was not for Peter to calm the storm but to learn to look at the situation in a different way, through the “lenses” of God. Jacob Pereida, 27, is a preacher of the Gospel who has recently been asked to come to Christian Life Center in Stockton as a full time evangelist. Jacob has also ministered to RIOT youth over the years, most recently at a bon fire service in September.
I met with Jacob a few weeks back at a Tuesday night service at the Anchor. Jacob stopped and gazed at the intense glow of the San Diego sunset. I could not figure out what was so wonderful about a sunset I had seen hundreds of times before.
“That is a great sunset,” Jacob commented.
I later learned that Jacob is a guy who looks at things differently and he encourages others to do the same.
“When I look at the life of Jesus, I see a revolutionist. I see…a man who challenged the world he lived in to rethink God. Not to reinvent God, not to recreate God but to rethink how God related to humanity and vice versa.”
Jacob ministering in Hawaii
That night Jacob sat down with me and talked about his life, and the unlikely road his life took to where he is now.
Jacob is from San Antonio, Texas, the west side, which is predominately a Hispanic community. Both his parents came from the world, originally raised as Catholics and later turning to drugs and the party lifestyle.
God changed them said Jacob. They went to a Bible study and received the One God-Jesus Name revelation and later started attending a Pentecostal Church.
Jacob was born in 1980, the youngest of six brothers. His family had a little house on Martin Street, a traditional home amidst a crime-ridden section of town. Jacob’s mother began mornings by preparing fresh hand-made tortillas, which she would spread out across the table as breakfast. His father worked as a painter and his mother cleaned houses. In an effort to keep Jacob’s older brothers away from the gang lifestyle, his father moved the family to the outskirts of San Antonio, a two-story farmhouse complete with animals. Jacob said he was too young to realize what he had.
His father did everything he could to be a Christian man and to lead his family in the right way said Jacob. But his family could not escape the influence of the gangs, which began to pull at his Jacob’s brothers.
One day, one of Jacob’s brothers got drunk and crashed a go-cart into the house. His father became angry and they argued. The brother took two beer bottles, broke them and stabbed his father in the eye. Later that day, Jacob came home from school to fine a huge hole in the front of his house.
Jacob heard the story from his mother as she washed the dishes.
“Where’s dad?” Jacob asked her.
“He’s in the back,” she answered.
Jacob ran into the back, and as he approached, his father turned and looked at him. There was a gash on his eye.
“I’m sorry son. I tried,” said his father.
“I was like—what are you talking about,” remembers Jacob.
Tears began to come down his fathers face.
“I tried.”
He was drinking a can of beer, something Jacob said he had never seen his father do before. The hours passed, Jacob was now in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal, processing what had happened. His father entered and just stood there watching his son eat for ten minutes. His father started to cry, turned around and walked out of the kitchen and never came back.
In HawaiiWith the absence of his father, the family lost everything. They had to move back to their old neighborhood and live with their grandmother. From the age of 14 to adulthood, Jacob was back in his old neighborhood and turned into a “wild juvenile,” becoming entangled in the gang lifestyle.
When Jacob was 18, his brother Christopher was hospitalized, a victim of a violent assault. Jacob had just finished visiting him in the hospital and now returned home.
“I was looking at myself in the mirror in the restroom,” said Jacob. “And I am so full of rage. And all of a sudden, in my mind, I start hearing these Sunday school songs ‘Father Abraham had many sons, Jesus loves the little Children.’ I started remembering being a kid in Sunday school. I’m trying to get these thoughts out of my head. And I just feel God.”
“He literally walked in there, in the room. And He said to me ‘“If you’re done with your life, then give it to me and see what I can do with it. If you’ve come to your end, then why don’t you try where I begin.’”
The next day, Jacob asked for the keys to the car and he went to church. He was baptized in Jesus Name and ever since then he said he has never looked back, living for God “full throttle.”
Jacob gives the credit to Jesus Christ for totally changing who he was and giving him a bright new future. When I asked him if he had any words specifically for R.I.O.T youth, Jacob talked about changing our perspective.
“Never be afraid to challenge the world you live in to rethink God, to rethink themselves in the eyes of God. To love fiercely, to give freely, to forgive willingly. And not to just exist but live. Not just scrape by and exist but actually live. I challenge them to look at a sunset in a different way, to look at an ocean in a different way.”
“Jesus’ invitation to Peter was not an invitation to calm the storm but to look at the storm from a different view. I would say (for them to) trade looking at life from the broken lenses of humanity and pick up the lenses of Jesus.”
“Look at life from his eyes.”
Hanging with Bro. G.
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