Punk-2-Praise
Heart of the Lord Ministries
From Punk to Praise
Heart of the Lord Ministries is a vision the Lord has kept upon my heart since 1989.
Hello, and thank you for visiting our site.
My name is Richard O. Webb and I would like to share our little story with you. Back in the early 1980’s, I was in a punk rock band, playing at night clubs in the Boston area. I had a relationship with Jesus Christ but didn’t have much knowledge of what is was to follow Him. I would strive to get love and attention through the thrashing guitar and loud vocals I would sing with the band.
I was quite young when I started playing the clubs and often would not even have been allowed in them because I was not of the drinking age. Yet because I was in the band, they had to let me in. But life was empty then and it seemed the more I was striving for attention, the less my heart was fulfilled. I lived in a little apartment in Boston and was starting to implode on the inside.
It was during those times that I started to seek the Lord for His will in my life. I had come to receive Him as my Savior a few years earlier and was transformed by this knowledge of His love and grace. But it was in these days that I started to realize He had more for me than taking my anger and frustration out in the distortion of a punk rock band.
I realized that knowing Him was better than anything I could strive for in this world. And it was at that time, living alone in a little studio apartment in Boston, that the Lord started to draw me closer to Him.
Sometimes when we are in the most difficult situations, it’s in those seasons that the grace of the Lord is at work the most in our lives—transforming us from the inside out. He has a way of giving us complete freedom and yet, at the same time, changing us and causing us to become conformed to His will.
In this process, He changes us to become who we were made to be—bringing healing, step by step into our lives. It was in this season that the Lord started to give me a hunger to let go of the band and to follow Him.
In 1985, I started drawing little pictures to encourage myself in the Lord.
During this time, I also started making little cartoons. I always liked to draw, ever since I was a child, but I now found myself drawing pictures of the Scripture. I would make illustrations to help me better understand what the Lord was showing me in the Bible. I found that by drawing it out on paper, it would go deeper into my heart—so I could visualize what it was that I was starting to understand. The Lord even gave me a little character and developed him so I could draw out the images. It was these illustrations that eventually became the basis for our eGreetings called “BibleHearts.”
A music resurrection...
Shortly after this, the Lord called me away from Boston to the quiet beaches of Marshfield, Massachusetts. It was there that Jesus impressed upon my heart that I could write songs for Him. I was hesitant, as I didn’t want all the striving that I had done before. I had given up playing the guitar. In fact, I took my guitar, threw it in a closet and thought that was the end of it.
But one day while a friend came to visit, he asked me to play a song. I remembered a song which I had written with the Lord in mind, and played that quiet little song on the guitar that I dug out of the closet. It was at that point when I felt the Lord’s tug on my heart that I could play for Him.
Heart of the Lord Ministries
The Lord later gave the name “Heart of the Lord Ministries” for the name of the ministry He was developing. I had actually put it on a music cassette I made back in 1989 (anyone remember cassette tapes?)
Far from the loud thrash of the punk rock music that I used to play, the Lord started giving me quiet songs of His love. I remember telling the Lord in those days “Well, Lord, even if everyone hates these songs, I’ll sing them for You.”
"He hath torn, and He will heal." Hosea 6:1
It was soon after this time that I married my first wife, Kristine. We were together for about three years when she went home to be with the Lord in 1992, due to a tubular pregnancy. To say I was devastated at this time would be an understatement. I think I was so wounded that I couldn’t even get upset with the Lord. I mean, it’s hard to get angry at someone you need so much. But I knew the Lord had a plan and I knew that she was safe in the arms of my Savior. It was because I did love her that I could be glad she was safe with Jesus. It was then that the Lord drew very close to me. Often I would just go to a park or a quiet place and wait there until the Lord would show up and make His presence known to me. Like John the Apostle, I was just leaning on the bosom of Jesus—and He was so faithful to carry me and care for me and show His compassion towards me.
He heals the brokenhearted
Now at this point, it was only the Lord and myself going forward. I wasn’t looking to remarry but to carry out the work the Lord had for me. I had been grieving for about four years, when one day I met Lois. It was at a church I had just started attending. And it was just nine days later when the Lord spoke to my heart and revealed to me that she would be my wife. I was pretty stunned because I wasn’t thinking this way at all. But He had put such a love for Lois in my heart, instantly, that I told the Lord, “If for some reason this isn’t You, then You need to take it away!”
Shortly after that prayer (six weeks later), the Lord revealed the same thing to Lois. We had known each other for only six months when we got married and she has been such an encouragement and blessing to me for over 26 years now!
Lois didn’t know she could sing at the time, but soon she was singing with me the songs the Lord had given me. She starting writing and co-writing a few songs too, as the Lord touched her heart. I always tell people “Lois is the best part; I’m just the filler.”
Since that time, I have been an assistant pastor and have pastored our own churches in Massachusetts, Florida and in Georgia, preaching and teaching the love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We have also ministered in music and in God’s word at many churches, home groups, coffee houses and nursing homes as well. Now the Lord has called us to take His ministry to the web and thus HeartoftheLord.org was born, to share His gentle touch to a hurting world.
We pray that you would be encouraged today in the love that bore all your imperfections so that you might stand perfect before Him! How good it is to know that the Judge bore the judgment, and through Christ we can stand before God—in love. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be yours in abundance!
