Harris Cook was on probation at the University of Alabama and was more interested in drinking and partying than studying when God reached down and changed his heart, saved him, and set him on a new course.
Cook, who recently retired as pastor of CrossBridge Community Church in the Birmingham, Helena area, had switched degrees several times and was supervisor when he “discovered” Jesus 52 years ago. He started taking a Bible with him to class and his grades improved dramatically.
Just before school was fired for the Christmas break, one of Cook’s law professors asked to speak to him after class.
“He said he noticed I brought my Bible,” Cook told The Alabama Baptist. “I said, ‘I just can’t get enough of it, and every free minute I have read and journal and weep over the lost people who don’t know the Lord.'”
The professor said to him, “I think you could be a good lawyer, but I think you need to go home and pray about whether you should get a law degree or whether God has something for you to argue for His cause . I have a feeling that the Lord might be calling you to preach, ”Cook said.
“I was blown away by a college professor in Alabama,” he said. But the professor revealed that he was the son of a pastor and tuned into what God was doing in Cook’s life.
“My way with the Lord”
In the spring semester, Cook was enrolled at Samford University in Birmingham.
“My first year or two as a preacher was about David and Goliath and Jonah and the whale and all the things that Church-raised people did in Summer School,” recalls Cook. “But here was a preacher in his twenties who was preaching all the school biblical stories, because that’s where I was on my way with the Lord.”
After graduating from Samford, Cook went to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and took his first pastorate in Proffitt, Texas, “just a little farther on the road, out in the woods on the plain.”
In 1975 Cook and his wife moved to Alabama with their young son and he became pastor of Garywood Baptist Church in Hueytown.
While at Garywood, Cook was doing a PhD on the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in Birmingham’s expansion program and a dissertation on single adult service supported by single adults in the Church, he said.
About five years later, Cook followed Rick Lance – Managing Director of Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions – as pastor of the West End Baptist Church in Birmingham. From there he went to First Baptist, Alexander City, then Northside Baptist, Jasper.
While staying at Jasper, Cook’s wife, who was 24, died of cancer at the age of 42. God later provided for Jenny, to whom Cook has been married for 27 years. They went from Jasper to Venezuela together in 2000 as some of the first International Mission Council members to be selected in the new millennium. In 2006, Cook was called to co-pastor CrossBridge.
Go with God
In retrospect, Cook stands out most when he was a Baptist in the West End and his first wife was very sick. She spent almost three months in the hospital when her son was in elementary school.
“There was just so much about me during that time that one day I got in my car and just wanted to drive off, change my name and leave,” recalls Cook. “The pressure got so great. I don’t even know where I was going. I was just in another world. I turned off the curb, drove off, and sat on a tree stump.
“I said, ‘Lord, I can’t do it anymore.’ I tried to be a good husband, a good father, a good pastor, a good friend, a good son. It weighed on me. Sitting on the stump, the Lord was just as real to me as I was talking to you.
“[Ichhörteihnsagen:’DumachstesdirschwerAlleswasdutunmusstistMichzuhörenundmitMirzugehenundMirzugefallenWennduMeinenWillenfürdeinLebentustwirstduderbesteEhemannVaterPastorSohnundFreundseinderduseinkannst'”[IheardHimsay}’You’remakingithardAllyouhavetodoishearMeandwalkwithMeandpleaseMeIfyoudoMywillforyourlifeyouwillbethebesthusbandfatherpastorsonandfriendthatyoucanpossiblybe'”[Ichhörteihnsagen:’DumachstesdirschwerAlleswasdutunmusstistMichzuhörenundmitMirzugehenundMirzugefallenWennduMeinenWillenfürdeinLebentustwirstduderbesteEhemannVaterPastorSohnundFreundseinderduseinkannst’“[IheardHimsay}‘You’remakingithardAllyouhavetodoishearMeandwalkwithMeandpleaseMeIfyoudoMywillforyourlifeyouwillbethebesthusbandfatherpastorsonandfriendthatyoucanpossiblybe’”
That encounter with God changed Cook’s ministry, he said. From then on, his morning began asking God what he had to do for him that day.
“Instead of building my life around life, I built it around God,” said Cook. “It made a huge difference. It gave me a new perspective because I knew that God was with me in everything I went through and that He had a plan and purpose and I didn’t have to understand everything. I just had to do it through obedience. “
There were definitely difficult times in 50 years of service, Cook admitted.
“Not everyone in the church is nice. I would like to say they are, but they are not, ”he said, adding that not everyone liked even the Old Testament prophets.
“You just have to be loyal and faithful and faithful and obedient to the Lord Jesus and that makes for a wonderful, beautiful experience with God,” said Cook. “Even after retirement, I know that I can do anything he wants because my life is his.”
