Close to the Heart of God: The Story of Greg Mundis

"I wanted to be like the Apostle John, who could lean on His breast. Very softly. The heartbeat of God." — Gregory Mundis Greg is born in Youngstown, Ohio — a steel city. He lives in a trailer with an outdoor toilet. His parents each married and divorced three times, and the house is full of parties, alcohol, things a child sees and doesn't know where to put. And yet he remembers being happy. There were dogs. There was a parakeet that landed on the dog's head, every time, like a small daily blessing. Then one night his mother wanders, almost by accident, into an evangelistic crusade and gives her heart to Jesus. Everything changes. At thirteen, on a military base, in front of a Billy Graham film, Greg feels a tug he doesn't understand but can't resist. He stands. He walks forward. It's the beginning of a lifetime spent chasing that same closeness. The day of his calling arrives without warning, on an afternoon that becomes legendary in his family. Greg describes it like this: as if God pulled an arrow on His own bow, straight through his heart. He rises in tears in front of the whole church. And as he runs outside to tell Sandy, his wife — pregnant, in labor — she has only one answer: take me to the hospital, the baby's coming. From there, twenty years in Austria. A Bible school denied, then quietly born anyway. The Berlin Wall coming down. His appointment as director of five nations, then of all Europe, then of everything. But the heart of this conversation isn't the milestones. It's the moment his wife tells him: "Greg, you're out of sync." It's the door he knocks on, without shame, because — as he'll later tell his own missionaries — needing help and not asking for it out of pride lets something fester inside you. It's a diagnosis that arrives in a single heartbeat, from someone he didn't expect. And it's the closing: the image of the risen Christ who doesn't hide His wounds, but offers them. These are my wounds. You can put your finger here. In the end, Greg is asked the same question he's posed to others for an hour and a half: what are your current wounds? And after a long pause, he answers with a word no one expects from a man who has just spent this conversation describing his own healing: unforgiveness. In this episode Greg does something rare for a spiritual leader: he doesn't preach. He lets himself be seen — close, fragile, still on the way. They are real. They are true. They are sacred. Listen when you're ready — or listen precisely because someone finally understands.