You expect Zac's story to be moving, but you don't expect it to be confrontational. But that's the reality of it. I spent months wrestling with what the story was, what it meant, and how to understand it. And when I sent a draft through to my producer - she simply said Geoff it's to confrontational - I had to stop. You just don't see it coming. What is shocking about Zac's story is also the most unexpected.
For me, among many moments, there was one particular conversation that stands out from the rest. It was like somebody turned the lights on. I remember it as clear as day. It was a conversation with one of Zac's best friends, Brandon Erga, in a park, under a huge spreading fig tree. Brandon was in a hard place, and even ten years on, was still close enough to the trauma to have tears while telling the story. Zac was a best friend, and after losing him, he lost not only his confidence in God, but his confidence that God even existed. His world came crashing down, he lost his health, his friends, his sanity and his will to live.
It was in this conversation, when for me, Brandon turned the lights on. Suddenly I understood something I'd never seen before.
Now before we go any further, I have to say, that within Brandon is unfolding something so remarkable, something so crazy beautiful, it has the fingerprints of the supernatural all over it. It's his story to share, and that's for another day if when he's ready, and it's worth waiting for. I have had the privilege of watching redemption and salvation dawn in and around this man - and it doesn't look like anything I'd imagined.
The first time we met he gave me a glimpse into his journey, literally falling into the dark hole that is fear itself.
I stopped surfing because, like, I can't get in the water anymore. I couldn't play f***ing video games that had sharks in it. Like I'm talking, I went, like, fear to the next level."
"Jesus says, I'm leaving you, but I'm not leaving you with fear. I'm actually I'm leaving you with peace. And it's like holy s**t, that's what I need in that moment when I feel like I've got nothing but fear and I'm drowning in fear. And he says, yeah, but I didn't give you that. You're yelling and screaming and swearing and he's like 'I hear you. Here's my peace. A peace that surpasses all understanding.' It doesn't make any sense.
Brandon Erga
So we get to the tenth anniversary of the shark attack, and in honour of Zac the whole beach at Port Macquarie is packed with people and their surfboards. It's dark, windy, 'sharky' weather, and this huge crowd, heading out through the waves to form an enormous circle about 200m from the coast.
And here in the middle of this is Brandon! I was out there on a board and it was wild. It felt like everywhere I looked there where people needing to be rescued, people getting washed into the rocks, like crazy stuff. And then this guy - Brandon - he emerges from the surf cheering. Literally, fist-pumping, grinning from ear to ear. Like, a different man!
I'm not kidding - we witnessed a miracle that day. But, that's his story to tell, when he's ready.
So what did he say to me? He simply put 'love' in terms I'd never heard before.
You know, like, everybody has a story about Zach that makes them laugh, because it didn't matter what was going on. Zach always had a focus on two things, and that was "I am making it my mission to make you laugh, even if it's a situation where you shouldn't be laughing. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you know you're loved." For every person. Random guy in the surf. "Hey, bro. You know you're loved." I think that's his legacy. It's the legacy of love, you know.
Brandon Erga
See love, in this world we live in, is so cheap. It means nothing. I love my wife and I love coffee. I love golf and I love my kids. I love a good comedy movie and I apparently love God.
Really? Love like this, it must be made in China. It's really, really, cheap, and lasts about 2 seconds.
Everybody in this world is supposedly about love. Everybody from the loud activists to the silent majority, everybody claims to be all about love. Yet for all this love, the people around us are emotional wrecks, damaged and dying. Our neighborhoods are dysfunctional. Broken families are everywhere.
The fruit of love as we know it is awful. And yet somehow, that's what we're used to. That's normal. And so here, in this conversation under the fig tree, Brandon tells me of Zac, who lived with an entirely different idea of love.
The love he lived for cost him everything, but left behind people who had tasted the divine.
The unique and beautiful thing about Zach was he received this beautiful, simple message of love, hope and grace. You could see it in his eyes. You could you could just see it. It's not what he said. And the beautiful thing was that he embraced that message and put his arms around the whole community. And I think that that's the fruit. The tangible thing that you could see in Zac was genuine love and genuine faith and genuine hope. He lived a genuine life of faith, and it was personal between him and God. And he embraced anyone and everyone in those last, you know, 2 or 3 years. That's how he went out.
Dave Malvern
He would follow people up. He would keep he would keep in contact. He would get with people one on one and just really try and help them, work them out how they were, what they wanted. You know, what were they trying to grapple with, how he could encourage them if they were Christians in their Christian walk. He wanted Christ to be as real to them as Christ was to him. And I think that's that's what he lived out. He knew God was real. He knew God made a difference to him. And he was so excited about that, so transformed by that, that he wanted others to sense that same transformation, or sense that same joy and excitement for life that he had.
Chris Varcoe
Every person who met Zach was impacted by him in some way or another. The reason why is because they encountered love. Because Zac emptied himself. Properly. He just like he gave up his life for God. For God to fill him up. And wherever he was you'd encounter love. You wouldn't encounter Zach. That's why I impacted everyone so much.
Luke Cowan
We all love. Everyone loves. Everyone has the capacity to love. And there's a thing called common love, which Jesus talks about. Loving those who love you, which is easy to do, that's common love, and we should do that. But to love the unlovely, to love the one who you don't receive anything back from, to love the one who may even reject you. That's uncommon love. Loving those who persecute you, giving to your shirt, to someone who takes, you know, giving, going beyond the extra mile, those kinds of things are beyond our natural human instinct. It is supernatural. It's it takes that encounter with the supernatural love of God, which is unconditional, and that is what Zac experienced. And it flowed out of him. He was filled up. And then out of that overflow, other people received it as well.
When we read greater love has no man to lay down his life for his friends, we tend to think of our physical body. You only get to lay down your body once - you know you'll stop breathing one day. It'll happen to all of us, mostly in old age, but for some earlier than that. But to lay down your life, your soul, your mind, your emotions and your will, to be willing to suffer loss for the sake of another, to give yourself for another, that can be done daily. That's a daily thing. And in a sense, that's what Jesus did. He not only died for us, but he gave his life for us. He was equal with God and, according to the Bible, gave up his equality with God to become a man and to become obedient to death. What for? For us. Because he loves us. And Zach had experienced that love, and he wanted others to experience that love. And that's not common. We know that Jesus loves us. But to have that love manifest itself in us in a way that flows out of us into other people so that they experience it. And that's profound. That is different. And if I could explain, you know, simply it's uncommon love.
Darryl Carter
Zac was committed to making sure you felt loved, and that's a different standard of love entirely. That's a definition of love that challenges me every day. For this reason, even if this was the only reason, I am richer for having heard Zac's story.
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