He thought she was crazy, this wife of his. Debbie Hall told her husband she’d had a dream about a poor man who was wise who would change their Texas city.
When Ron Hall met the man in the dream, he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Denver Moore was threatening to kill everyone, and Ron couldn’t quite understand why God would pick this man.
“Little did I know that God was about to bless me with the greatest friend that I would ever have,” Ron tells Charisma News. “The person who would absolutely change my life. He was a man that Debbie, through her dream and through insistence and through her love, she threw the two of us together to actually save each other.”
Their friendship is on display in Same Kind of Different as Me, which re-released Sept. 19. Hall and Moore’s unlikely relationship will also be featured on the big screen next month starring Greg Kinnear, Renee Zellweger and Djimon Hounsou.
Zellweger will play Debbie, a passionate, Spirit-filled woman who ran after Christ with everything she had. Her conviction and actions radically impacted those around her, and she actively lived as the hands and feet of Christ. Kinnear will portray Ron, who says he wasn’t quite as gung-ho as his wife when it came to serving the poor.
“Truthfully, I’m so embarrassed to tell this story,” Hall says in a tear-choked voice.
When Debbie first met Moore, she and Ron were working on their marriage. As Debbie had drawn closer to God, Ron had pulled away, and in doing so, became involved in an affair.
“I’m so embarrassed because it’s not, it doesn’t feel good to be so vulnerable on the big screen, and I watched this film with my children who had no idea until their mom died and I confessed everything and said I was going to honor their mom by writing a book and telling her and Denver’s story,” Ron says. “But I have to get up in front of people after we screen this film, I’ve just been so exposed of how what really awful despicable person I was. It’s painful. But, she forgave me, God forgave me. Nobody ever brings it up. People tell me it’s one of the most healing things that they’ve seen that have gone through this similar thing that people don’t know about. Women have told me that it saved their marriages reading our book, because you know when they experience the same problems in their marriage, they have a choice, ‘Do I kick him out or do I just forgive him and not beat him over the head with it for the rest of my life and just kinda put our family back again?’ It’s become such an important part of our story is just the fact that I told it, and I wasn’t the only person that had ever done that or lived through it but I do hear, that only since I’ve told the story have I heard of other women be willing to share how because they read the book it saved their marriage because they were able to forgive their husbands and put it behind them.”
But Moore saved their marriage and Ron’s life. Moore was a homeless man who often saw Debbie washing the feet of his female comrades and painting their nails. He was fascinated by her but refused to tell her his name. Eventually, Debbie sent Ron to befriend him.
When Debbie was diagnosed with cancer, Ron says Moore would show up every day and deliver words of knowledge that encouraged the couple until her death.
“I used to sit and marvel just right before and after the death of my late wife Debbie that how in the world did God choose the most dangerous, dirty, filthy and in-rags man, how did He choose him to show up on our doorstep every morning, bring us a fresh relevant message, gleaned from hours on his knees by a dumpster in the inner city. How did that happen? When we had all of these scholarly faiths, and scholarly Christian leaders who were coming to us and praying for us, but the one God chose to deliver the message that comforted us the most during the 19 darkest months of our lives was an illiterate homeless man, African-American, ex-con, schizophrenic addict, a man who lived by a dumpster, spent all night by a dumpster in the inner city, and he was the one who comforted us the most. And I would just think, Wow, isn’t that just like God?”
After Debbie’s death, Moore moved in with Ron, and the two traveled around the country speaking at churches, Bible studies and more. Moore changed Ron’s entire perspective on faith and God, and Ron continues to champion the message now that Moore, too, has died.
“First of all, Denver taught me never to judge. And he changed my perspective on life in general just as far as being non- judgmental on people whether or not that I believe that they’re Christians,” Ron says. “He taught me that even with my own father, whom I was absolutely certain was not a Christian; he taught me, he said, ‘Don’t be judgin’ the man, just show him.’ He said, ‘It was the Christ in Mrs. Debbie that became the hope of glory for me.’ He said, ‘Mrs. Debbie showed me the love of Christ for a year before she ever mentioned his name.’ He said, ‘What she has I wanted. And so she was the first person that ever gave me hope that it wasn’t talking about Jesus, it was showing the love of Christ.’ He said, ‘I used to watch her wash the feet of those women there, the homeless women, and paint their toenails and their finger nails, wash their hair and all that all on the street, I used to see her do that, and I thought, Man, that’s what Jesus would do if He was walking here on the streets.’ And he said, ‘So that’s what brought me around was the Christ in Mrs. Debbie became the hope of glory for me.'”
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