When I was a child, I was very spiritual. By that, I mean that I had a deep sense of the existence of God, although I didn't have any real theological understanding of Him. My family didn't attend church. When I was about 12 years old, a new church was built within walking distance of our house. My brother and I both began attending that church when it was completed. We went through confirmation classes and became members of the church. I even sang in the Junior Choir. Anyone who has ever heard me sing knows that that's a testament to the Junior Choir Director.
I continued attending the church through my high school years. After high school, for one reason or another, I stopped going to church. I joined the work force and eventually began taking some college classes at night. During that time, I was pretty much agnostic. I didn't really believe in God, but I wasn't antagonistic toward Him or toward those who did believe. In fact, I always enjoyed engaging in conversations with people who believed and who didn't feel threatened by my unbelief.
When I was 22, my parents bought the 20-acre farm, where I would eventually have my horses. The week that they were moving into the new house, my dad had to go to the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery. A week later, to the day, my uncle died suddenly of a heart attack. This was the carpenter uncle who had converted the pantry into a breakfast nook in
the house where I grew up. Two weeks later, to the day, my brother was killed in an auto accident. Three weeks after that, to the day, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Five or six weeks after that, my dad had a major heart attack. He was only 52 years old. He survived the heart attack, but the heart suffered damage. This was before heart transplants. He lived 19 more years, but he suffered with congestive heart failure during many of those years.
Meanwhile, my mom had a mastectomy and had a pretty good life for eight more years. She died at age 61, when I was 30, just after her own mother died. And, in between the deaths of my mother and grandmother, my closest cousin was killed in an auto accident.
My 22nd and 30th years were difficult, to say the least.
My dad was an alcoholic and had been for basically his entire adult life. When a doctor told him he was killing himself, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and had achieved 16 years of sobriety when my mom died. Then he started drinking again. AA maintains that alcoholism is a disease and that it continues to progress even when the alcoholic is not actively drinking. That seemed to be true with my dad. Or maybe it was just his depression over losing his wife of 36 years that made his drinking so bad.
I was living in a house trailer on Dad's 20-acre farm, so that I could be there to take care of my horses. I was obsessed with worry over my dad's drinking and the fear that he would kill himself or someone else in an auto accident. I used to turn the lights off in my house trailer at night, pretending to have gone to bed, while actually sitting up and watching Dad's house until I knew he was safely home. Even then, I couldn't turn off the worry. I knew he had a shotgun in the house and feared that he was depressed enough that he might even resort to suicide.
My dad actually remained active in Alcoholics Anonymous during this time of his resumed drinking. But he no longer attended meetings where he had been known during his sober years because he knew that those folks would recognize the symptoms of his drinking. Instead, he found new meetings to attend and even continued to reach out to help other struggling alcoholics.
Over the years of Dad's association with AA, I had heard many recovering alcoholics give testimony to God for helping them in their recovery. During the years of Dad's renewed drinking, my feelings of aloneness and anxiety drove me to my knees in prayer. I can remember kneeling beside my bed and praying to a God that I didn't really believe in, and telling Him that, if He was there and if He could help Dad and me in the way that others said He had helped them, I was ready to meet Him on His terms.
I think it was less than two weeks after I prayed that prayer, on a Saturday, that my dad told me that he was going to be driving to a nearby town to pick up a man named Ted, who was being released from a detox center. Ever worried about Dad's driving, I offered to drive him there.
We picked up Ted and took him home. That afternoon, Ted called me and invited me to go with him to an AA meeting that night. That was the last thing I wanted to do, but I agreed for Ted's sake.
At that meeting, I met Bruce, who was a pastor and also a recovering alcoholic. Bruce had gone there specifically to talk with Ted and invited Ted and me to join him for coffee at a local restaurant after the meeting.
Over coffee (Pepsi, for me), Bruce asked each of us if we knew for sure that we would go to heaven when we died. Well, I didn't think that was something anyone could know for sure, but Bruce said that the Bible said it was possible to know. Then he followed that question up with another, even more thought-provoking question: If you WERE to die and God were to ask you why He should let you into Heaven, what would you say?
Well, I think my answer was pretty much along the lines of, "I've always been a pretty good person."
Bruce explained that the Bible says ALL are sinners and are, therefore, unable to earn entrance to Heaven by our good deeds, since no sin can enter Heaven. He explained that God had provided His own Son, Jesus, to take upon Himself our sins and to give His own life to pay sin's penalty for all who would put their trust in Him. If we would believe and ask, Jesus would take our sins and, in exchange, give us His righteousness. As Bruce explained it, we choose whether we will stand before God to be judged on our good works (which the Bible describes as being "as filthy rags") or whether we'll stand before Him trusting in what Christ has done for us.
Bruce concluded by inviting us to visit the church where he served as pastor the next day. Ted and I both made excuses, but we wound up going to church together that Sunday. I was interested in what was said and sung during that worship service, but I was still holding back. I couldn't stop thinking about the things Bruce had shared, though. They permeated my thoughts, even in sleep. Finally, after about two weeks of that, I called Bruce to see if I could talk further with him. He invited me to come on over to his house, saying that there was another guy there that he was talking to and that I could join them.
This time, Bruce had a Bible out and showed us the passages of scripture as he talked about them. In the end, he invited us to pray with him to ask Jesus to come into our hearts and to forgive us of our sins. Such a simple prayer, but so life-changing.
The all-consuming worry that I had had about Dad and his drinking was lifted. I had a desire to know everything that the Bible had to say and couldn't get enough of reading and studying it. I began attending the church where Bruce pastored, as well as a group Bible study at his home. When special services were offered at other churches, I would attend those, too. I was amazed at the simplicity of the gospel message and that I had lived to age 34, without ever understanding these truths. And yet, the Bible confirmed everything I was hearing, as did the many hymns that we sang.
I was sure that none of my friends and acquaintances had ever heard these things and that they, too, would believe if they only knew. Unfortunately, in the thrill of my new faith and my zeal to tell everyone I knew, I'm afraid I scared some of them, including my best friend of 16 years. She didn't really want to be around me anymore, and I felt the pain of that loss for many years. We had been closer than many sisters, and the loss of her friendship left a gaping hole in my life. Fortunately, God was busy leading me into new relationships that would help me to grow in my new faith.
Bruce told me later that he had really thought I was already saved, based on my comments about my early church experience. Both times that he talked to me about salvation, he thought the Lord had brought him there to talk to Ted and the other man. But those guys were never heard from again. It appears that, all along, it was me that God wanted Bruce to talk to about these things. He was answering my prayer.
About two years after I trusted Christ for my salvation, the Lord led Bruce to drive out to my dad's house and talk with him. My dad became a believer that night.
It's been 31 years now since I asked Jesus into my heart. I have absolute confidence that, when I die, I will go immediately to be with Him. There's no pride in that statement, because it isn't because of anything I have done. It's all because of what He has done to secure my salvation for me. What love!
