I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, where I was baptized and confirmed, but I felt something was lacking. When I was 16 years old, I went to hear an evangelist who was traveling through our town, and I responded when he asked people to come forward and make a decision for Christ. And at that moment I knew that something had happened. I didn’t quite know what because I had not studied the Bible enough to be able to describe it, but the next day I went back to milk the cows on my dad’s farm and I knew I was different.
As a teenager, I needed to know for certain that I was right with God. I could not help but admit to myself that I was purposeless and empty-hearted. In a word, I was spiritually dead. But I know that God always had his hand on my life, leading me step by step.
I remember that I always wanted to be things I could never be, like a baseball player. I also wanted to stay on the family farm, because I loved farm life, especially the dairy part of it. I thought that someday my brother and I would probably inherit it from my father and that would be my life’s work. But God had other plans.
I went down to Florida to attend Bible School, where I began to study the Bible in earnest and to feel that maybe God was calling me to some form of religious service. The school was surrounded by a beautiful golf course right on the Hillsborough River, and I remember going out on a moonlit night and lying on the edge of the 18th green and just thinking a lot.
It just seemed to me that there was something pulling me, but I couldn’t say what it was. I didn’t hear a voice, but I know that God was calling me to serve him, although I didn’t know in what form. So I got on my knees on that 18th green, and I said, “Lord, I’ll go where you want me to go, and I’ll be what you want me to be.” Immediately, I felt a great peace in my heart.
That was a big turning point in my life, and I started practicing preaching down on the river and out in the swamps.
Since I first committed my life to Jesus Christ some 60 years ago, I have crossed paths with people who hold virtually every kind of religious and philosophical views imaginable. Often I am moved by the intensity of their spiritual searching and by the depth of their commitment. At the same time, as the years have gone by, I myself have become even more convinced of the uniqueness and truth of the Gospel of Christ.
Is that merely stubbornness on my part, or self-deception? Actually, it comes from a deeper and growing understanding of who Jesus Christ was–and is. The Bible says that Jesus Christ was God in human flesh, that 2,000 years ago God deliberately came down and took human form upon himself in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus was not just another great religious teacher, nor was he only another in a long line of individuals seeking after spiritual truth. He was, instead, truth itself. He was God incarnate.
When I seek to point people to Christ, it is because I am convinced that he alone is God’s answer to life’s deepest problems. I have seen him bring changes in the lives of countless individuals who have turned to him in true repentance and faith.
We are living in a world that is beset by problems and upheavals and instability, yet this is a glorious day for the Gospel. I’ve been privileged to preach the Gospel on every continent, and I’ve always found that when I stand to preach to any audience, no matter what the culture or the language, people the world over have the same deep needs. The problem of sin is still there in the human heart.
I think one of the greatest challenges we have for the future is to try to keep ourselves together and have a moral basis to our togetherness. The next generation will have to face the same problems that past generations had to face. And as he has been in the past, Christ will continue to be the answer to all of our problems in the future.
God has a plan for each life, and I believe that there is a moment right now that God has set aside when I am to die. And I believe that there is a time when he will see that it’s my moment. And I’m looking forward to it because I want to go to heaven.
I am convinced one of the joys of heaven will be discovering the hidden ways that God, in his sovereignty, acted in our lives on earth to protect us and guide us so as to bring glory to his name, in spite of our frailty. As I look back over the years, however, I know that my deepest feeling is one of overwhelming gratitude.
I cannot take credit for whatever God had chosen to accomplish through us and our ministry; only God deserves the glory, and we can never thank him enough for the great things he has done.
