Jim serves as a deacon at Sovereign Grace Church of Fredericksburg, VA. The following is his testimony of coming to know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior (audible and written).
Forty years ago on January 29, 1974, God graciously saved my soul. This glorious day marked the end of a three year search for truth. This search had taken me to many different places, some very dark and all empty. Jesus Christ, who is the Bread of Life and who is the Truth, forgave me of my sins, satisfied the hunger in my soul, and revealed truth to me.
Through most of high school, I was a straight arrow kind of kid who did well academically. I was a joker, but also very straight and very studious. In my senior year, I started to change. I became politically radical. I began to run with a party crowd. A good friend and myself published an underground school newspaper which we named the POW Press. In it we published teacher evaluations from our interviewing of our party friends and other rebellious radicals on campus. We wrote flaming editorials. Some teachers were extremely agitated by our student journalism.
In spite of this, the school administration and a council of the teachers awarded me several honors – outstanding achievement awards in various disciplines along with several local community funded scholarships. Because I also graduated second in my class, I was asked to be one of the speakers at graduation. In arrogant radical fashion, I rendered my thanks to all who had honored me, by giving a blistering speech on “The Failure of the American Educational System”.
Over the next few years after graduation, I became increasingly radical and increasingly anti-establishment. I believed in evolution. I viewed religion, particularly Christianity, as the opiate of the masses. I believed that in the beginning man created God. I was lost. I was angry. And I was very arrogant.
I gradually began to ache to know truth. If there was, in fact, any truth in the universe, I had to find it. Obviously to me at the time, there was no truth in our world system and there was no truth in Christianity – all Christians were quite the hypocrite and very deluded to put their confidence in a fictitious God based on a book that man wrote. These were my presuppositions as I began my quest for truth.
I became obsessed in my pursuit of truth. Truth had to be more than I had previously been exposed to.
During this time I was in college, then out of college and in the work force full-time, and then back to college again. I was living with my grandmother at the time. She was 65 and had been a Christian since she was 8 years old. She was perhaps the finest Christian I have ever known and she was not shy about bringing the gospel. I remember one time in my lostness that I had set a Buddha I had purchased in Mexico in her living room and fell prostrate on the floor worshipping Buddha. She yelled, “get that little fat guy out of my house before I break him up in little pieces”.
My quest for truth had taken me to dabbling in Eastern mysticism, reading Gabran, pondering eastern religions, sometimes fasting looking for enlightenment, writing sometimes spooky spiritual poetry.
I was becoming more and more disturbed as I could not find truth. I was planning to go to a deserted stretch of beach in Mexico to seek truth and to not return until I had discovered it.
But before I did, I was invited by a high school acquaintance to come to his family’s home on a Friday evening to participate with him, his brother, and his mother in an exercise to enter the spiritual realm. The more he talked the more fascinated I became. His mother was a medium who could contact spiritual powers and enable others to release the power within them. I saw amazing things happen that Friday evening and returned a couple of other times.
The problem with all of it was that I was now convinced that there were real powers beyond the natural world, but I was becoming extremely depressed and was actually battling a compulsion to kill myself. I came to the conclusion that there were real spiritual forces in this world, but the ones I was becoming involved with were evil. If there were evil spiritual forces, then there would logically seem to be a spiritual world that was good. This I had to find!
So I took a few more laps with everything but the Bible. Nothing seemed to really be truth. Nothing satisfied. I began to think that maybe there was no truth. That was a very depressing thought. At that time many things in my life were going wrong. I remember writing this poem to describe my situation.
“As I sit and watch the gray crash in
I think of Earth and God
And my mind begins to spin.
Wouldn’t it be nice to sit back and stare
And have faith in the world out there
It would be nice
But so unreal
Because life is only a dream
That we can sometimes feel.”
I was real lost. I was still living with my grandmother who was so very loving and served me day and night. I remember yelling at her, granny, why do you keep ironing my clothes? I prefer to wear them wrinkled! She would just smile and usually start singing. And her 4 and 5 course home cooked country meals were legendary. But one thing that was frequently irritating is that she would pray each night in her bedroom and I could hear her in my bedroom. A regular prayer was “God save that boy, he’s a good boy, but a lost sinner – he needs you so bad please God save his soul”. She meant well, but was she ever deceived!
One night I returned home at my granny’s house after having been to a late night party. As I rumbled into the house I heard my grandmother again praying for me. I was greatly angered by this intrusion into my after party altered state of consciousness. As I made my way to my bedroom, I saw her big black Bible on a desk. I grabbed the Bible and out of nowhere yelled, “Alright God if you have anything to say to me you had better say it and say it now!” I flung the Bible open and randomly threw down my finger to read.” This is where my finger landed and what I read,
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. – 11 Timothy 3;1-7.
I was immediately sober and smitten deeply within.
I began to secretly read the Bible. I remembered a line from a song written by Bob Seeger and sung by the Byrds that said “To everything there is a season”. I had heard that this was from the book of Ecclesiates – so I read the book. It was a journey through all of the areas in life that the natural man looks for fulfillment – wisdom, knowledge, wealth , pleasure, etc; but after each Ecclesesiates said “for all was vanity and vexation of spirit”. As I read I kept saying outloud, yes, that is the truth! I could not wait to get to the end of the book, as here truth would probably be revealed. I finally got there and with great anticipation read,
“ Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.”
Those were words of truth that struck deep into my sin sick soul. I had at various times in my life heard about Jesus. In fact, in high school I had wept upon hearing the opera, Jesus Christ Super Star. So I now began reading the gospels.
One evening soon thereafter, on January 29, 1974 forty years ago, I went to church with my grandmother to what was called an evening revival service. After the altar call was given, I rushed forward fell on my knees and cried my eyes out as Christ came into my life. I arose from my knees a new man with no weight of sin on my shoulders and my heart filled with the truth that I had been so desperately seeking.
This is my story, but much more than that this is the story of how our gracious loving Lord created a hunger within the heart of a young man and drew him to himself that he might display his great love and tender mercies.
