Testimony and Calling

My Testimony

I was not raised in any religion.  My mom was raised Catholic and my dad was raised Lutheran, neither of which were active.  My mom was actively anti-Catholic and taught me that Jesus was a made-up person by the Catholic church to control people.  After graduating from High School, I joined the Navy, and I met all kinds of religious people, so I asked them questions about what they believed.  A Shipmate left a gospel track on my workbench titled God’s Simple Plan of Salvation.  I read the track and I knew it was the truth, but I said, “I don’t have time right now”, and I threw it away.  I got discharged shortly thereafter and went back to Michigan.

In 1989 I worked at an insurance office with several members of Van Born Baptist Church.  I asked my co-worker Steve lots of questions about what he believed, and every time he would open his bible and read what the bible said about it.  He was the first person I met that said he knew he was going to heaven.  Over the course of three months Steve witnessed to me and gave me the same track I received two years earlier, and I knew it was coincidence.  I sat in my house and ‘prayed the prayer’ on the back, but I knew nothing changed. I knew I was still on my way to hell.  Another co-worker invited me to church and I decided to go.  I had been under deep conviction for some time but did not know ‘what was wrong’.  At church that morning I knew I did not have the salvation he was talking about, and I needed it.  When I got home that afternoon I could not sit still, and I knew if I died, I would open my eyes in Hell.  I could not find that track Steve gave me, but I knew I needed to confess my lost condition to the Lord and ask Him to save me.  I believed Jesus was real, and alive, and listening.  I knelt by my couch and cried out, “Lord, I’m a sinner, and I don’t want to go to Hell. I hope I don’t have to confess all my sins because I know don’t them all, but I sure hope you will forgive me, and save me.”  Unlike my empty prayer of repetition a few weeks earlier, I knew that very moment something changed.  Everything changed.  I was changed.  I didn’t understand it but I knew it happened.  I had joy inside I could not explain.  I was a very foul person, so Steve knew something happened, because I quit swearing.  I went back to church the following Sunday and was baptized the following Sunday. 

My Call to the Ministry

God began to deal with me about preaching in the fall of 2003.  At our December 2003 night watch service, I was helping watch some children and was telling one of the boys and listen to the preaching.  He said to me “when are you gonna preach?”. The Lord used a two-year-old to put a dagger through my heart.  Shortly after that, while talking after work one day with my staff, one of them asked me if I had ever considered becoming a preacher, and I was convicted again.  I was preparing Vacation Bible School lessons at that time, and the Lord kept stirring me up, waking me up at 1am night after night. I thought it He was dealing with me about the VBS lessons, as this was my first time writing them, but that was not it. I talked to my Pastor about it, that I thought the Lord was calling me to preach, and we both began to pray about it.  I did not want to surrender to my emotions and go on how I felt.  I needed something to confirm it was the Lord, so  I asked Him to do something so unusual that I could not mistake it for anything but the Lord’s doing.  I asked Him specifically to give me double my sales quota ay work, which had never been done. 

The Call to Conifer Colorado

I told the Lord I was in over my head, and I didn’t know what to do next.  Moving across the country and changing churches was overwhelming.  That Wednesday evening Pastor Smith preached from Ezekiel 47 with a message titled “Come on in, the water’s just fine”.  When he got to vs 5, he looked right at me, smiled, and said “you feel like you’re in over your head?  Come on in, the waters just fine”.  I knew if I did not respond I would be in disobedience to the Lord.  I told Pastor Smith that night that all that the Lord was doing, and that He wanted me to stay in Colorado.  He told me to go home and talk to my Pastor before I did anything else, so I did.  Both Pastors agreed to transfer my membership to Platteville Baptist Church, and the move was on.  By January 2018 my home in Michigan was sold and I was a full-time resident of Colorado.

My mother had moved to Indian Hills, Colorado, and when she passed away, I preached her funeral service.  As I looked at the 50 strangers that came to her service, God began to deal with my heart about that area.  We had major tax and legal issues wither her Estate, but the Lord helped every step of the way, always confirming that He wanted me to keep the house, and even worked out the method to do so.  The burden for Colorado continued, and as I continued to pray about it, one town, Conifer, kept coming to mind.  As I research the area I found there were no Baptist churches in any of these small mountain communities.  I co-owned the Colorado property with my mom’s best friend Grace, and she passed away in March 2015, thrusting me into another estate fiasco.  I flew out to Colorado to look for some legal paperwork, and stopped at the grocery store in Conifer for food and water for the weekend.  I parked the car and began to weep.  The burden for this place, and the conviction was overwhelming.  I knew, as surely as I was saved, that I had to preach in this place.  I had considered going to several places in the past where there was a need and an opportunity, but I had never experienced a calling.  For three years God had been patiently calling, and He was now confirming it.  I came back in September 2016 for a court case for the Estate.  When I first arrived, I went to the same grocery store in Conifer, parked the car, and waited. The Lord convicted my heart all over again that this was the place He was calling me to minister.  I knew one of my biggest challenges was that I did not want to leave the church family I had grown with and loved for the past 20+ years.  While in Colorado I was attending Platteville Baptist Church, and Pastor Smith preached a message from Luke 14:26.  The Lord convicted my heart with the opening verses.  He knew my stronghold was the stable life I had where I was, but He assured me I needed to love Him more than that and follow Him.