Fifty years. That’s 5-0. A half-century ago, 1972. Forgiven, saved, redeemed, regenerated, baptized in the Spirit, restored, raised to newness of life, transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the realm of light, converted from being an enemy of God to being adopted as His child, justified, secured, assured, emancipated from the slavery of sin, chosen, recruited by God to be on His team, and made blameless. All this took place one night in September of 1972, fifty years ago this month (September 2022)! Herein is my testimony of God’s grace to me (this is the short version; the extended version would require a book).

I grew up in a church-going family where religion was important but something practiced primarily on Sundays. Though I attended a parochial school early on, my life was pretty much normal compared to any other kid. My earliest religious experiences are associated with guilt, for I lied at my first confession. My sensitive conscience at the age of seven haunted me, and each week the shame compounded when I couldn’t bring myself to confess the first sin of lying to the priest, at all my subsequent weekly confessionals. I began to make things up. As time went on, I pushed the guilt aside. As I got into high school, my passions became increasingly centered on the usual young male things: sports, girls, drinking, etc. God was only there by the requirement of my parents.

When I left home at seventeen to attend Oregon State University, any vestiges of spirituality I had soon faded away. I was far away from home, and college life took over. Four years of studies, parties, pot, etc., consumed my life. But there was an emptiness deep down inside that these things couldn’t fill.

God brought various people into my life through those years. They were different. Not strange, but they stood out. They were people who were not afraid of speaking up for what they believed. They talked about Jesus Christ. The first of these was a pair of what I thought were weird girls in high school who would show up at basketball games and hand out religious leaflets (tracts). We all mocked them; they stood out, that’s for sure.

The next one came when I was home on break from college. A kid was helping my younger brother repair his surfboard, and he wore a t-shirt with “Jesus” written on the back. He didn’t say much about it, but he stood out.

The next was a girl in first-year composition class at college. It was the first day of the course, and the prof had us sitting in a circle. We each had to share a word that describes ourselves. One girl said “butterflies” because she was a free spirit. The guys offered words like “sports” and “sex,” with the expected explanation. I said “alarm clock” because I was always running late. Real profound stuff, eh? But one girl responded with two words: “Jesus Christ.” She looked normal in every way, even attractive. I couldn’t understand why a good-looking person like her could be so religious. She explained what Jesus Christ meant to her. She seemed wholesome, happy—like her life was all together. Mine certainly wasn’t, but I never let on to her or anyone else. But she was religious, and she stood out.

I thought religion was for “old people” or it was a feminine thing. But then I met Tim. One day after a pickup game of basketball, we were changing in the locker room, and in casual conversation, he mentioned where he lived. I had heard of that place called “Shiloh House.” It was where some “religious people” lived. Yet Tim seemed to be normal! I asked him if any of that religious stuff wore off on him. He responded that he had known Jesus personally for over two years. I quickly changed the subject and never talked with him again after that day. But he stood out.

Every once in a while, my mind would go back to a Billy Graham film my older brother had taken me to in high school. In the movie, people were turning to God, going forward at a crusade, or sitting around a campfire telling about how God had forgiven them and how they were restarting their lives fresh. I wistfully thought that sometime, somehow, I could get right with God. But how could I ever do that? If He existed and there was a heaven and hell, then I had no chance, no hope. I had done too many things wrong. And I could never live the “religious” life. So, I continued to live for all the gusto life had to offer.

After a long college-kind of “bull session” (as we called them in those days) arguing over the existence of a “creator god,” someone suggested I take a course in comparative religion. Taught by a self-proclaimed “Christian atheist,” that class shattered any remaining thoughts I might have secretly harbored about the objective existence of God. I bought into the concept that you make your own religion to suit your needs. And by now, my religion, to strain the word, was to live for myself.

Upon graduation, my first job was in Buffalo, New York. Within a few weeks, I met a summer employee who was “religious.” She was normal looking, even attractive. She didn’t fit the stereotype of a religious person that I had fostered in my mind. My friends at work told me to stay away from her because she was a fanatic. Being confident in my views of things, I decided that I was going to find out what made people like her tick, how their minds worked that they would believe such nonsense passed off as religion. I was going to prove her wrong and show her the real world. I wanted to save her from the delusion of close-minded, blind faith and open her mind to freedom from religious constraints.

As I got to know her and her friends, they all turned out to be ordinary people, not kooks or snake handlers. So why would they rely on a religious crutch? I leveled my best arguments against their beliefs and was good at it. But I was not able to shake her faith. I still remember her saying to me over a hamburger during a lunch break from work, “Chuck, I can’t out-argue you, but one thing I do know—Jesus Christ is more real to me than you are.” She looked me in the eyes as she said this with a confidence that betrayed no shred of embarrassment. She really believed it! I wasn’t so sure of what I believed, despite my outward confidence.

Then she rocked my life with this challenge: “If you are so open-minded, why don’t you go to the source and read it for yourself?” I had heard some of the stories and knew the basic facts about Jesus Christ’s life from my parochial background, but I had never read the Bible myself, much less for understanding it. The next day she showed up with a Bible (just the New Testament) written in modern English with lots of pictures and handed it to me. What could I do? To refuse would prove me to be the closed-minded one in the argument.

I began to read it that night, searching for the contradictions I had claimed were there. Studying it carefully to bolster my arguments, I could not find anything to nail her with. Truth be told, I thumbed through the book to see the pictures and read the captions before turning to the beginning and reading in the Gospel of Matthew from the beginning.

What I found unnerved me. It told me that I was a sinner, the very thing I feared was true. There it was, right there in the Bible. That is what kept me away from God for so long. But I also found the message that God loved me, wanted a relationship with me, and was willing to forgive me. He was not a mean old ogre looking down over the banister of heaven wanting to nail me with a spiritual two-by-four when I was having fun. The Lord wanted to give me a full and abundant life filled with meaning and purpose. He wanted to give me eternal life.

I didn’t want to believe this at first; I couldn’t believe it. But the more I read, the more I was drawn into it. Still, at the same time, my sinfulness seemed to intensify. I had spent years trying to bury the guilt, and now it was coming to the surface. The ensuing struggle was to become the decisive battle of my life.

One evening, I was with a group of people who thought like her, including a policeman who shared what Christ meant to him. They were otherwise normal, except they were weird for believing the Bible was true, and they talked about living for Jesus Christ. Later that evening, the inner conflict was boiling over as I took the young lady home. I knew I was on the verge of a momentous decision. But fear overwhelmed me. Darkness started to settle in. I made up my mind—I was through ever hoping that I could get right with God. I was ready to give up; it was just too hard. I was too far from God—if there even was a God.

When I dropped her off at her home, I said I was finished with her, her friends, and God! It was messing my mind up too much. The pivot point was the next thing out of her mouth: she asked if she could pray for me before I left. I said something like, “Suit yourself.” Having been used to “Our Fathers” and “Hail Mary’s,” I was startled to hear someone simply talking with God, like having a conversation with Him right there in the car. Over the next little while, my heart began to melt. Darkness began to give way to light. I found myself praying like this: “God, if You are there, I want to know You. If You want to forgive me and have a relationship with me–here I am. I am so sorry for how I have lived and for putting You out of my life.”

I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was I going to jump up and yell, “Hallelujah,” break down and cry, or what? For the first time in my life, I did not want to be a phony; I wanted to take God as He was. Then it began to dawn on me why Christ died on the cross. It was God showing His love to me. Because of this, He could forgive me. That night, I turned my life over to Christ and dared to believe in His complete forgiveness.

My life changed drastically. It was a day-and-night kind of difference. That night in the car, I began to answer all my own objections that had kept me from belief in God, including what I had previously thought was a convincing argument: how could God exist when there is so much hatred and killing in the world? But, now, after surrendering to God, the answer was as clear and real as anything ever was. There is hatred and killing in the world, not because God is not good or able to do anything about it, or that He doesn’t exist. No, it is because people reject God who loves them! How can they not see that? How could I not see it before this? The difference was that God had forgiven me for rejecting Him, and now I wanted to tell everyone about that.

The vacuum I had been trying to fill with other things was now filled with Christ! A verse in the Gospel of John captures it well. Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). It wasn’t that I had to change anything. But with Christ in my life, I now had the power to change things that once controlled my life. I was now free!

That all took place in 1972, when I was just out of college. Since that time, Jesus Christ has been my life. In 1975, I met Mary, and we were married a year later. After seven years working as a systems analyst, we left everything so I could study at Dallas Theological Seminary with the goal of serving the Lord in full-time ministry. With our young family, the Lord led us to Canada to work with two churches over twelve years, then to Rochester, New York, for twenty-five years, with the overwhelming burden for church planting and seeing others come to know Christ personally.

Our children are now grown and have children of their own, and we live close to them in San Diego, California. I praise God for what He has done in my life and His many, many blessings. Though life has at times been a struggle, I have found that with Christ with me, there is hope, meaning, and joy. He is gracious, generous, compassionate, and above all, loving. And He has secured me with eternal life forever. And it all began fifty years ago! To Him be all the glory!