My Early Story (28)

 

Coming To Know Jesus - Four

 

I have not always been a good witness for Jesus, O my goodness, No!

 

But, witnessing has been part of the fabric of my life…from the beginning. I shared Jesus with my friends and classmates, I purchased tracts and handled them out, I talked to people at bus stops. I was once at the bus terminal in Friendship Heights on the D.C. – MD. line, where you had to transfer, and was talking to some folks who happened to be Catholic.

 

When I mentioned being “born again” (John Chapter 3), and they told me that that wasn’t in the Catholic Bible, I went into the bookstore that was there and purchased a Roman Catholic Bible and showed them the passage.

 

I have never understood not sharing Jesus with coworkers. If it had not been for a coworker I would not know Jesus. I have worked as a construction laborer, a carpenter, worked in a stone quarry, served as a soldier, as well as a CFO in a high-profile regional firm, and as a COO – and by God’s grace I have seen my positions as first and foremost venues to be the Presence of God to others, places to serve others, pray for others, share Jesus with others, be Jesus to others.

 

To be sure, in my early years I was inconsistent in my living, I don’t want to mislead you. To be sure, I am still on the learning curve of life. However, the workplace has been the primary place of spiritual formation in my life (along with marriage and Chrisitan koinonia) and a place of witness…often long-term relational witness.

 

I was once preparing to leave a firm and knew that there was one lady who I had not shared Jesus with, her name was Julie. I invited her to lunch, which she accepted. At lunch I looked across the table and said, “Julie, I need to apologize to you. We’ve worked together over a year and I’ve never shared the most important part of my life with you. Could I please do that now?”

 

With a smile she said, “Of course,” and we had a sweet time together as I shared my testimony and about Jesus Christ.

 

Now let me remind you, that the quality of my work and my attitude of service toward my coworkers laid the groundwork for this lunch – we cannot separate our work and our actions from our words.

 

The Early Church grew through workplace witness, through witness via commerce. As Michael Green writes (in effect) in his book, Evangelism in the Early Church, “Evangelism in the Early Church was primarily a lay movement.”

 

Perhaps being rooted in Mark 8:34 – 38 has meant that I’ve never expected anything but the Cross in life, service, and witness. What is the point of espousing something that you can’t give your life to? That you can’t give your life for? If Jesus is God, which He is, and if we have truly meant Him and are in a relationship with Him, then we ought to get with the program – He has sent us as the Father has sent Him (John 17:18; 20:21).

 

From the beginning of my life in Christ I have loved hymns. I used to not only carry a Bible, but also a hymnal. Often, when waiting for a bus in D.C. I’d have my hymnal open and sing to the Lord silently, I guess like praying the psalms. Those hymns are embedded in my soul and I still sing them, with renewed and deeper meaning; Jesus is their focus, and the Bible is their foundation.

 

There are so many things to write about, so many things I “see” looking back, but I’d better close this for now. Here is a saying I learned as a teenager, and I still believe it:

 

Only one life, twill soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.

 

My Early Story (27)

 

Coming To Know Jesus - Three

 

My poor father didn’t know what to think about me. He hated what was happening, but I suppose he hated it because he wasn’t equipped to process and interpret it. I had no rules when living with him. I could come home anytime I wanted to, school night or not, and I was out some late nights. I was really a kid on his own, doing his own thing. The only constant in my life was my after-school job.

 

Now you might think that school was a constant, but school was chaotic for me. I had some interesting and nice friends, one from Greece, another from Guatemala, another from Thailand, and one American – the school had quite a few international students, after all, we were in N.W. D.C. We ate lunch together most days. I was also in Jr. R.O.T.C.

 

But in terms of academics, I really didn’t care.

 

Before Howard Wall’s question to me about being a Christian, I was reading philosophy on my own; I recall Plato and David Hume. Perhaps if I had a goal, it was to discover what the heck we were all doing here on earth.

 

I enjoyed my grocery job because I had a feeling of accomplishment, and I liked the people I worked with. Howard Wall was Native American, then there were Jewish folk (the owners were two Jewish brothers), your average white folks, a Cuban refugee, and African – Americans. I truly liked them all and they all treated me well. I was the only kid working there until I got my classmate Roderick a job. Maybe, looking back, it was also a safe place for me, a kid in an alcoholic family.

 

As I was coming to know Jesus I began carrying a pocket New Testament and Psalms with me. I’d read it in some classes (I had been reading philosophy in classes that bored me), and I read it during lunch and other breaks. While my international friends thought my turn to religion was a good thing, my best Anglo friend, like my dad, was upset.

 

One day, during a class break, I was sitting at the base of the flagpole reading the New Testament when my friend, Frank, came up to me and knocked the book out of my hand – he was so angry at me coming to Jesus.

 

I shared Jesus with my friends back in Maryland, where I had lived with my mom, two younger brothers, and Aunt Martha. One evening at my church in the Wheaton – Silver Spring area, I invited friends to come so we could talk about Jesus (the pastor let me use a room), and that’s what we did. Some came to know Jesus over those same months that I was coming to know Him.

My Early Story (26)

 

Coming to Know Jesus – Two

 

I have known folks who can’t recall a time when they didn’t know Jesus. I have known others who can point to a time and place when they came to know Him. All I can tell you about myself is that sometime in early 1966, over the course of a few weeks, or maybe months, I came into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

 

This occurred primarily through reading the Bible. My great-great aunt Martha gave my brother Bill and me Bibles when we were quite young, and though I never read mine, when I moved in with my Dad I brought my Bible along with my other books (mostly history). As I look back, what is particularly interesting about Aunt Martha’s gift is that she wasn’t a believer, she was very much an idealistic humanistic, along the line of New England transcendentalism.

 

After I came to know Jesus Aunt Martha said to me, “You’ll get over this.”

 

One thing for sure, Aunt Martha loved me even if she didn’t understand me and I owe as much to her as to anyone in my life for many many reasons.

 

Aunt Martha once told me that she’d heard Gypsy Smith preach; who knows the seed that God placed in her heart during that meeting. She also once mentioned that she had an aunt named Rose who prayed. “Aunt Rose prayed,” is what she said. I’m sorry I never asked her to tell me more about her Aunt Rose, but I’ve often thought that I must be the fruit of Aunt Rose’s prayers.

 

I began with Genesis in my Bible reading and got bogged down in Leviticus. What to do? I noticed there were red letters in the back part of the Bible and was drawn to them. These were, of course, the words of Jesus.

 

I only had to read Mark 8:34 – 38, and Mark 12:29 – 31 once to realize the import of what I was reading. I read those passages over and over and over again, and without trying to memorize them, I knew them, they were embedded in my soul. I have probably recited them in Sunday messages, and in conversation, more than any other passages, with Galatians 2:20 a close second.

 

Frankly, the only Gospel I have ever recognized is the call of Jesus in Mark 8:324 – 38, anything else is less than the Gospel. This is what conversion looks like. Many people are converted who never say a “salvation prayer,” and many are not converted who say such a prayer. Jesus draws us in many ways, all by His Holy Spirit.