I remember, as a kid, getting a small New Testament Bible and thinking, “This is all I need to know about God.” When I learned about the thief on the cross next to Jesus, I thought maybe being saved is easier than I thought. Then, when a Sunday School teacher explained that, as Christians, we need to share “The Good News” with others. I was not prepared for that bit of information; I just dared to be baptized, and now I need to talk to others.
That idea was scary to me; I did not like answering questions in class at school. It was one thing to give an incorrect answer in class, but say something dumb about what was in the Bible, a book that had so much I did not know, was totally different. I convinced myself that salvation is personal and avoided being put in that position.
Other than the VBS class, the summer I got baptized while in elementary, I made it through high school without attending any church summer programs. In 2 Corinthians 6, the Bible says, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” In 1964, I married Eva, and we both were Christians. However, we were not the same. While I was working all those overtime hours, Eva was involved in the church choir. Over the years, as I changed employers, my job got more demanding. I made it to church on Easter, Christmas, and a few other times, but it was clear that everyone in the church knew Eva a lot better than me.
When I was working for Gulf States Toyota and doing a lot of travel for work, it was convenient living in our first house near the airport, but some of those trips were on the company jet out of a private airport. That airport was close to where GST was located back then. I wanted to move closer to work, but we were not too far from where we grew up, and Eva was not keen on moving to another part of town. As part of the incentives to get Eva to consider moving closer to where I worked, I promised to go to church on Sundays. It was more than a year and a half later before we found a builder we liked, and our house was completed.
We began moving into our new home on Friday, 25, 1977. Our first day in church was on Sunday, March 6, 1977. Tammy and Jennifer’s Sunday School teachers were also teachers at school. The following Saturday, I was working in the backyard when Eva brought the Pastor from church back to talk to me. He talked to me about how I could help in various areas of the church, and I explained that he had me confused with someone else. He just laughed and said, we’ll see.
Nothing has been the same since that day. I knew a lot more about the Bible, but I had never made it a priority in my life and avoided talking about religion. I learned about Eva’s gift of music and her love for Jesus. A year later, I was dealing with my dad dying of cancer, the loss of the best job I had ever had, some extended family problems, and a lot of unknowns. I was sitting at my dad’s funeral when I realized what the scriptures mean: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Eva had joined the Ray family when she married me in every way. At that point, I knew it had to be different in my mind. Our family had to be the center of our universe, and other things were the extended parts.
Our church family and our immediate family were our focus for several years. God put me in places I did not necessarily want to be in, but I could see Him using me in ways I did not think were possible. God let us feel pain that we did not want, so that we could understand things we could not see otherwise. It became clear that God does not take us through tests of fire without a reason. The Bible says, “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
What Jesus taught me is that if you love Him, you will want to share what He has done for us while we were still in our sins. When we get to the end of our journey of life, it is not the stuff we have accumulated that matters; it is the lives we have touched. The question we must ask ourselves is: “Did we make a difference?” Not with that big project or big deal, but with someone’s life.
And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
Mark 16:15 New King James Version
Cristy Lane – Why Me Lord
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