“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer. 1:5)
My Testimony
Conversion
I was born in Central California into a Christian family with godly parents. My father was a blue-collar worker; my mother was a Christian school teacher. One of the earliest memories of my home life is seeing my parents sitting together on the couch with open Bibles and listening to a Bible teacher on Christian radio. They served the Lord faithfully in local churches and demonstrated a genuine faith in the Lord that had a deep and lasting impact on my life.
Unfortunately, there were not many biblically-balanced local churches in our area during my growing-up years. Churches that we attended were strong in evangelism, but anemic in Bible teaching and focused mainly on external indicators of spirituality, such as number of souls won, standards of dress, and submission to pastoral authority. This early exposure to a defective presentation of Christianity created a lot of spiritual confusion for me.
I remember making a profession of faith before age 6, under my mother’s influence. However, during preaching and revivals at church I would often wonder if I was “going to heaven” and experienced frequent doubts. On many occasions, I went forward during church invitations; someone would read a Bible verse to me and I would pray, then they would immediately take me back for baptism. I think I have been baptized at least three or four times. However, doubts about my salvation continued up through high school.
A couple of important events in my high school years played a significant role in God’s work in my life. The first was a public challenge by our pastor to the youth group encouraging us to read the Bible for ourselves. I had grown up in Sunday School and church and knew a lot about the Bible, but I had never really read it for myself. I accepted this challenge, and during my senior year of high school, I began to systematically read my Bible on a regular basis. The second event was a presentation made by a mission team that passed through our church. They invited the youth to “volunteer” for missions. They explained: “Even if you don’t know what God’s will for your life is, you can volunteer to make yourself available and pursue becoming a missionary until God closes the door.” At that time, I had completed enrollment at BJU, with plans to enter school in the fall as a Humanities major, but I had no goals, ambitions, or direction. So, I made a public decision to volunteer for missionary service.
My freshman year at the university included a course in Personal Evangelism. On the first day of class, almost the first words out of the instructor’s mouth were, “If you have doubts about your salvation, you will have difficulty leading anyone else to the Lord.” This statement burned in my heart, because I continued to experience doubt about my salvation. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became! I had always been a “good kid”: I was obedient to my parents; I had kept apart from the immorality and rebellion of many of my high school peers; and I studied hard in my public high school. I was angry, because I felt that God was unfair to permit a good kid like me to have such painful and unsettling doubt about my spiritual condition.
Over a period of weeks, God began to show me myself in a new way; I was not as good as I thought. Through my Bible reading, classes, preaching, and the conviction of God’s Spirit, I began to realize how far from being good I actually was. For the first time, the gospel began to make sense to me. When I cried out to the Lord and asked, “How can I know I am going to heaven?” It was as if he spoke in my heart, “I died so that you could know.” I accepted Christ and his sacrifice as the sufficient substitute for my sin. At eighteen years of age I truly came to know Christ for the first time.
Call
I was already a volunteer for missionary service when I experienced the new birth. At the semester break of my freshman year I switched my major from Humanities to Christian Missions. My sophomore year I became involved with Morningside Baptist Church and began to grow in my Christian experience. My school studies and church ministries all contributed to an increasing conviction that God was pleased with my pursuit of missionary service. I became involved with the mission prayer groups on campus and felt a particular interest in Asia and the Far East. In the summer after my junior year, I travelled with a BJU mission team to Manitoba, Canada. By the time I graduated, I had arrived at a firm conviction that God had indeed called me to be a preacher of the gospel on the mission field.
I pursued that calling after my college graduation by making an independent mission trip to Taiwan; I lived and worked with a missionary family for four months. I had opportunities for preaching, teaching, evangelism, travel, and the study of Mandarin Chinese. That trip made clear to me the tremendous need for gospel ministry in Taiwan. I felt a great burden and desire to return there as a full-time missionary.
In furtherance of that goal, I completed an M.A. in Bible at the Bob Jones Seminary over a three-year period. I worked part-time, studied at the seminary, and actively served in my local church. Marla and I were married during that period of my seminary studies. Soon after completing my degree, we joined Baptist Mid-Missions for service in Taiwan. We have now served together in full-time ministry for more than thirty-five years.
Marla was called to missions after completing college, while attending a mission conference at her home church. That experience occurred before we began to date one another. The independent conviction in both of our lives that we are doing what God has called and equipped us to do has been a stabilizing influence through the ups and downs of ministry. Many times, we desired to quit and would have quit, if we were not convinced that God has called us to this ministry.