MY FIRST WEEK AS A CHRISTIAN!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2nd, 1971

Yesterday, I said that prior to giving my life to Jesus on January 31st, 1971, I enjoyed arguing religion with "religious fools."  One such incident had taken place six months earlier, when a Navy Chief named Hal Judd tried to convince me that there is a God.  I must have won that argument because Chief Judd walked away in a huff!  A couple of days after I trusted in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I was sitting in the Admin. Bldg. filling out papers to be released from the Navy.  You see, I thought true Christians could not be in the military; I declared myself a Conscientious Objector.  While sitting there, Chief Judd entered at the far end of the large room.  When I saw him, I yelled, "Hey Chief Judd, come here a minute!"  His response supported my belief that I had won our debate, because he responded with sneer, "What do YOU want?"  My response change him; I told him of accepting Christ, and his face actually shocked me.  He was like a child at Christmas!  In his excitement, he asked if I had found a church yet.  I told him since it just happened two days before, I hadn't really thought about it.  He wrote down the name of his church and the address on a piece of paper.  Since it would be five days before I needed to read it, I folded it and put it in my wallet.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3rd, 1971

The follow Wednesday, I again had the night watch at the hanger, and I went up to the clinic to tell my friend of my experience.  I asked him, "Since you were studying for the priesthood, could you give me a list of college courses I would need to prepare for my "new calling?"  He said it had been several years, and recommend we call a church and ask a pastor.  So, he took the Pensacola phone book and started giving me home phone numbers to call.  The first one was busy,  The second one was no longer in service.  The third one said they had recently moved in and didn't know the former owners.  The fourth call was answered by a pastor's wife who said her husband was at the church, "And he would love to have you call him there!"  I said my friend, "How does she know I'm not a tax collector or worse?"  He laughed and said, "Oh well, he was a Baptist anyway!"  Both he and I had been practicing Catholics, and Baptists were a "little unpopular" with us.  We tried another number, and IT was busy!  Finally, he said, "Go ahead and call the Baptist, and he gave me the number of the church.  When he answered, I told him my name was Paul, that I was a new Christian, and that I was looking for counsel on college classes.  I heard music in the background, and he said their Wednesday Prayer Meeting was about to begin.  He asked me for my number and said he would call me back after the service.  Like an idiot, I gave him the number of the clinic instead of the Blue Angels number.  So....I sat there for about an hour, and waited.  When the phone rang, the pastor asked me if I knew Hal Judd.  I said yes.  He said, "Hal came to prayer meeting tonight all excited because he said the young man for whom he had requested prayers for salvation for the last six months, had given his life to Christ.  He then asked me, "Are you the Paul stationed with the Blue Angels?"  I said YES!  We had called the church that Chief Judd had written down and I did not know it!  The pastor asked if we could meet, and recommended at 7:00 p.m. the following night; he wanted to meet at Krispy Kreme.  I said I would meet him there.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4th, 1971

Pastor David Shoffner met me there, and he had two other men with him.  He said that on Thursdays, they visit church members who were shut-ins.  So, instead of me discussing my new found faith, he paired me with an old gentleman, and said we would meet back at the church following our visits.  I was surprised, to say the least, thinking Baptists are stranger than I had thought!  When we return to the church, he asked us how our visit went.  I told him the Marine Major we had visited spent the time showing me from the Bible that it was okay for me to be a Christian and be in the Navy.  That was a relief, in a way, because I wanted to stay married to Judy!  Pastor Shoffner sat and talked with me for quite a while, and after telling him all that had happened since waking up Sunday, he asked if I would give my testimony the next Sunday night.  When I asked what he meant, he said, "Will you tell our church members what you just told me?"  I said, "Okay."

SUNDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 7th, 1971

My "testimony" lasted about an hour, and I really don't know what I said.  It was as though I was in a daze, and someone else was speaking!  At the end, the pastor asked if there was anyone who wanted to come forward and put their trust in the God Who gave me that awesome testimony.  A man named Mike Sibley came to the platform, weeping, and gave his life to Christ!  Mike had been a deacon at the church for a few years, but he said that God spoke to him while I was talking and told him he needed to give his life to the Lord!  Later, I learned that deacons are assumed to be born again, but Mike had just been religious; he had been trying to be good enough to get to heaven.  Praise God!

Maybe, if God wills, I will continue the next time.  By the way, the conversations above were forty-seven years ago, and I do not intend them to be exact quotes; I am seventy-five, after all.