On
the Easter Saturday of my twenty-first year I had a saving encounter with our
Lord Jesus Christ that transformed my life.
The
book had been very inspiring in a negative sort of way. The story, "The Year the Yankees Lost
the Pennant," had been popularized as a Broadway play, and most people
thought of it as a rather innocent fantasy about a man who sold his soul to
become a championship baseball player. I
was eleven years of age, impressionable, and fascinated by the concept that
there might be a power greater than myself.
It didn't matter that it was the devil.
What did matter was that there was something other, or should I say,
someone! I did what I thought was the
logical thing. I tried my first
experiment in prayer. I got down on my
knees behind a chair in our living room and gave my life to Satan. There was no flash of black lightning, and on
the surface I was mildly disappointed.
In
order to understand the significance of my experiment it helps to know that I
grew up in a well-churched family.
Sunday worship, Sunday School, choir, youth group and all the other
activities normal to churches were a regular part of our family life. We were orthodox in our beliefs and
conservative in our life style. What was
missing was a concept of personal faith.
We looked on ourselves as Christians, but it was something we did,
rather than Someone we knew. What I
hungered for was that Someone to know. As Teilhard de Chardin said, “What I cry
out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is
something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.” That I was looking in the wrong direction
never even occurred to me.
While
there were no overt manifestations of the evil one, circumstances were to
provide an answer of sorts to my offer.
A friend of mine began working at a local store and began to steal from
the cash register. I was glad to share
the spoils. The thefts from the cash register continued on a weekly basis for
almost two years. Those years were to
see an increasing involvement in petty theft and vandalism. School, always difficult at that time in my
life, became almost impossible. By the
time that I was eighteen I had spent three years just getting through grade
ten. My school career ended with a
conflict in my home that forced me out of school and into the Royal Canadian
Navy.
I
enjoyed the discipline of boot camp and reveled in the physical challenges, but
that six month period was only the calm before the storm. Immediately on being assigned to a ship in a
Canadian port city I took up with the heavy drinkers on board ship. From the very beginning of my drinking I knew
only one possible reason for the use of alcohol, and that was to blot myself
out. Whenever the ship was in port I
spent my time drunk, or planning to get drunk, or begging in order to get drunk
and became involved in petty theft and violence in order to sustain the ability
to get drunk. I drank away trade ratings
and promotions and thought nothing of it.
My ship-board career ended when I was working on a live electrical box
and failed to warn the Electrical Officer before he stuck his hand in the box
to correct my work. Within twenty-four
hours I found myself assigned to a shore hospital. They really didn't know where else to put
me. Being confined to the hospital
interfered with my drinking so I went AWOL in order to spend an evening
drinking. That act transferred me from a
hospital room to a cell in solitary detention.
In order to keep track of me they assigned me to duty as a guard at the
brig. During this time came my second
and more constructive attempt to pray. I
had spent an entire night drinking and had been unable to get drunk. That failure to get drunk put me in a state
of sheer panic. I remember rolling over
in my bed and crying out, "Oh God, help!" Shortly after that I found myself with a
conditional discharge and was told that if I stayed out of trouble with the law
for a year they would give me an honorable discharge.
Here
is where the miracle began. When I
arrived home several things happened.
First, God temporarily removed both the opportunity and the desire for
alcohol. It was an act of sheer
grace. Second, I went to lunch with my
father who leaned across the table and asked me an utterly incomprehensible
question. He said, "Have you asked
Jesus into your heart?" I didn't
even know what he meant, but in the following conversation he shared with me
that he had asked Jesus to be his Savior at a Billy Graham Rally in
Toronto.
I was enrolled in a
special school designed to help people who had not finished high-school to take
two years of schooling in one year. I
discovered that several of my classmates, all young people who had been out in
the work force and were returning for an education, were more different than I
could have imagined. They had a light
about them, a radiance that came from the personal knowledge of Jesus and from
an openness to His Spirit. I began to
attend evangelical meetings and began to hear the steps of salvation clearly
for the first time. Several times I
earnestly sought repentance, but one thing always held me back. That was the theft from the cash register so
many years ago.
Finally on an Easter
Saturday I read a chapter in a book that bore the heading, "Repentance and
Restitution." The Holy Spirit
confronted me with the fact that God, in my case, made a very clear connection
between confession and going to talk to the shop-keeper from whom we stole the
money. I got down on my knees in my
bedroom and began to pray. "Father,
I can't confess this to you, because If I do, then I will be arrested and then
what good will I be to you?"
It was at this point
that I heard the voice of God. Not
inwardly, but outwardly with an audible voice!
He said, "Go ahead, son."
I said, "But I can't, because my friend will become involved, and I
don't have the right to do that."
He said, "Go ahead, son."
I came up with four or five more reasons, but each time He patiently
answered, "Go ahead, son." I
got up off my knees and walked to the corner store and took the owner aside and
told him my part in the affair without identifying the other person or giving
the date when it happened. The owner
merely asked, "Is it all right in your heart now?" He gave his forgiveness without lecturing or
preaching and in so doing gave me a most precious gift. I went down the street after our meeting with
a tremendous feeling of my burdens being rolled away. For the first time I felt an immediate sense
of the presence of the Father and of Jesus without an accompanying sense of
guilt. But the miracle was not over yet.
A
few weeks later I knelt in a humble living room with a small group of people
praying. It was my first experience of
an actual prayer meeting. The meeting
was so dull that the person kneeling beside me kept turning the pages of Life
magazine. Every time he turned a page he
would say, "Amen," or "Hallelujah!" I took a look at that strange performance and
turned to God and asked Him, "What am I doing here?" With that He poured out his Holy Spirit on me
with the waves and billows of his love.
I lost all awareness of my surroundings and became only aware of
Him. I stayed under an intense anointing
for what seemed like hours. During all
of that experience He was making me anew.
How precious those moments were when He let me know that there was a Power
greater than myself and that He Himself loved me.
© 2013 Robin P. Smith
