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.
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 honourable 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.
2014© Copyright The Rev. Dr. Rob Smith
