Living a Purposeful Life - Part 2

During this time in our life, my husband came home from work one day and asked me if I had a Bible. I asked him why he would want a Bible and he said a man who worked with him had been sharing some spiritual things and gave him scriptures to look up on how to be born again. I thought about that black-bound Bible I had received years ago. I told my husband it might be in a box in the attic. He immediately went to the attic and found the Bible. He said when he opened it up it creaked it was so unused.  After my husband read the scriptures he said he thought we needed to find a church where they preached from the Bible. So we began our search for a Bible-based church. 

As we came to the Christmas season our neighbor invited us to a Christmas Eve service at her church. When the pastor told the Christmas story of the birth of Christ, my husband’s spiritual eyes were open to all the man from work had told him about the importance of receiving Christ into your life. So as we were singing “Silent Night” I noticed that there were tears dropping on the hymnal and I asked Jerry what happened. He said he had just invited Jesus into his heart. I remember thinking that was good for him because he didn’t grow up going to church. In reality, if we had both died that night my husband would have gone to heaven and I would have not. I was a church attender but not a born again believer.

The next few months were very interesting as my husband wanted to pray and read the Bible often. I only used to praying at mealtime and had given up trying to figure out how to get through the Old Testament. Jerry was always a kind man but as he began to grow in his faith I felt left out. I didn’t understand what happened but I knew it had to do with the Christmas Eve service we attended. I began to feel that God had taken him away from me and I couldn’t relate to his newfound faith in Christ. 

By this time I had conceived and was due in May of 1970. Jerry had received Christ on December 24 of 1969. I was still trying to figure out the difference between me being religious and Jerry being saved. We visited a lot of churches and finally found one that we both liked. It was a Methodist church that I felt comfortable with and a pastor who preached from the Bible which Jerry liked. After our first Sunday visit, we received a home visit. We didn’t know that the pastor had just been to an Evangelism Explosion seminar to teach how to lead people to Christ.

I will never forget when that evening. I offered coffee and cookies and we small talked for a while when all of a sudden Pastor Ken asked us two questions that changed my life. The first question was, “Have you come to the place in your spiritual life where you know for certain if you were to die tonight that you would go to heaven?” My husband answered that he knew he would and I said I thought so and hoped so. The second question he asked us was, “Suppose you were to die tonight and you were to stand before God and He were to ask you, “Why should I let you into My heaven?’ “What would you say?” My husband’s answer was because he had invited Christ into his life. I fumbled with an answer and gave a mostly good works answer. It was then the pastor began to share the plan of salvation with me. At first, I became uncomfortable when he said all have sinned. I thought it was rude to come to my house and then call me a sinner. But as he continued the share, the eyes of my understanding began to open and I realized I needed to repent of my sins and invite Jesus into my heart to be saved. That night Pastor Ken lead me in a prayer to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. That was on April 19, 1970.

 One a month later our daughter Shana was born and fifteen months Lisa was born. I remembered my prayer promise to God that if I had children I would raise them in a Christian home. It was then that I realized I needed to learn what a Christian was all about.

Here we are with our first answered prayer our daughter Shana

Fifteen months later our second daughter Lisa was born.