This following article of testimony was written and posted to my company website a few years ago before I closed the  business and retired. I hope it will be an encouragement for those of you who have been saved and are still working in the business world.
You may wonder why it is that I speak of my Lord Jesus Christ in the context of my business. It’s a long story, but I will be glad to share in a shortened version, the testimony of what the Lord has done on my behalf. It began about as soon as I was born. My dad was(and still is) a Christian, having been saved early in life and then having rededicated himself to the Lord Jesus in his early adult years. He pastored a small Baptist church and even attended seminary for a short time. All this to say that I had a drug problem from birth: I was drug to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening every week.
When I was eight years old some of my friends in church started making professions of faith and getting baptized. It occured to me that I did not want to be the last one in my Sunday School class to get baptized, so I told my parents that “I wanted to get saved.” Dad talked with me that evening after he got home from work and I remember we prayed together and I asked Jesus to save me. I also remember feeling guilty at the time because I wasn’t coming to Him with a sincere heart.
Needless to say, I did not experience much joy or peace in my life, even though I continued going to church regularly. When my teenage years hit, and dad started his business and started frequently working 7 days a week, it did not bother me at all to miss church. When a friend asked me if I believed in Jesus and God I told him no. I also remember telling myself and some friends a few years later that “I would never again step foot in a Baptist church.” I continued in rebellion against the Lord and even tried to convince myself that He did not exist. When a professor in junior college ridiculed the christian faith, I jumped right on board. I became what the Bible calls a fool. See Psalms 14:1.
Well this continued on until my mid-thirties. I married young–and divorced before I was thirty. I was blessed with a great son. But ungodly and selfish decisions I made in those years had a harmful affect upon him and his mother. I am grateful that he and I have a wonderful relationship today and have had for the past 20 years, but I could easily have ruined any chance at a relationship with him. I remarried in my late twenties and would have probably wound up in divorce court again because of my ungodly and selfish life. Except …
Except that the Lord began to draw me to Himself. One day I was at work and needed an o-ring for a machine I was working on. The company next door at that time was a distributor of o-rings. I went next door and got the part I was needing and as I left, the owner of the company told me “The Lord bless you.” I just looked at him thinking why would anyone in business say such a thing? A seed had been planted. Then a short while later, a friend of mine who coached our middle son in baseball called me one Saturday and invited us to church and dinner afterwards. Without trying to fish for an excuse I said “Sure. We’ll be there.” The seed was watered a bit.
We went and enjoyed it. The preaching was good, the time spent with friends was good. My wife and I talked about it afterwards that it was enjoyable and that it might be a good church to join. We went again the next Sunday and when they had the invitation, my wife and I and the boys went down front and told the pastor we wanted to join his church! What?? Me??? A man who had foolishly spent years trying to convince myself that God did not exist???? How could this be ?
Then the pastor asked us: Have you trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior? I gulped, and remembering when I had prayed the sinners prayer at the age of eight, replied “Yes.” But my conscience soon began to work me over. I began to think back to that time and within a few months realized that I truly had not asked the Lord to save me and come into my life as my Savior and Lord.
I had heard preaching at church and on the radio, that if I would admit to God that I was a sinner and would trust Jesus to save me from my sins, that I could be saved. I made that mental ascent. I had come to believe that God truly does exist. I realized too that Jesus died for the sins of the world, mine included. Then one day, I don’t recall the exact date– it was either late 1986 or early 1987– I heard a man on the radio preaching on the Lord Jesus’ promise in Revelation 3:20. “Behold I stand at the door and knock: If any man hear my voice , and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
I couldn’t get that verse out of my mind. That night as I lay in bed it was as if God was speaking to me saying “Open the door and ask me in David.” I remember thinking in my mind “What if I ask you to be my Lord and you want to send me to Africa to be a missionary?” That was the worst thing I could think of to rationalize declining His pleading. Then it was as if the Lord said to me “David, if I loved you enough to die for you, don’t you think I love you enough to take care of you, no matter where I send you or what I have you to do?” He melted my heart and my resistance. I then and there, lying in bed, asked Jesus Christ to come into my heart and to be my Savior and my Lord.
I had been reading my Bible for a while prior to that time, and then really began to become absorbed in the Scriptures. I recall as I would lie in bed at night that I would be reminded of a certain sin that I had committed prior to being saved. I found a verse in Hebrews 9:14 that helped me tremendously: “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” My conscience started getting scrubbed clean. I started realizing from other scriptures that I had peace with God. I relied upon 1 John 1:9 for forgiveness of my sins that I committed following my salvation. I began to walk in fellowship with God and other believers and to grow in God’s grace and the knowledge of Him and His Son. I found a joy that I never knew existed. I found a purpose for living. I found the ability to start doing things the right way instead of my old selfish, sinful wrong way.
So, to sum up, that is why I live for the Lord Jesus Christ. He loved me so much that He left the glories that attended Him in heaven and became a man. Not only so, but He also lived a life that I could not, a perfectly sinless life. Not only so, but He also was willing to be nailed to that old cruel cross on Calvary’s hill where He was cursed of God and bore my curse on His own body and where He died for my sins. Not only so, but after being buried in the garden tomb, He arose from the dead victorious. He conquered death and sin once and for all. And not only so, after forty days, He ascended up in the clouds with a host attending Him back to His Father and sat down on His Father’s right hand where He lives for ever and makes intercession on behalf of His saints. And I became a saint, a born again son of God, sanctified forever by Christ. And I became His servant. He is the best Master any man, woman or child could ever imagine. “We love Him because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19.
I hope that you are a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and that if you are not, that you will look into the promises of the Lord made in the Bible. He loves you, wants to save you from your sins, wants to give you eternal life, and wants you to serve Him.
Oh, by the way. The Lord has a wonderful sense of humor. I had sworn to never set foot in another Baptist church when I was a teenager. My wife and I now are members and active in a great … you guessed it … Baptist Church, Northeast Baptist Church in Southlake, Texas !
