My reBirthday

Summer is almost here and it’s time to celebrate! I know it’s not officially summer until June 22, but don’t we really think of summer as being between Memorial Day and Labor Day? Many students are already celebrating their freedom from school. For the past 238 years our country has celebrated its independence and freedom on July 4^th. Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration of the ending of slavery dating back to 1865. It was on June 19^th that the Union soldiers, led by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with the news that the war had ended and that all slaves were now free. Sheri and I celebrate our anniversary in June (it’s either the 26^th or 27^th) and I celebrate my birthday every summer in July. As important as all of these dates are, there is one celebration I enjoy that you may be unaware of.

Every June 16^th I celebrate the most important event in my life. Because it was on that date I made a decision that sealed my destiny. That sounds pretty heavy doesn’t it? Well, it is, because not only did that decision determine my destiny for life, it also sealed my eternity.

It was a Friday evening during the summer of 1972. I was sixteen. That night I was a bundle of nerves because I had been preparing to make a public statement.  A proclamation that would prove I was a “Christian.” Well, my little prepared speech didn’t turn out quite like I had planned.  It was better!

I was raised in a family whose religious background was Roman Catholic. During the first 16 years of my life I was immersed in Catholicism. I was christened; confirmed, received my first communion, attended catechism, and went to confession. My elementary school years were spent at Mount Carmel Catholic School. There I was taught about God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I learned how to genuflect, make the sign of the cross and stay away from angry nuns.  I learned that if you were good, you went to Heaven when you died and if you are bad, you went to Hell. They also talked about a place called Purgatory, which is sort of like an afterlife holding cell for the not too bad for Hell, but not good enough for the Heaven crowd. I never really bought into that. So, to me, the choice was clear, Heaven or Hell; a no-brainer, right? So I decided that if I wanted to go to Heaven, I had to be good. Problem was, they didn’t tell you how good you had to be, or more importantly, what wasn’t good enough.

Therefore I vowed to stay out of trouble because I learned the hard way that it could be a very painful experience. I remember one time in elementary school being brought by one of the Nuns to the principal’s office. She grabbed me by my left ear, gave it a good twist and a yank and away we went. Yeouch!! She led me all the way to the principal’s office with ear in hand. As I entered the office my knees were shaking in my ear was aching. I was one scared little boy. The principal, the Head Nun, set calmly in her chair. She pulled out a ruler from her top desk drawer and laid it very gently on her desk. This is a very effective intimidation tactic I’m sure they learn in Nun school. The only thing I can remember is staring at that ruler and fearing for the sake of my knuckles. Somehow, I was able to leave with my knuckles unscathed. I am just now, after all these years, getting the feeling back in my left ear.

From that point on I was determined not to get my, “knuckles whacked, my bottom smacked or, go to Hell.” I felt very confident about accomplishing the first two, but the going to Hell thing really scared me.

How good do you have to be? I didn’t know, and no one else seemed to know either. I try to gain points with God by being an altar boy, as I, along with other boys tried to work our way into Heaven by assisting the priest in conducting the mass. We would arrive at school early in the mornings to prepare the hosts (little bread like wafers) and the wine that only the priest would get to drink. Looking back I can tell you that putting eleven-year-old little boys in charge of an alcoholic beverage was probably not a very wise choice. At least it wasn’t in our case.

Someone had told me that the hosts were sacred and that if you didn’t eat them right away, or if the leftovers were not disposed of properly something very bad would happen. Like, they would turn into snakes or scorpions. Well, that really piqued my curiosity, so one day I brought some home, put them in a baggie placed them on the top of the refrigerator. Every day for a week I would check the baggie, and every day there was no change. As I think about it now, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but for little boy it was huge. Why would they tell me this if it wasn’t true, and, if that wasn’t true, what about all the other stuff they want me to believe?

I left parochial school to attend public school in the seventh grade. There I would experience a whole new set of consequences for getting in trouble. One day, at Hartman Junior High, the coaches and the assistant principal has set up a sting operation to catch adolescent malefactors as they ran down the hall (as we know many of the most hardened criminals in the world today began their life crime by hall running). The punishment - to whacks on the rear end with a wooden paddle designed to provoke fear into the hardest of criminals. It worked. As I sat in my seat I was shivering with fear waiting for the assistant principal to call me into his office.

As I entered his office he asked, “Mr. Walker, were you running down the hall?”

“Ummm – uh – yessir,” I whimpered, thinking that honesty might get me off with just a warning. I was wrong. The assistant principal then pulled out a hard backed wooden chair over and told me to lean over the back of the chair and grabbed the front legs with my hands. Not only is that a most humiliating position, but it also makes a skin on your bottom end tighter than shrink-wrap. Then he asked me the dumbest question I ever heard in my life. He asked, “Are you ready?”

Are you ready? Are you ready? There I was draped over the back of a chair with my rear end raise to the Heavens and he asks if I’m ready. Was I ready? Was I ready to have a man three to four times my age and bigger than Goliath blister my butt with a board?  No sooner had I said, “Ummm – uh – yessir,” I heard the board whistling through the air. It sounded like a double barrel shotgun going off in his office.  BAM!!! My soul did that hurt?  Then, BANG!, he hit me again.  That was the last time I got swats (there was one time before, but it wasn’t my fault – – yeah right). I never got them in high school.

At Ross S Sterling High School in Houston, I was introduced to other things that could really get me into big trouble. I stayed away from most of it. It was during this time I began to seriously consider life questions. I remember sitting in geometry class wondering if all the stuff I was taught in parochial school was true. Was I good enough to go to Heaven? What was good enough? What wasn’t good enough? More importantly, was I good enough? I knew I was a good kid but honestly I didn’t think I was good enough to be Heaven material.

When I was sixteen I joined a (don’t laugh) Square Dance Club. Okay, go ahead and laugh. I mean really, how many teenagers do you know join a square dance club? Well, I found out that there were quite a few actually. The name of our club was the “Swingin’ Squares”. And we were. Every now and then our club would visit another club in La Porte Texas called The “Bayshore Promenaders.” That’s where I met Gwen.

I thought she was so pretty. I would catch myself watching her and wondering if I could ever be with the girl is pretty as her. Well, after several times dancing with her I knew that I wanted to see more of her. When I finally worked up the nerve to ask her if she would like to go out with me sometime she said, “Yes.” But, there was a catch.

One of the prerequisites to dating Gwen, set forth by her parents, was that you had to go to church. Well, that was not a problem, I went to church. In fact, I had the papers to prove it. What they really meant was, I had to go to their church.

On the surface that didn’t sound too bad. Then I found out that they were Baptist, but not just any Baptist; they were Southern Baptist. I’ve been warned about these people. Weirdoes! They didn’t dance; they didn’t drink; they didn’t smoke or chew. They preached fire and brimstone. They went to church all the time and they couldn’t have any fun or they’d go straight to Hell; Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200. These people petrified me. But Gwen was really, really pretty. So, after weighing all the pros and cons that are important to a sixteen-year-old pubescent boy, I decided to take the risk and go to the “Southern Baptist Church”.

Bayshore Baptist Church was in La Porte Texas. The pastor was Rev. Bill Baker. He had wavy grayish hair and was in pretty good shape (athletic). He spoke with a big booming voice that there was something else I heard in his voice that I wasn’t expecting; sincerity. I was drawn to him because of this genuineness. He spoke of Heaven and Hell, which I expected, but then he began to talk about how you could know for sure that you would go to Heaven. He also spoke of having a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ; wait, what? I had never heard that before and I wanted to hear more. I continued to go to church with Gwen and her family and the more I heard about the message of knowing Jesus the more interested I became. There were times, mainly during the Sunday night services, when Brother Bill would ask people to stand and tell of how the Lord was working in their lives. They call this, “giving a testimony.” When people stood up and spoke I could see that they really had a love for Jesus. When they spoke I could see their passion for the Lord. How did they know?

Sometimes Brother Bill would ask the audience, “do you know, that you know, that you know the Lord?” No!, I didn’t know, but I sure wanted to.

I wanted what these people had but I didn’t know how to get it. The more testimonies I heard the more I realized I needed one. I asked Gwen’s mother, Pat Shippey, what it meant to have a testimony and she gave me a recording of a guy named James Robison, giving his personal testimony.

It was fascinating to me to hear how his life had changed from a being gang member in Houston, Texas during his Milby High School years, to becoming a preacher. He explained how he came into a relationship with Christ and something within me just knew that I needed the same. He said that it was like a bride walking down the aisle and as she approached her husband she was saying, “I love you. I trust you with my life. I dedicate my life to you forever. I accept you as my husband.” He said that he came to the Lord a very same way. He said, “Lord, I love you and I want to live my life for you. I want you to be the Lord of my life. Please, forgive me of my sins. I accept you as my Lord.”

I had decided that what I needed to do was give a testimony. The next time there was a “testimony time” I would tell everyone there that I was a Christian and then I would go to Heaven. One problem, I didn’t have a testimony. I was just going to make one up.

Then the time came.

On June 16, 1972 a youth choir, from Corpus Christi Texas, came to do a concert at Bayshore Baptist. It was a Friday night. I had decided that on that evening I was going to give my testimony. I was a ball of nerves all day long. That evening we were sitting halfway between the front and the back rows on the piano side next to the wall. The closer it came to the end of the concert, the more nervous I became. And then, it was time for the “invitation” part of the service. That is the time at the end of the service when the pastor would ask if anyone present would like to come to the front and accept Jesus as Lord. This was it. Now it was a time to give my “testimony” and secure my place in Heaven.

We were all standing while the choir sang the invitation song and it seemed as if that song would go on forever. I kept telling myself that if they sing one more verse then I’ll go. When the next verse started I would make the same promise all over again. They kept singing; I was shaking. No one was going down the aisle but they just kept on singing!  Really? Come on, what are they waiting for!? Man, I was about to explode with panic. The grip I had on the pew in front of me was so tight that my knuckles began to turn white. And then it hit me. I couldn’t give a testimony, because I didn’t have a personal relationship with Christ. I became more and more anxious. I didn’t know what to do.

Turning to Gwen I asked her, “I need to know Jesus Gwen, what do I do?” She said that I should walk down the aisle and talk to Brother Bill, he would help me. So, that’s what I did.  I began to make my way toward the center aisle. Many people I crossed in front of were smiling because they knew what was going on inside my heart. Many were crying. Mrs. Shippey was on that row and as I passed in front of her she said, “I’ve been praying for you.” It seemed like it took forever to make it to the aisle and even longer to make it to the front of the small auditorium. As I was walking toward the front, I could see Brother Bill waiting for me. He had the warmest smile.

When I reached the front, Brother Bill wrapped his arms around me. After a moment he asked, “Gordon, why are you coming tonight?”

I said, “Brother Bill, I need to know Jesus but I don’t know what to do.”

We knelt down facing the pew of the front row and he led me in a short prayer where I simply asked the Lord to forgive me of my sins and come into my life. I found myself crying and noticed that Brother Bill had tears in his eyes as well. I really don’t know how to explain to you what happened inside of me. All I know is that when I stood up, I was not the same. There was an indescribable peace inside of me and I knew that Jesus himself had touched my life. Now, I knew that if I died I would definitely go to Heaven. I also knew that not only would I live forever with him in Heaven, but he would also live inside of me and that he wanted to be intimately involved with me.

The Lord is given me many opportunities to share this story with many people and I always say:
Even if there wasn’t the threat of going to Hell for those who do not trust him, which there is, and
Even if there wasn’t the reward of going to Heaven for those who do, which there is also;
I would still trust in Christ as my Lord today because of the life he gives me each day.

An intimate, personal relationship with Christ is truly amazing.

So, there it is; My “testimony”. Since I have given my life to Jesus I can say without doubt that if I die before the Lord’s return, I will be in Heaven. There is only one thing that could make this even better, and that is knowing that you will be there to.  Will you?