Faith | His path to belief in Jesus Christ is marked with memories

I had a great childhood growing up on a farm.

I admired my father who was a very honest, kind, strong, hard worker. My mom was very loving with high moral standards. I had one sister who was 7 years older than me and a brother who was 4 years older that I respected and looked up to.

We were a typical farm family with the exception that we didn’t go to church. My mom would sometimes mention “the man upstairs” or God, but I don’t remember ever hearing my dad say anything about God. There were a few occasions on Easter when I did attend church with a visiting cousin and her family.

I remember once asking, “Who is Jesus Christ?”

It all seemed so confusing that it was easy to block the topic out and go on with my busy life, as usual.

Growing up, my favorite part of school was playing sports, which fed my active competitive nature. I tended to thrive on trying new things and was open to just about anything, even if was considered as being borderline dangerous.

I was confident in myself, and yet, in spite of my dare daredevil tendencies, I realized that I was fearful of death. While I was in junior high school, a classmate’s sister was tragically killed in a car accident and it reaffirmed how afraid of death I actually was.

When I was 15, between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, I was at the Benton Franklin County Fair showing and selling my FFA Angus steer. On the last day, August 24, 1969, my brother came to pick me up and said we had to go to a meeting on our way home. It was a Campus Crusade For Christ meeting in someone’s home.

I remember a girl on their staff sharing the Four Spiritual Laws booklet with me in the kitchen. It explained that God loved me while I was a sinner and separated from him, and that Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross was our only provision for our sin. If we trusted in him as our Savior and Lord, we could know and experience God’s love now and for eternity in heaven.

It seemed to make so much sense to me, and I just assumed that my brother—whom I looked up to—already believed it. So, it seemed very logical to me to trust in Jesus Christ, being God the Son in the flesh, as my Savior and Lord, and to be born again. This was also explained by Jesus to Nicodemus in the Bible in John, Chapter Three.

I found out several years later that my brother had just accepted Christ as his Savior earlier that same day at the fair with the same girl. I still remember very plainly while going home that night, that I was no longer afraid to die, even in a car wreck, because I knew that I would be in a much better place in heaven forever.

After that day, on numerous occasions, I questioned if I might have lost my salvation, which made me repeat accepting Christ as my Savior, over and over. I also went through a phase where I asked God to prove to me that I was saved, using a miraculous sign to confirm my salvation.

A few months later I was greatly comforted while listening to Campus Crusade for Christ tapes teaching from 1 John 5:13. I learned that Jesus wants those who have accepted him as Savior and Lord to know that they are eternally saved.

God showed me that since I had truly accepted Christ, it was guaranteed forever—no matter what—and I could not lose this gift that came from God. Thus, Jesus gets all the credit and glory for my salvation.

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Lee Walter is Sunday School superintendent at Columbia Bible Church in Kennewick and vice chairman of the Tri-Cities Child Evangelism Fellowship. Questions and comments should be directed to editor Lucy Luginbill in care of the Tri-City Herald newsroom, 4253 W. 24th Avenue, Kennewick, WA 99338. Or email lluginbill@tricityherald.com.