Torch, Fall 2001

Fall 2001 / TORCH 13 People must hear the Word of God. You can be a helper, a great friend, and a great neighbor. But, if people don’t hear God’s Word from your lips, they will never be changed. They will not have intimacy with God. We must communicate the Word of God and its power to affect others’ lives. Wife : I first came to understand who God is when I was a young girl in a neighborhood club. I understood that God was a holy God and that I didn’t measure up to what he expected me or intended me to be. And I understood that had a penalty, and that penalty of death was paid for by the life and death of Jesus Christ. I accepted Christ as my Savior. My parents taught me to follow Christ and share my faith, and they took me to a church where I was instructed. I learned to spend time with God daily in His Word. I learned to run everything through the truth test of God’s Word. I also learned who I was during that time. As part of my education in the church, I had to memorize parts of the Westminster catechism. One of the first questions in that is, “What is the chief end of man?” The answer is, “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” I understood that life was not about me, but it was about God. I was a good student. I was told that I could be anything I wanted to be and that I could do anything I wanted to do. At the encouragement of my high school counselor, I went off to a secular college to prepare for a career in medicine. I found that I loved the friends, sports, and activities of college. I was dating a guy who was tall, blonde, smart, and athletic. Back then we called that type of guy “cool,” but I think students call them “hot” now. This was in the early 1970s. It was at the height of the drug and love culture, and by the end of my first weekend at college I had seen it all. There were many different kinds of people there: ethnic Jews who were practicing atheists, pre- seminary students who had a form of godliness but denied the power of it, and sons and daughters of wealthy businessmen, but there were very few followers of Christ. The message around me was clear—get all you can while you can. The question for me was how was I going to live in this environment? What was I going to do with God’s Word? Was I going to believe it? Of all the kids I met there, there is one that I still remember. He was in my freshman chemistry class. He had long hair, a leather jacket, and a really wicked superior attitude. He was very interesting to talk to. He quizzed me about philosophy and eastern religions. To be honest with you, I was pretty intimidated. I didn’t know the answers to all those questions, and I repeatedly ended up saying to him, “I really don’t know about that. But I can tell you what the Bible says.” Husband: I attended that same secular college in the late 1960s and early 1970s in my pursuit of becoming a doctor. I looked, acted, and believed like many in that generation. If you could have seen me then, you would have voted me least likely to make a presentation such as this. Sure, I had gone to church as a little boy, but I didn’t know who God was. When I was about to have my first communion at age 13, I thought, “I am finally going to get to know who God is.” I took communion, but I didn’t get to know who God was. I went back to church week after week. I finally figured out as a teenager that the people in that church didn’t know who God was. And I was discouraged. What do you do when you are discouraged in a spiritual pursuit? You look to what men have in mind. And those two things are philosophy and pleasure. One of my favorite philosophers was Ayn Rand. Her book Virtue of Selfishness summarizes her philosophical outlook. That’s how I lived at that time. I pursued the virtue of being selfish. You don’t have very many friends when you live like that. The other thing I pursued was pleasure. As stated earlier, this was