By the time 1993 rolled around, I’d married my high-school sweetheart, had a child, with another on the way, put in two years of college before dropping out, and spent the last year working temp jobs to scrape together a meager living. We lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment, and I drove a rattletrap old Nissan. My wife and I oftentimes had a contentious relationship. Two tempestuous tempers did not make for calm seas. My Christian faith at this point, five years removed from my brief churchification, bore no marks on my life. I never read the Bible, prayed, or considered attending church again. I still clung to vague new-age ideals of a doddering god who gently encourages us from afar. God, any god, really, stood far off from my contemplations. My hedonistic faith system bore predictable fruit. My interests were entirely selfish – a poor disposition to hold in marriage with a growing family. I lazed about with unmotivated indifference. I had zero self-confidence. I shirked responsibility and lacked ambition. I grew up sheltered and spoiled; I had no idea how to support my family or how to succeed at life in general.

At this point, I worked as a part-time delivery driver at a pizza parlor. I hated it. Customers were frequently rude, the hours were slim, and I had a boss who looked like Hitler and ran the business similarly. I needed a change. My bank account demanded full-time work. I applied to a heretofore unknown-to-me nonprofit business called the Weatherford Opportunity Workshop (WOW). It provided job opportunities for people with developmental disabilities. They did contract work for local businesses and the state. They also operated a recycling department, handling plastic, aluminum, and cardboard. I applied for an opening in recycling. I earned an interview with the department supervisor. I can’t say I had an overall positive initial impression of the man. He appeared to be in his mid-forties, but had a well-worn face. He had a scruffy beard and bow legs. He walked with a noticeable stoop. He had an odd sense of humor and wore every emotion on his sleeve. His vigorous Christian faith stood out as his most distinctive feature, which shone through even in our brief interview. He pointedly asked me if I was a Christian. Momentarily taken aback (wasn’t that a forbidden question to ask job candidates?) I stammered, “W-why y-yes, I am”. I hadn’t thought about that question in years. I remembered back to 1988 and my baptism and acceptance into the church. I felt confident in my answer. The supervisor gave me the once-over and quickly moved on to his next line of questioning. In short, I got the job, only to find out later that I had only ranked third on his hierarchy of candidates. He hired me because I was the only one who answered his phone. At the time, I didn’t understand the concept of divine providence, but its effects were about to be fully felt.

I quickly learned why my supervisor asked about my spiritual status. He exhibited a rare piety and outspoken Christianity, never leaving me in doubt about his stance on any moral or spiritual issue. I must admit, he fascinated me. I had never met a Christian who unabashedly lived out his faith without compromise, without apology. His name was Earl, and he grew up in Clinton, a town just down the road from Weatherford. He came to faith in Christ later in life, and the change came suddenly and dramatically after a chance encounter with a stranger while he worked at a highway gas stop. The man witnessed Christ to him, left a card, and drove away, never to be heard from again. A powerful conviction of sin and a weeping confession of Jesus as Lord and Savior followed. Earl attempted to contact the mysterious stranger to thank him for his witness, but he never found him, almost as if he had disappeared into the wind. His testimony gave me pause. Did God send someone directly to Earl to convert him? Did he entertain an angel unaware? My conception of the Almighty did not fit this scenario. God stood distant, aloof, allowing us to come to him as we pleased. Or not at all. God did not intervene in our lives. I didn’t realize at the time, but my religion could be labeled as a kind of new age Deism. Earl’s testimony did not compute. Ultimately, I categorized his story as hyperbole and moved on. However, I could not ignore the man. He stood as a living example of authentic Christianity.

I don’t mean to write a hagiography here of the man, because I will admit, he did not live blamelessly, but I can say in retrospect, he upheld a high standard of Christian righteousness. He sometimes let his emotions get the better of his judgment and would land in hot water with management. I quietly relished his moral slips because, in my eyes, they knocked him off the saintly pedestal he had placed himself on. I knew many self-professed Christians who didn’t live up to the example of their namesake, but Earl proved himself different than most. When he messed up, he came back in humility without exception. He would apologize for his transgressions and ask for forgiveness. I had never witnessed any person act in this manner, especially a man with such strong opinions. Again, this strange, scruffy fellow gave me pause. He forced me to re-evaluate my predispositions about reality, and especially Christianity. Instead of plunging into intense introspection, I reacted defensively. My carefully constructed worldview began to shake as the sandy foundation shifted under the scrutiny of Christian truths. I responded by leaning hard into my new-age humanism. I sprinkled quotes from various secular and new-age gurus on the corkboard hanging next to my desk. Earl and I shared the same office, and every now and again, he would glance at my quotes and shake his head. He preached the gospel and the goodness of God daily. I never said much in return. I respected his faith. I mean, I had to, right? I identified with Christianity just as authentically as he did. His gospel was my gospel. Yet, I didn’t really believe any of it. I squirmed every time he proclaimed it. So, did that mean I wasn’t really a Christian? I didn’t really believe Christian things, but couldn’t bring myself to drop the label. I think I felt a certain security by keeping the title, a shield to hide behind, avoiding the penetrating gaze of a displeased God. I refused to confront the reality of a feigned faith that once again placed me under the wrath of God. I didn’t like that feeling the first time back in high school when I read that infernal Chick tract. I liked it even less now.

I endured Earl’s daily ramblings for over a year and a half with polite restraint. My humanistic quotes formed a wall of philosophical brick-and-mortar to fend off his theological projectiles. Eventually, my defenses crumbled to dust. I couldn’t refute his arguments for Christianity and against other belief systems. I’m not saying Earl possessed a towering intellect, certainly not. But the simplicity of the Christian message held a beauty and grace I could not deny. I could clearly see God’s favor over his life, and it unsettled me. God frequently answered his prayers in ways I, as a skeptic, found difficult to explain away. For a prime example, one day, he confided in me his need for new insulation in the old house he had bought. He couldn’t afford the cost, so he took his petition to God and asked Him to provide a way to obtain enough insulation to finish his entire house. I reacted with incredulity. I scoffed at the notion that God would somehow drop dozens of packs of insulation straight into his lap. “Good luck with that,” I replied. A couple of weeks later, our cardboard trailer had filled up with bales, and we called the trucking company to swap it out for an empty cargo trailer. When the truck arrived, it was my responsibility to open the doors and sweep it out. To my surprise, this trailer contained cargo. That had never happened before. I examined the contents and discovered – you guessed it – dozens of packs of insulation. I ran back to the office and informed Earl what I found. He furrowed his brow, picked up the phone, and called the trucking company. Apparently, they had forgotten to clean out the truck in their haste to get it delivered on time. The owner didn’t want to deal with the forgotten cargo and told Earl he could do with it as he pleased. Earl reported this to management and asked if he could keep the insulation for his personal use. They OK’d it, and just like that, his prayer was answered. He immediately gave the glory to God and did a little dance in his office at His faithfulness. I stood there bewildered, jaw hanging loose. The odds of this being a coincidence were simply too astronomical for me to explain away. I had no argument left. God was real, and for reasons unknown to me, He loved Earl.

Still, I resisted, primarily due to my desperate hope that I possessed a stripped-down, yet entirely credible Christian faith. But every time I looked at Earl, his life and faith, his zeal and boldness, his tenderness and prayerfulness, his humility and humble demeanor, I knew I lacked these virtues within myself. Not out of lack of practice, but because I didn’t possess them at all. The implications of this revelation shook me to my foundations. For a time, I repressed them. I focused on worldly distractions to drown out the nagging voice of conscience. God turned up the volume, applying the pressure, but my obstinate will would not yield to the obvious truth. I was not a Christian; I had never been one. A fact too horrible for my anxious soul to contemplate. My resistance persisted for a short while until one day my boss, who threw scripture my direction like a farmer tosses hay to his cows, hit me between the eyes with this text from the sixth chapter of Ephesians:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Of course, I had heard this well-worn passage many times before in my life – more than once from Earl, who, as a Pentecostal, frequently quoted it in relation to the spiritual warfare a believer is to wage in his daily struggle against Satan’s kingdom. But now I understood the verse as an accusation against my persisting unbelief. God unveiled a spiritual reality I had long scoffed at. He painted a picture in my mind of the certainty of the existence of good and evil – God and Satan. Both realities coexist on the stage of history, and neutrality is an illusion. I had to take up arms either for God, heaven, the holy angels, and all the saints, or I must fall in line with the principalities, powers, and dark rulers in service to the devil. These visions hit me with a clarity I could not deny. I knew which legion I stood among. With horror, I saw who I had my sharpened sword pointed against. Indeed, I was no Christian at all. I served the devil, fought alongside his denizens, and would share their ultimate fate. This scene all took place as I sat in my car, prepared to drive home at the end of the day. I must have been a sight to behold, gripping the steering wheel of my beat-up old Nissan, staring blankly out the windshield for several long minutes.

I can’t recall how long I meditated on this heavenly illumination before God moved on to the next phase of His redemptive plan for my life. I felt stuck in the mire of conviction, much as I had in high school, but this conviction ran deeper. I didn’t have the stark mortal fear of eternal suffering on my mind. I could clearly hear God’s call to switch allegiances, lay down my arms, and join the army of God, led by King Jesus. That path could only be accessed through true repentance and faith. My previous exercise of those virtues failed to produce any real change in my soul, so I simply shoved Ephesians 6:12 and my conviction into a dark corner closet of my conscience and tried to continue enjoying life. But something fundamental had changed within me, leaving me agitated and discontent with the status quo.

In hindsight, I can now clearly see the work of the Holy Spirit preparing me for the salvation to come.

He plucked out the thorns and thistles.

He plowed the soil, removing the rocks and pebbles.

He planted good seed into the soil of my heart.