WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT JULY 21?

Today is July 21, 2006.  It’s a Friday.  I know I don’t usually post entries on my blog on Fridays (usually it’s Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays).  But this is a special day.  Some of you will “get this” and some of you won’t, so I will try to explain it:  today is my “spiritual birthday”.  My physical birthday was September 19, 1954.  My spiritual birthday was July 21, 1970.  That’s the day I was “born again” as we evangelicals say.  So, there’s a sense in which I’m 36 today.

I was born into a pretty religious Roman Catholic home.  The one area in which my parents were NOT typical of religious Roman Catholics is that they sent their kids to public and not parochial school, but in just about every other area, they were very religious.  I didn’t know this until I was about eighteen, but my mother entered the convent after high school and spent about two years as a nun (or was it “nun in training”?) in New Jersey.  Thus, she was almost “more Catholic than the Pope”!  Mom was very devoted to Saint Teresa (of France).  My father was very “macho” and did not wear his religion on his sleeve.  Like many Catholics, he had no trouble saying, “Jesus” as an exclamation and expression for just about EVERYTHING.  But he was very faithful to attend mass and I don’t think I ever heard him say a critical word about the Catholic Church.  In our home we were taught that the WORST thing one could EVER do is become a Protestant.  If I’d (hypothetically) ever said, “Mom, Dad, I’m Gay!”,  their instant reply would have been something like, “Oh, thank God;  for a minute there I thought you were going to tell me you were leaving the Catholic Church!”.

Although I had a cesspool mouth as a fourteen-year-old, and I could appreciate most dirty jokes, AND I was a chronic liar and cheater, I secretly said the Rosary every day.  In my heart, I desperately wanted to know God and be right with God.  I thought saying the Rosary would be the way to do it.  One evening in late 1969 there was “nothing” on television.  I ended up watching Billy Graham from Anaheim, California.  Boy did I feel guilty.  Billy said cheaters were going to Hell. MAN, in that case, I was gonna split Hell wide open when I died!  For some reason I was compelled to watch Billy Graham for the next few nights.  

In the Spring of 1970, I became friends with akid named George Barnett.  Our family had two C.B. radios- a base station at home and a mobile unit in my father’s car.  George had a walkie-talkie and was very interested in two-way radios, so that became our point of reference.  George was a very different kid.  He did not appreciate dirty jokes.  He did not use the “f” word.  He did not swear at all.  He seemingly did not do anything wrong.  He was a “goody two shoes”.  I have to say, I profoundly respected him.  I wondered how he could be such a good person.  One day he told me he was a “Christian”.  Well, that did not seem to be such a big deal to me, because I “knew” that every Catholic and Protestant was a Christian.  Was I ever surprised when he told me that most Catholic and Protestants, in fact, were NOT Christians?!  George told me that a Christian is someone who has “asked Jesus Christ into their heart to be their personal Savior and Lord”.  I was confused but I asked him if that was what Billy Graham was asking people to do when he had them come forward at his crusades.  George told me it was.

There’s a whole lot more to it, but several weeks later, Billy Graham was on T.V. again.  There was no “1-800” number to call in those days.  You had to “write to Billy Graham, Minneapolis, Minnesota”.  I did.  On Tuesday, July 21, 1970, a reply letter came from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.  I still have that letter.  It’s the most important letter I ever received. The letter included several pamphlets which explained to me HOW to receive Christ as my personal Savior and what that all meant.  I did.  I had no idea on that Tuesday afternoon in 1970 what a profound difference that would make in my life!  Originally, I had no intention of leaving the Catholic Church.  Over the next few years, it became clear to me that the Catholic Church’s beliefs were in conflict with Scripture in a number of places.  By the time I was twenty-one, I was completely out of the Catholic church.  I fellowshiped for a time at a Baptist Church and for a time at a Presbyterian Church.  In 1976, I attended my first service at an Assemblies of God church.  I NEVER thought I’d ever become a pastor, but one thing led to another, and I attended Bible College, eventually became an assistant pastor and nineteen years ago I became a pastor.  (I was formally Ordained an Assemblies of God minister in 1985.)  

Several months before he died, my father received Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior as an Alzheimer’s patient in a nursing home.  My mother never left the Catholic church, but during the last year of her life she attended church on Sundays at the A/G church in Framingham where I pastor, and she put her faith and trust in Jesus rather than in “the Pope, Mary and the Saints”.

What’s so special about July 21?  Well, I hope after reading this, you get it!

“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”  (Romans 10:13).