“Yes, Grandpa, I have asked Jesus to be my Savior.” This was the answer my 12-year-old grandson gave following my inquiry about his relationship with Jesus Christ after a sermon by our pastor. My grandchildren often sit next to me in church at the Westminster RPC in Colorado, and I often ask them what they think about the sermons. This is the response every Christian parent and grandparent desires to hear, which brings joy and appreciation for the influence of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit in the lives of our loved ones.

My wife, Vicki, and I came together with our children to form a family about 2 years before we came to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. She had 2 children and I had 3 children, with their ages being 18 months to 8 years old. Over the early years we had our fair share of family difficulties in working out the various interpersonal relationships. We had differing views of handling personal finances and the children’s discipline and education.

As I look back, I can see the way the Lord intervened in our difficulties to strengthen our marriage. God’s Word and the counsel and prayers of godly Christian friends guided us and encouraged us to walk humbly before our God. What is the difference between a Christian home and the family next door without Jesus Christ? The Christian home is not one that is problem free or without sorrow. Both homes have many common experiences of life, but the Christian home is one where Christ is the central focus. He is Lord and King, and we must listen to Him and respond in obedience to His will.

I was raised in a Catholic home and spent most of my elementary years and two years of high school in parochial schools. I knew what God’s commandments were and always seemed to break His law in many areas, no matter how hard I tried to obey. As I grew older I only seemed to carry a larger burden of guilt. I felt much like Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress, weighed down with guilt for my sins. I had come to believe that living with this guilt was no way to live. I began telling myself that maybe God did not exist, that the idea of God’s existence, like that of Santa Claus, was just a ploy by our parents to try to get us to be good. If there is no God to whom we must answer, then we should just make the best of this life and quit beating ourselves up over the issues of sin. But no matter how hard I tried to numb myself (such as by heavy drinking), the reality was that deep inside I could not remove the guilt. I wondered why my understanding of God was not like the God of Abraham and Moses whom I had read about. He spoke directly to them and they had a relationship with Him.

In the summer of 1979 I heard the gospel for the first time. Through a series of events Mike, a man about my age with a similar Catholic background, sat down with me in my living room and began to show me from Scripture my condition and the hope that God offers. My wife had set up this meeting through her dentist, who had just a few weeks earlier invited her to receive Jesus Christ as her Savior.

I was correct in thinking that my problem was my sin. Much more, I was correct in knowing that God was holy and had to give punishment to satisfy justice. It was my sin (original sin, as I understood) that separated me from God, not just the acts of sin. My fallen spiritual state was the reason I could not obey God and follow His law. God’s Word showed me that I was spiritually dead and needed to be “born again”! God demonstrated His love and mercy by sending His Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty due for my sins by shedding His blood on the cross for me. It was who Jesus was and what He did that justified me before God, His righteousness that was imputed to me.

Mike said that to have a relationship with God and to have eternal life was a gift from God received through faith. This message sounded too good to be true, but it was true. That evening Mike gave me a small pamphlet that contained the Gospel of John. I began to read it, and in about a week I prayed to receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. God especially used John 14:6 to speak to my heart, mind, and soul, saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” At this time I knew it was not by my works or the church I was raised in but through the person and work of Jesus Christ that I could have access to God the Father.

The power of the gospel (Rom. 1:16) began to have its transforming effect on my life. I attended Mike’s church that Sunday morning and began going to a midweek Bible study. I hungered for Christian teaching and fellowship. My prayer times seemed much more meaningful than what I had known as a Catholic. I really was talking to God and He was listening to me. I began to memorize Scripture, especially passages that dealt with witnessing to others about Jesus Christ. I had come to know Jesus Christ in a personal way and I wanted others to know Him. In the first three years of my conversion I witnessed to every member of my family (parents and eight brothers and sisters), some of them many times; but I was surprised to find that they were not at all excited about the gospel. But God in His timing has called all but two siblings and my parents to receive Jesus as their Savior. God opened up many opportunities for witnessing, such as a Bible study with an aunt and uncle and my parents. We hosted a Bible study in our home where my mother-in-law (now living with us) and my childhood best friend and his wife knelt in our living room to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. The Lord has used our family in the lives of many relatives and friends to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. Not all times were joyful, and sometimes we experienced persecution from some to the extent that relationships were broken. It has been amazing to me to watch how God in time changed the hearts of individuals and turned them around. I have learned not to give up on anyone but to be patient and loving, praying always for their salvation, and trusting God.

God used the first church I attended to cement the importance of discipleship and service. Since becoming members in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and now the RPCNA, God has chosen to use me as a deacon and an elder. My two daughters and their husbands serve and worship at Westminster, where my son-in-law, Eric Martinez, is a deacon. It is important that we just make ourselves available and let God open the areas for service. He will take care of the preparation and training to accomplish the tasks of service that He has purposed for each of us in His kingdom building.

I am now going on my 26th year as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I am continually amazed at His unmerited grace shown toward me. Some of the old Catholic concepts that I had still affect my mind, though, such as that God’s love can be measured to match the degree of my doing right, and thus, if I do things that are pleasing to Him, He loves me more. But how can He love me more than He did the first day I came to faith, since He gave His life for me? How can there be any greater love than that (Rom. 5:6-12)? I remember telling a Christian friend, the first year of my conversion, that the bad things that happen to us are because we are bad and God is expressing that He loves us less. My friend was very polite, but corrected some of my thinking. He said that God has other reasons to allow bad things to happen to us, and one is to build us up in our faith. I had a difficult time understanding this, but over the years I have come to question less and less God’s love and wisdom during times of trial. I have come to see God’s wisdom to allow sickness, family relationship difficulties, a loss of employment, etc., as His way of strengthening my faith and causing me to trust Him as the King of my life. It is His desire that trials build in us a character of steadfastness that results in praise and glory to Jesus Christ (1 Pet.1:3-9). It has been my experience that God allowed trials to prepare me for some of the greater pains that I would experience in this world of sin, including grief at the death of dear ones.

The name of the grandson I mentioned at the beginning is Michael Martinez. He went into the presence of Jesus on Aug. 26, 2005, following complications from surgery to correct some effects of Muscular Dystrophy. This was just a few weeks after he told me he received Jesus as His savior. It has been a very painful time for us, and especially for Michael’s parents, Eric and Shannon, and his sisters, Michelle and Aubernay. A day does not go by in which my wife does not remember something that Michael did or loved. We and our church family miss having Michael racing around in his wheelchair and the way he entertained his church friends by giving rides on the back of it. It has been our knowledge of God’s wisdom, love, goodness, and grace that has sustained us during this time and will into the future. We look forward to the hope of glory, to be in the presence of Jesus and to see our grandson again with no disease, walking and running again.