Dorian to Christ

I was about six. I had just finished watching a TV program and began to cry because it made me ponder the concept of death. I was afraid I would no longer exist after death. My dad came into the room to console me. Afterward I was soon off and busy with other things.

I didn’t think about it again until, in 5th grade, my younger sister Jenny came with me to an after-school Bible Club at Mrs. Beverly Yerkie’s house. Mrs. Yerkie opened her home one afternoon each week to students who wanted to join the Mailbox Bible Club during the school district’s Religious Release Time. Our mother would help transport students from our school to Mrs. Yerkie’s house. I have fond memories of those rides.

Once we arrived, Mrs. Yerkie taught us a Bible lesson using her felt board and felt Bible characters as well as many songs like “What Can Wash Away My Sin?” and “Jesus Loves Me This I Know.” I enjoyed completing my Bible homework and mailing it back for correction each week. The first lesson, “A Country Called Heaven,” taught me I was a sinner needing a Savior. I learned there was only one road to heaven, the narrow road. The broad road led to destruction (Matt. 7:13–14). As I read other portions of the lesson, I became convicted of my sin (Rom. 3:23). I understood that God loved me by sending His Son to die on the cross for my sins (Rom. 5:8). Not wanting to be separated from God, I repented of my sins, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior (John 1:12). I found assurance for my salvation in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Soon after my conversion I struggled with the messages being preached at the PCUSA church my family had attended for 12 years. In my young mind I couldn’t understand why my parents would bring us to this church if the minister criticized people for being “born again” and spent much of his time preaching politics rather than God’s Word. I also struggled with what was being taught in our weekly MUPPY (Midweek United Presbyterian Program for the Youth) meetings. In one meeting a guest speaker spoke on Planned Parenthood. My thoughts were, “Abortion? What is that? Why would someone choose to kill her baby before it was born?” I spoke with my parents that night and told them my frustrations with the church; I wanted to leave for a better one. They said they would give it thought.

Several years later, my older brother Ross and sister Jenny also came to Christ. We encouraged Mom and Dad to leave the PCUSA. Our parents brought us to the First Baptist Church in downtown Syracuse, N.Y., where they had met and married. We siblings grew in our spiritual walk under the faithful teaching of Pastor Brooks. We each were baptized, and I became involved in organizing Baptist Youth Conventions in New York state.

In the summer of 1981, a friend invited me to go to Word of Life Island in Schroon Lake, N.Y. I spent a week there for the next two summers enjoying fellowship with other teenagers. There I learned how to memorize scripture and how to do daily devotions by studying the Bible. From 1985–1987, my faith continued to grow as a student at Faith Heritage School.

During my college years, I first studied art history and design; then I transferred to Messiah College to earn a degree in early childhood education in May 1992. That summer, I followed my best friend to Believers Chapel in Cicero, N.Y. I also began attending the singles group every Friday night, where I met Brian. He led various Bible studies for our group, and I helped to serve refreshments as well as plan for social activities. And here the Lord would make Himself known in my life in ways I hadn’t expected. Since my Mailbox Club days I had prayed for a godly Christian husband. Little did I know that prayers were soon to be answered.

Brian to Christ

Unlike Dorian, I was largely ignorant of God growing up. While she was doing her Mailbox Bible Club, I was busy playing in the woods, playing hockey, playing my stereo, and playing guitar. This isn’t to say I wasn’t religious—because I was—but I was ignorant of the things of God in profound ways.

Raised a Roman Catholic, I attended parochial school all my life. We attended Mass weekly—and often in connection with school, too. My earliest memory is riding in the back of our car pondering that God never had a beginning; I was struck that I can’t “go back that far” or be “big enough” to know it all, that I was limited as a creature.

Another early memory was my boundlessly energetic mother involved in the church as secretary, and the Vietnamese refugees she and the church welcomed in the early 1970s. She commonly brought me with her there. I remember throwing the baseball with kind Father Reddick and being treated afterward to my favorite turkey legs candy in the rectory. I would explore the church building, whose atmosphere brought to me a sense of God’s majesty, which I was aware of in the woods too.

Even so, sin marked me despite being a “decent kid.” By my teen years my interest moved from sports to music. The first lessened as my parents grew apart, and I delved into music and guitar much more. Skills developed under much practicing, lessons, and creativity, but so did an idolatrous use of them. I was self-absorbed, building my life on my own interests and pleasures. I may have avoided the more common sins of my friends, but I was an idolater who “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God” for an instrument of six strings. I was soon committed to my rock band and then life at college pursuing a degree in music performance. I had planned to be a concert classical guitarist. At college I did pursue sin as many of my friends had.

But God brought me back through the witness of one high school friend, Dustin. He lived near me, was the first person I met senior year at my first public school, also played guitar, and even had a recording studio. Over the course of a year our friendship grew; his witness was exemplary. So in my second year in college I started reading the Bible he gave me.

Eventually I came to see that what I had heard so often throughout my Catholic upbringing was not something for me to see about the priest and the Eucharist, but it was about Jesus and applied to my own need: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). For the first time I beheld Jesus. My sins needed to be taken away. And He did that at the cross as the sacrificed Lamb. I need only behold Him by faith. I now understood what I previously didn’t about all the sacrifices of Leviticus I had read about. I now understood what my Catholic experience couldn’t lead me to. I had confessed all the articles of the Creed. I had considered the Bible as God’s Word, and I was somewhat familiar with its people and stories from school. But never had I heard the gospel. I had no knowledge of its message or of Christ Himself. But now, clearly by grace alone, I had.

I knew that Christ was now a Savior to me, and that I now was united to Him, for many things changed in me. I immediately ceased a habit of foul language—something quite inexplicable even to me. Second, I was now eager for the Scripture and not for “the strings.” I also felt compelled to tell others about the gospel; I wanted others to be saved. And I found a new interest in the fellowship of believers before God in prayer and worship. This led me to Believers Chapel, and while serving there as a singles group Bible teacher, to Dorian.

Together for Christ

We were brought together as Christians under unlikely odds. Truth be told, I (Dorian) thought Brian was a good match for my friend, and so I tried to match him up with her. We each were interested in other persons at the singles group. But as we served the Lord more in the local church with our gifts, we realized that God had put us together despite the odds—in fact because of the odds. We surely would never have found each other on a dating site! We were going different ways, but the Lord brought us together on a common path while serving Him in the church; and we discerned His will in that setting. He did a wonderful thing there: We discerned a higher will than our own, whose will turned our will to His while we each sought after it.

A common commitment to seek the Lord’s will is where our unity is despite any differences. Christ has made our gifts, as well as personalities and temperaments, balance and complement each other’s very well. We each have what the other often lacks; what one is poor at, the other is better at. In this way, despite our many differences, we always find unity and good fruit bearing where it truly is—with Jesus.

We hope our testimony has useful application to searching young adults and is a reminder to long-married couples. We are encouraged by it ourselves whenever we see and tell our differences to each other. It testifies to God’s good sovereignty, something that has spanned and directed our lives from the start. It guides us now as 25-year-newlywed parents of four and in our ministry together for the past 23 years with Messiah’s Church in Clay, N.Y.

We are together God’s.

Brian is the church-planting pastor of Messiah’s Church (Clay, N.Y.) since 1996, and Dorian works part-time with special needs children in the North Syracuse Early Education Program. They have four children.