The Hour I First Believed

Well, as I said earlier, my name is Val. I'm one of the pastors on staff and throughout the course of this summer while our lead pastor René is away on sabbatical. We're in the middle of a series that we are calling aha and we have a whole bunch of people coming through over the course of the summer sharing with us some of the aha moments that they have had in their spiritual journey.

As we were thinking about this series and what to do and what to talk about, it occurred to us that we really hadn't had a time to talk about the ultimate aha moment, calling it the hour I first believed. The moment when we come to know that all of this, all of this stuff we talk about, all of this grace, Jesus, God, it's personal. It's for us too.

We thought about bringing in somebody with an amazing faith story that they could tell, but that's just one person's journey, and all of our journeys are as different as there are people in this room right now. So what we decided to do is give you the opportunity to hear from three folks on our staff about the hour they first believed.

I'm going to start with the last person you're going to hear and work my way forward. The last person you'll hear is Jose Santian. Jose is on our staff serving in Hispanic ministries in amazing ways. Every Saturday night, you see him way up in the box translating the services live for people who are listening so they can understand the sermons.

He will be sharing right before him will be Jessica Bristol, our junior high pastor. You've heard her before; she'll be talking about a very different story that she has of coming to faith in Christ. Then first, you're going to hear from Dan Baker. Dan has been on our staff for many, many, and I think you deserve a third many years. Dan's been here. He mostly has served as our worship pastor during that time, although in the last few years he's transitioned into the care and senior ministries, and he is doing an amazing job in those ministries.

Dan's story is very different from the other two. His story seems like an all-American story in some ways: mom, dad, growing up, moving around, all that kind of stuff. But he's going to start us off, so let's welcome Dan Baker.

Hello everyone. Hey, it's great to be here today. All American family, huh? Really? Okay. Well, my grandfather was an illegal alien from Canada, and he was connected with a mob, and he ran underground gambling operations. All American. My grandmother was a wonderful nurturing kind of person, but she kept her ethnic background a secret to her grave. She never told us; we finally found out. So watch your Polish jokes around me, okay?

My dad's older brother was a bookie. That's a term we don't hear a lot around here. He was into gambling. He took bets. He was a bookie; he booked bets. Well, this culture really had an effect on my dad, and their marriage, my mom and my dad's marriage, was pretty shaky in those early days. Dad could not get a grip on it. He loved to drink and he loved to gamble.

One of the best decisions he made, though, was to get out of Dodge. He lived in Southern California, decided let's go to Oregon. We need to get out of here. I was only four years old at the time, and mom and dad were looking for a better life. So we landed in Eugene, and in Eugene, finances were a little tough. Dad made about a hundred bucks a month, and our mortgage payment was 96 dollars a month. Something had to give, so we headed for the land of plenty: Klamath Falls, Oregon.

There, he got a job as a shoe salesman. Money was actually a little better because it regularly came in, but what was really good about Klamath Falls, Oregon? That is where my folks' search for meaning came to an end. It was over because some neighbors invited them to church on a Wednesday evening.

On the way out of church that night, my mom started to cry, and she didn't know why. Dad didn't know why; he's going, "Oh boy, what's going on here?" But he picked up a tract out of the little tract rack on the way out of the church. This is old school; this is 1958. They went home, and when they got home, mom went to the bedroom, and dad stayed out in the living room. Independently of each other that night, they both prayed to receive Christ.

The next morning, they woke up. Mom greeted my dad and said, "You know, something really wonderful happened to me last night." And dad said, "Something really wonderful happened to me, too." Our family life changed dramatically. Jesus was the main topic of conversation, and it wasn't long before I knelt beside my bed one evening and prayed to receive Christ as well. I was just five years old.

I remember a year later in the baptistery in a church in Sacramento. I could barely see over the top. Where's the top? Right here? Look at her. I could see the crowd out there, and the pastor said, "I know this kid is really young. He's six years old. Look at him; isn't he cute? He's six years old, but he really loves Jesus. I see no reason not to baptize him." So that's the basic story behind the hour that I first believed.

But you know, more important than that hour are the hours and the years and the decades since that time. I can say decades and decades and decades. Wow, thank you. You know, our conversion is so significant, but our ongoing state of being converted is really significant.

Well, as I grew older, my zeal for the Lord diminished. I was really little; I know you find that hard to believe considering my present stature. I was small, and I struggled with feeling accepted in junior high. I was desperate for friends and I got with the wrong crowd, going down the wrong path. But that summer at a Christian camp, things changed.

It wasn't much of a camp, let me tell you. The main activity for us kids? They'd send us down to the railroad tracks to look for old wine bottles. I'm serious; I'm not making this up. This is a true story. The most popular entrée was horse meat. Yeah, I'm not making that up either. This is not Camp Amber; that'll be clarified later.

But a couple of things happened to me that week. The very first evening meeting, the speaker closed in prayer and he had us all bow our heads, close our eyes. He said, "If you know for sure that you are going to heaven, I want you to raise your hand." I could not raise my hand that night. I just couldn't do it; I didn't know for sure.

Another night at camp, the preacher was talking about some of the problems with our society. One of those problems is popular music, and he was basically saying if this music is really not good music anyway. Well, I was a mouthy little punk, and I liked the Beach Boys a lot. I actually stood up in the middle of the meeting, pointed my finger at the speaker, and said, "Who are you to say what is good music and what is not good music?" Thank you; I was preparing for music ministry at that time, but I figured for sure I wasn't going to heaven now.

Another thing happened that week. This was the significant thing; the previous thing was not significant. One of the guys at my tent accepted Christ for the first time, and he was so excited. He was expressing a joy that I just did not have anymore, and he was even excited to read the Bible. I remember one night in the tent, he opened up the Bible and he opened up to the book of Ruth. And he looked at it and said, "Wow, what is this about?" I don't know; maybe he knew a girl named Ruth or something. This really piqued his interest.

But his conversion really affected me, and by the end of that week, I was ready to rededicate my life to the Lord. It was a decision that came with a cost because frankly, I could not hang out with the same friends; they were going down the wrong path. So high school was a little bit lonely for me at first. But as time went on, I saw God honor that decision.

At camp, one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Psalm 37:4, and it says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." Now, though this verse was on a plaque in the home that I grew up in, I never really paid attention to it. But as I grew and as I got older, God opened my eyes to see this amazing truth.

Just before my senior year in high school, my family moved here to Santa Cruz, and we started attending Twin Lakes Church in 1970. I had very few friends prior to this move, but I'll tell you that very first Sunday, I met some people that are still my close friends today. I had always had the desire to do more musically, and I remember seeing one of my peers, a guy my own age—just defining the word peer for you—playing stand-up bass and singing. I watched that and went, "I want to do that." God opened the doors for me to do that very thing and so much more.

God also led me to work with kids at Twin Lakes and to work with kids at Camp Hammer for many years, and in the process, he led me into the full-time ministry. But there's one summer that really stands out in my experience ministry here at the church and at the camp. That was the summer of 1976. It was a great summer of ministry, but it was the summer that I met my wife. Yeah, we now have four kids, five grandchildren, and two on the way this year.

Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. But life has certainly not been perfect for us. We live in a broken world. I make mistakes all the time. I haven't always delighted myself in the Lord. I've neglected and doubted his ways many times. Even in our move back here to Twin Lakes in 1991, that move was fraught in my heart with uncertainty, pain, and lots of doubt. I had no idea what God was up to, but he had his hand on our lives, and he still does today.

Yes, the hour I first believed was in 1958 in Klamath Falls, Oregon. But I still believe today, and I pray by his grace that I will continue to believe until that day he takes me home. And I want to thank Josh Fox for leading us to the throne of God this morning. That worship service was truly amazing because it reflected on the glory of heaven and the strength that we have in Christ right now.

My brother has been gone 45 years. My dad has been gone 10 years. They are there in the presence of God now, and he has totally restored them. I look forward to that day, and I'll be there with them, and we'll be able to look back on that hour we all first believed and give praise to the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Amen.

Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm the pastor to junior high students, so normally I'm relegated over to the corner of the building with all of the 11 to 14-year-olds. I have to admit that when I first heard the topic for this weekend's message, I thought, "Well, my part is going to be short, simple, and boring." Seriously, the most intriguing thing about the hour I first believed is that I was in the shower. True, as a pastor's kid, I was born on Tuesday and in church the following Sunday, and I didn't miss many after that, even on vacation.

By the time I was in high school, I dreaded sharing my testimony because I thought it was dull and uninspiring. It lacked a dramatic moment or a stark contrast between my life before and after believing in Jesus, and I thought, "Who is going to identify with that? I just don't have a good story." I picture it sounding something like this: "There I was, right there, two and a half or something like that." Don't be deceived by the chubby cheeks in the blanket; I still have that blanket, by the way. I don't sleep with it, but I did for a very long time.

So there I was, a selfish independent toddler thinking I could do everything on my own, defying my parents to establish my own individual identity until one day my sister told me about Jesus, and then everything was perfect. The end. That's not—there's some truth to that, but that's not exactly how it goes.

According to family folklore, I did accept Jesus when I was three years old, and I did happen to be in the shower with my older sister. But honestly, I don't remember much about that moment. It's in the quiver of family folklore, of family stories, much like the story about how when I was two years old, we were staying in a motel and I jumped out of the bathtub and ran out of the bathroom and out of the motel room and down the walkway yelling, "Me nude! Me nude!" with my sisters running after me. It happened; my family likes to remind me of it at very inopportune moments.

But I remember my short career as a nudist about as much as I remember the initial moment of my belief in Jesus. Of course, I prayed with my older sister that day. I was three; she was eight. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up. If she followed Jesus and thought it was important, I wanted to follow Jesus and thought it was important.

My story just does not include a dramatic before and after. I have no idea what it is like to be in a home that does not value faith. My dad read the Bible or devotionals to us on an almost daily basis, and we acted out Bible stories together as a family. I still remember sitting with my mom in the rocking chair as she sang a song that included all the names of the books of the Bible.

I don't remember a time in my life I didn't follow Jesus or a time I didn't know about God's grace, but I have two clear childhood memories of significant spiritual moments that have nothing to do with being a pastor's kid or a devoted younger sibling.

In the fall of 1983, I was six years old and had just started first grade. That fall, my dad was diagnosed with a very rare tumor. He had a tumor in the right ventricle of his heart, and of the 33 cases known of this in the world, 31 had died, and they were only found in autopsy. His was the second successful surgery in the world. He was 38 years old at the time, and honestly, I see it as divine intervention and God's grace that the doctors caught the tumor and were able to operate.

The surgery was so rare that they videotaped the whole thing, even though it was 1983 and you know videos were new, and they gave us a short 15-minute version of the surgery, which my sisters and I used for as many science projects as possible while we were in school. That also means that we've seen inside my dad's chest cavity, and we've seen his heart pumping and stop and start pumping again.

So there are many details about those days that I don't remember, and a lot that's hazy, and some things I had to ask for in preparation for this because I was only six. But there are two things that are kind of burned into my conscious and my memories about that time. First of all, I remember going to school the day my dad had surgery and knowing he might not be alive when I came home. Even though I was six, I knew exactly what was going on and how serious it was.

And second, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was with me, comforting me in this very tangible presence. Even now, I struggle to verbalize exactly how I knew that. There was no audible voice; there was no dramatic sign from heaven, but God was there.

As I alluded to earlier, my dad survived the surgery. He's here; my parents are over there. He survived the surgery, and I am so incredibly thankful. Obviously, were circumstances different and things had gone another way, my life would have been very, very different from how it is today. But as I look back, I don't relate God's presence with a successful surgery; I relate God's presence with sitting there.

I think about how God sat there with me in the worry and the waiting. That is an example of God's grace. When we accept God's grace, he doesn't come into our lives and fix everything. He didn't make the tumor disappear; he doesn't make our lives perfect or without struggle. Instead, he promises to walk with us through the sorrows and the triumphs of life.

Second Corinthians 1:3–4 says, "God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others." I first believed at three, but my real aha moment came at six when God surrounded me with his comforting presence.

But it doesn't stop there. As I said earlier, I'm sharing two aha moments this morning, and the next most significant one came when I was 11 during the summer before sixth grade. That summer, I headed to Camp Hammer, which does not serve horse meat. Never did; never will. I'm with other kids from my church, and so here I am at camp. That's my camp picture, and the awesome thing is that on the back, it is signed by Mark Spurlock, Laura Spurlock, Paul Spurlock, and Valerie Webb. So we're all in that picture somewhere, but there I am looking awesome in my cropped blue shirt with ducks—awesome sense of style.

So over the years, most of my memories of that week have faded, but I have two things that I remember about that week. First, to my horror and utter embarrassment, I was fishing in the pond and I slipped and fell totally in, totally soaking wet, and I had to walk all the way back across camp wet, thinking everyone knew exactly what happened, and I was going to be like that kid that fell in the pond, and people were looking at me thinking, "Like, the pool's over there; why are you wet?"

But more importantly, I recommitted my life to Christ that week, and I'm not sure what led to that decision. Unlike Dan, I don't remember anything the speaker said; I don't know who the speaker was. I don't remember who my counselor was; I don't remember any certain verse that was shared. But I know that that week at Camp Hammer, I made a pivotal decision in my life to follow Christ.

As this week, as I was thinking about it, I was like, "Maybe God had it happen at Camp Hammer because he knew way back when that I would be here today and I would be sharing this story with you in a church that Camp Hammer has been instrumental in the ministry of Twin Lakes." So at three, I put my faith in Jesus to the extent that I understood; at six, I had that very significant aha moment of God's comforting presence; and at 11, I decided again to follow Jesus and make my faith my own.

I no longer believed because my dad was a pastor or because I wanted to be like my sister. Jesus had called me to follow him, and I responded. But it isn't like it's been smooth sailing since then. One thing I've realized in the intervening years is that when you grow up in church, it's very easy to fall into the Pharisaical trap of pride.

Jesus told a story about a tax collector and a Pharisee, and if you were here last week, then you heard Adrian reference the story as well. But these two guys go up to the temple to pray, and the tax collector prays and he says, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." And then the Pharisee prays, and the Pharisee is like, "God, thank you for making me me. I'm so amazing. I follow all of your rules, and I don't cheat or lie or do all the bad things that that guy over there does." Pretty much, he's like, "God, I'm awesome."

I have to admit that I have definitely had that attitude in high school and college and sometimes more currently than I'd like to admit. I look and I think I'm better than other people because I don't do or have done what they've done. But in reality, I'm a sinner saved by grace just like everyone else, and it's through God's grace that I heard his message early in life.

It's by God's grace that I stayed away from destructive behaviors in high school and college. I reap the blessings of godly grandparents and parents who continue to be instruments of God's grace in my life. Psalm 71:5 says, "For you have been my hope, sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth," and really this verse sums up my life.

Each one of us has a story, and all of our stories are different. Some have dramatic moments of life before and after Jesus, and others don't. It has literally taken me years to realize that my story is a good story because it is a story of God's grace. Thank you.

Well, hello everybody. My name is Jose. I'm one of the pastors here. I always wanted to say that. Anyway, I'm usually way up there translating the sermons into Spanish. If you didn't know, we have that available every Saturday, but today we're going to do things different. We have somebody come up and give you guys all radios. I'm going to do this in Spanish. That's a bad idea.

Wow. Anyway, I'm here to share with you my aha moment, but before I do that, let me share a scripture with you found in Ecclesiastes 3. It says this: "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven." Now, I shared that with you because I believe that every aha moment has a series of events that lead up to it. They just don't happen like that. You know, there has to be a series of events that lead you up to that moment.

As I mentioned last week, I grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, and that scripture has been very true in my life because there has been a time for everything, good and bad. Just to keep it short, let me give you an idea of how bad it was. When I was nine years old, something really bad happened in my life that made me decide that I was going to grow up one day and kill a man. That was my whole purpose in life: to grow up and kill this guy. I went into survivor mode.

I might imagine the things that can happen when a nine-year-old boy decides to live like that. My heart was a rock. My dad came to the U.S. when I was six, and he left us living in a shack made out of cardboard, like the one you see on the screen there. That one's pretty nice; I just wasn't so nice. I just found that on the internet, but it was kind of like that. It was made out of cardboard, and it was in the worst part of the city.

Now, I grew up blaming everything not on my dad but just on the fact that I didn't have my dad with me growing up. Now, to save us time, let me put it to you this way: bad, bad, bad. Fast forward; now I'm 18. I come to the U.S. More bad, more bad, more bad. Now I'm 23 years old, okay?

So my first encounters with Christianity—you can see my face right there—that's the anger I had. My first encounters with Christianity were when these two guys at work kept telling me about God and about the Bible, and they never really invited me to church, but they prepped me up for the day when my sister invited me to church, and I actually went. I remember going to that service, and during that sermon, the pastor kept saying that God was our Father, and I really wanted that in my life, so I was hooked.

Just to make a long story short, I kept going to church regularly. Eventually, I started going to Bible Institute, and in 2007, I got my pastor's license from that denomination. Now everything was great. I was preaching God's Word; I was telling people about God. Yes, but here's the thing: I could not believe those things for myself. It was okay for others when I told others, and I saw what God was doing in their life. It was okay for them, but me, I just couldn't believe that. It sounded too good to be true.

Now, I remember preaching, and it was the worst feeling in the world. I would tell people about God, and they would get all excited, and we'd sing some songs, and then they would give their lives to the Lord, and I'd go home feeling empty, feeling angry, disappointed because I was telling people about a God I didn't believe in, and they were actually believing my lies.

Now, I'm proof that you can learn some Bible talk; you can sing songs. You see me right there leading worship; you can sing some songs; you can be a pastor and still not believe in God. I'm proof of that; it's possible. This went on for seven years, three of those years as a reverend. Everybody was calling me Reverend.

Now, until in 2010, my wife went on a long trip with my two kids, and I was home alone. Now, the Bible says that it's not good for men to be alone. It's true; it's very true. So there I am one night by myself, just feeling really bad, feeling like nobody cares about me. I've dedicated years of my life to a God that I don't even believe in, and I'm just sitting there, and I went, my life was a mess. I went and grabbed a bottle of pills and a big glass of water and I put it on the table, and I said, "Okay, God, this is it. If you really are out there, if you really are the God that I've told people about, I want to know you. I need to know you."

I said, "No lightning, no burning bush. I have told people that you can speak through your word, and I have it right here." So I opened my Bible thinking for the last time. And this is what I read: Psalms 18: "The ropes of death entangled me; floods of destruction swept over me; the grave wrapped its ropes around me, and death laid a trap in my path. But in my distress, I cried out to the Lord. Yes, I prayed to God for help. He heard me from his sanctuary; my cry to him reached his ears."

Now, when I read that, I fell to my knees and I said, "God, I believe in you," and I led myself in the sinner's prayer and I said, "God, I accept you in my life as my Lord and Savior." And that was the hour I first believed—my aha moment. Ain't that cool?

Now here's what you can take away from this: that night I decided to settle three things in my heart to never again question these three things. Number one: God exists. That was something that I struggled with. I was, "What if he's not true? What if he's not out there?" And I found out that he does exist, and I said, "I will never again question that in my life." Number two: He loves me, and he will never act outside of his love for me. No matter what happens in my life, I know that he loves me through the good, through the bad, through the ugly, and he's with me right now.

Number three: He wants to use me in ways that I keep finding out different things that he calls me to do, and I just want to serve him. I want to be obedient to him, to his calling, to his word. I don't know where you are today. Maybe you're where I was, where you just can't find yourself in a place where you can actually believe these things. You think it's all fantasy, but you must know that the Bible says there is a time for everything.

And in everyone's life, there must be a time when you can be honest with yourself. You can be honest with God and just tell him how you feel. Tell him your doubts; tell him everything that you're feeling because he knows that anyway. You might as well be honest, and he will not reject you. I thought it was all fantasy. I thought it was okay for other people but not for me, that it was too good to be true. But I found out that he really is the God that he says he is. He really is an all-loving God. He was there with me in my darkest hour. He really is an awesome God. Honestly, it doesn't scare him.

So I hope that you know that you can have your very own aha moment, and I hope my aha moment helps you to have your own. Life is no walk in the park, but I know he holds my hand every step of the way. I hope you have your own aha moment.

I also want to share with you another aha moment that until today I could not share. Years ago, back in 2007, I was driving on the road right here. I had never been here in this church prior to that, and I'm driving by, and I looked over and I looked at this building, and I pointed to it and I told my wife, "One day I'm going to be a pastor in that church." I'm going to stare. Oh, we laughed. We really laughed.

But you know what? The Bible says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart," and that aha moment has just happened here in your presence. So I hope my aha moment helps you to have your own because I know your life will never be the same.

Three very different stories, very different journeys, but the same God. Honestly, there are many things that we talk about here, but one of the things we talk about the most is God's grace. The thing I tell you is that the thing that matters the most to us is that you, each and every one of you in this room, know personally the grace that these three have spoken about—that you know personally that you can have a relationship with Jesus, that this grace we talk about is for you as well.

When I was a little girl, one of the first Bible verses I was asked/forced to memorize was Romans 3:23, and it says, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." I spent a lot of time thinking about that verse, and I decided it's kind of a depressing verse when I was a little kid: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Now, it is a little depressing, but it is still true.

It literally was not until a few years ago that I connected verse 24, which says, "And are justified freely by his grace through Jesus Christ." We all have sinned, and we all are justified freely by the grace in Jesus Christ. If you have never come to that moment where you say, "Oh, this is for me. I believe," I would encourage you to set that straight today. All you have to do is say, "Yes, Lord, I believe." The two "alls": all have sinned, and all are justified freely by his grace. This is all God's work, and it's an amazing journey.

If you have made that decision, I encourage you to spend a few moments today reflecting on the journey that God has put you on because it's encouraging to hear the stories of people who have believed, and you have that story. Probably a lot of you do. Think about it today. Thank God for that hour you first believed and that journey that he has you on, and don't be afraid to tell your story because people need to hear it. It's encouraging, and they need to know your story as well.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, where would we be without your grace? Where would we be without your saving grace? Where would we be without your sustaining grace, your daily grace for our lives? Lord, we acknowledge that we need you. We acknowledge, yes, we are all sinners, and we say thank you, God, that you are the Savior, that you provide exactly what we need, not only for our eternal life but for our present life.

Lord, I pray that if there are those here today who have not yet made that decision, that you would just continue to call them to you, that they would soon have that aha moment—the best aha moment of life. And for those of us who have believed maybe for years, Lord, I pray that you would continue to instill in us a sense of wonder that we've had that moment, that you have called us, that you have saved us, and that we would be willing to tell our story, that we would be willing to tell about your grace in all the opportunities that you provide us.

Thank you, Lord, for your mercy and your love. In Jesus' name, Amen.