I was not raised in a Christian home so I never gave God much thought.
When I was 18 I was not happy about spending the rest of my life working in a filthy factory. I collected a couple of paychecks, hid them on my person, rounded up a sleeping bag and a few essentials and started hitchhiking across the country. I went down to Louisiana and over to Arizona, and eventually to California with a lot of adventure along the way.
It wasn’t long before I met people who used drugs, and not having much direction or moral compass in my life, I started using them too. Mostly marijuana and hallucinogenics, but before long almost anything I could get, not to leave out alcohol.
Most of my 20’s was spent moving from one place to another such as Memphis, Houston, Tucson, Los Angeles and vicinity, Denver, and more. All the while doing drugs.
(I almost forgot to mention that in 1973, when I was 21, I had a felony conviction for selling an ounce, yes 1 ounce, of marijuana to a narcotics agent. I was on probation for 5 years but was still able to move around. I did so much drugs, mostly marijuana, that I thought I would be senile by the time I was 30).
When I was 30 years old, I was back in Ohio sharing a small house with a biker friend of mine. One day I received a flyer in the mail talking about a prophecy lecture series in a nearby town. I thought that would be interesting so I decided to go check it out. When I got the to the address in the other town I saw it was AT A CHURCH! Huh. I traveled there thinking about Nostradamus, not Daniel or John the Revelator. Either it didn’t mention a church in the flyer or the Lord hid it from my eyes.
I stopped on the street thinking “I’m not going into any stinking church”. I can’t honestly say whether I was an atheist or an agnostic, but I didn’t want anything to do with God or church. While I was pondering what to do, a voice in my head (which I now firmly believe was the Holy Spirit) said “you drove all the way over here, you don’t have to stay and you don’t have to come back, so you might as well go in and check it out”. That sounded reasonable so I went in. The greeters were friendly and I found the lecture on Daniel 2 fascinating. Well, I went back and saw most of the lectures in the series although most of the time I was high from marijuana while I was there. Did I mention I was a drug addict?
Anyway, when the series was over I didn’t make a decision to follow Christ because I didn’t want to change my lifestyle. But Pastor Seeley had a different idea. Every couple of weeks he would stop by and try to encourage me to come to the light. A few months after the series had ended, my roommate Tim, and I were having a party with around 20 people, all of which were on drugs, mostly LSD, and we heard car doors shutting so we walked to the window and who was getting out of their car but Pastor and Mrs. Seeley! My big biker roommate, who had attended a couple of the lectures, looked at me in shock and asked “what are we going to do?” He walked away in despair and I answered the door. As the Pastor was walking up the porch steps, he said “it looks like you’ve got company. Maybe it would be better if we come back another time.” That felt like we dodged a bullet. The next day when I was home by myself, the Pastor showed back up. I invited him in and again he encouraged me to make a decision for Christ. I decided to be honest with him so I told him I used drugs, that I used them every day. He asked what kind of drugs I did and I said “you name it, I’ve probably done it, but marijuana is my main drug.” I told him that there was never a day that I didn’t use something. I hadn’t been straight, even one day, for years. I told him I didn’t think I could quit, that I didn’t know if I even wanted to quit. I said “all of my friends were druggies too”.
He said something inspiring to me. He said “that’s not the decision you need to make. The only decision you need to make is, do you want to follow Jesus? If you make that decision, He will help you make all the others”. At that very moment that voice in my head was back again saying verbatim: “What is so great about your life that you’re not willing to give Jesus a chance?” I was overwhelmed, I looked at the pastor and said, “I made up my mind. I want to follow Jesus.” He was so happy, he encouraged me, he prayed with me too and said he would do whatever I needed to follow through with my decision. After he left I went into my bedroom and got down on my knees and said my first ever real prayer. I asked Christ to come into my heart, to get me off of drugs and help me to follow Him. When I stood up, I knew (don’t ask me how) I was off of drugs and alcohol. That was 40 years ago and I have never touched drugs or alcohol since that day in 1982.
Just one epilog: I felt so good that I totally forgot I was supposed to go over to a girl’s house and pick up a quarter lb. of marijuana that morning. I got on my road bicycle and rode around in the country until I remembered my appointment. I rode over to Ava’s house. She asked me what took so long because she knew how much I loved pot. I asked her to sit down. I said “I won’t be needing the pot because I just gave my life to Christ”. I told her all about my new feelings and faith, and she said “I want that in my life too.” I started picking her up to go to church with me where she started doing Bible lessons, and a few months later she was baptized!
And that’s NOT the end of the story!
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Randy Underwood is head elder of the Bowling Green Seventh-day Adventist church in central Ohio.
