Personal Testimony I

Joel Gillespie

This is a brief and general account of God's dealing with one normal sinner whom He chose by His grace to grant new life in Jesus Christ

Born in 1957, I was raised in a fairly typical middle-class suburban household in Columbia, South Carolina, the third of four children.  Our neighborhood was rich with other kids to play and fight with, woods for foxholes and forts, fields for football and baseball, streams for damming and catching crayfish, lakes for swimming, and great loblolly pine and hickory trees for climbing and building tree houses.  I was an energetic, active youngster, involved in various sports (baseball being my first love), Scouts, piano lessons, roaming and exploring on foot and bicycle, and gardening.  In these early years I attended with my family a large “liberal” mainline church in Columbia, and I was actually confirmed in that church, but have no memory of having had any interest whatsoever in a personal relationship with or allegiance to the risen Christ. My only clear memories of that time are having to dress up (which I disliked terribly), of arguing with my confirmation teacher, and of listening to The Rascals in my brother’s yellow Mustang on the way to church!  My father, though in most respects a kind and generous man, and a good and encouraging dad, was, alas, a rather serious binge alcoholic, and I remember many times in which he would drop us off at church and then head over to the local watering hole. My mom, a kind, servant-hearted, and good mother, had for the most part no interest in church.

While church itself did little to stimulate spiritual interest in me, I had developed, through long walks and adventures in and around the woods and lakes with the family dog, a keen sense that there was a God brooding in some way over what I now call His creation.  The woods, trees, plants, and animals, along with a general emptiness of heart, created a deep albeit ambiguous longing within me for something, though I did not know what.

When I was around the family stopped attending church altogether. The times were troubling in many ways. My parents separated for six months. Desegregation came to Columbia SC and I was bussed across town to a new school and to a whole new set of relationships. My dearest friend in life at that time, my dog Algeber (named after the donkey on The Little Rascals), died of kidney failure. I broke my big toe and lost my position as defensive end on my football team. Then I ruined my throwing arm for life the first day of practice in pony league. It was truly a bad year.

Regarding church, and in fairness to my parents, I must say that this particular church, just like many other liberal mainline middle class suburban churches of that era, had largely abandoned the gospel of Christ; and I can see in retrospect that apart from the words of some of the hymns there was not much there in the way of new-life power and biblical witness to call people to faith and repentance. It saddens me deeply as I look back upon it now.

But about this time my younger sister Mary became a believer through the ministry of a Baptist church near our home. I consider this to be the spiritual d-day for my family, when God chose to claim a beachhead, and work from there (which he is still doing). Although I argued with, made fun of, and persecuted my sister terribly, this daily presence of a “born-again” witness to Christ did provide continued exposure for me in the darker years to come.

The period from age 13 to about 16 ½ was a confusing period of searching and exploration.  One by one, most of my good friends became seriously involved in drugs, alcohol, or promiscuity, while I went from one group to another looking for a “fit.”  God was so gracious in this time that even as I got heavily into the rock-music scene, went to many rock concerts, and rebelled against my parents by growing my hair very long, God preserved me as a good student and maintained in me a sensitive conscience that simply would not allow me to follow along the path chosen by so many of my friends.  I have no natural explanation for this. God in His mercy simply chose to spare me. And all along, He kept me close to Himself in a vague un-saved sort of a way, especially through my love for the woods and forests.

Then, at age 16, through the invitation of a friend, Calvin Marshall, whom I had gotten to know in grade 9, I was exposed both to a clear presentation of the gospel and true Christian love through a Trinity Episcopal church youth retreat in Windy Gap, North Carolina.  I remember feeling like an outsider on that retreat, not really being a part of the inner circle of Christian friendships. Yet one young man chose to reach out and get to know me, take interest in me, and guide me through the weekend. His love and help opened up my heart to hear what was being taught, and for Billy Peebles I will always be grateful to God.

After that retreat, while lying in my bed at home, and more through a sense of personal emptiness and need than understanding, I asked Jesus to come into my heart and fill me.  Something changed inside and there were observable changes in my life. For example,  I almost immediately ceased a deeply ingrained habit of lewd and profane speech. I began to seek out Christian associations, and thereafter maintained a peripheral association with the youth group at Trinity Episcopal Church.  Most important in some ways was the fact that I developed some genuine and lasting friendships with a few Christians at my high school.  During this time of professed attachment to the Christian cause I attended Bible studies, read books in apologetics, and defended Christianity against its adversaries as I perceived them.  In those days Christian friends were always putting books into the hands of new converts like me – books by C. S. Lewis, J. I. Packer, Francis Schaeffer, and John Stott to name a few. I read most of the books that these men had written, plus many others.

God again was also very gracious in providing me with a Christian girl-friend, and through that a relationship which kept me in daily contact with one person’s genuine hope of heaven.  I remained very active in school, became quite involved in environmental issues, and began to appreciate new forms of music and literature. 

Despite having learned much about the Christian faith, and despite attending many Bible studies and having many close Christian friends, there was, sadly, as far as I could tell, little spiritual progress, even as I went on to university.  I remember telling Bill Marshall, my good friend and Christian roommate at Clemson, that he seemed to “have it” with God while I did not, and that I felt that I could neither escape from God nor find real life in Him.  Combined with this spiritual dilemma was an extremely intense frustration that despite doing exceedingly well academically and being very involved in the university scene, I could not find contentment in any career direction that I could imagine.  This burden was at times almost overwhelming for me. The combination of these two factors – my spiritual dilemma and vocational confusion – led me half-way through my junior year at Clemson to leave in order to go study at L’Abri Fellowship in Greatham, England.  There at L’Abri, great miracles of grace happened which were manifestly important and obvious even as they happened.  In my first hours at L’Abri all the emotional and psychological weight of the career-decision burden literally vanished.  The release was as palpable as anything could possibly be. I was thus freed emotionally to apply myself diligently to the study of Genesis, Romans, and Philippians, as well as other areas of interest to me.  Leaders at L’Abri and fellow students helped me sort through many of the issues which were troubling me.  During this time the “scales” on my eyes fell off, one by one.  What opened up to me was the glorious vista of God’s purposes in Christ (in general and for me in particular). Many of the great gospel truths in defense of which I had so often argued suddenly made sense to me and for me – God’s love and justice, the work of Christ, sin, hell, eternal life, new life in Christ.  My life for three months became an extended, “Oh, I see!”  In a very vivid way at the time, the Holy Spirit clearly applied to my heart the saving message of the gospel, and began to elicit from my heart true saving faith.  Interestingly, it was only at this time that the vague God of my youthful wanderings became the personal triune God – my Father in heaven, the risen Lord Jesus Christ, and the ever present Holy Spirit.  My love for God’s creation, which had previously issued in only vague longings, now had fulfillment through worship and praise and “thank-you’s.” To top off my three months at English L’Abri, the night I left to return to South Carolina I was baptized by Ranald Macaulay in an amazing service of worship and praise.

I returned from England with the intention of finishing university as quickly as possible so that I could go on to a theological school of some kind.  I had one primary desire it seemed, to study His word and learn more of this faith that had grabbed and transformed me. The change, however, from a slower-paced contemplative life full of interesting and stimulating people (all in a lovely rural English setting) to the hectic life of fighting traffic, working a job, going to school, and living at home again came as quite a shock, and I did not always manifest clearly the new life which was within me.  In addition I had to face several new challenges of faith. One dear brother with whom I worked, and who loved and encouraged me in so many ways, tried to convince me that I needed the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” as evidenced by speaking in tongues. How often I prayed for and tried to exercise this gift, but to no avail. Eventually that cloud passed as I contemplated Jesus’ invitation to “come unto me all who are burdened and heavy ladened, and I will give you rest.” And so I rested in Him and that cloud passed.

Another brother, a pastor of a close friend, after many long conversations, declared me to be an unbeliever, because, even though I had been baptized by immersion as an adult, I accepted the validity of infant baptisms in others. It was sobering to be declared a non-Christian on such a basis, but again God brought me through to peace.

During this time I eventually discovered a small downtown store-front type fellowship called Christ Fellowship Church. I became very active there, and despite my having more responsibility than maturity, God kept me close to Himself and maintained a vital witness of Himself to others through me.  The preaching of Dr. Paul Wright was solid and consistent. While at Christ Fellowship I learned many of the great hymns of the faith which have so enriched my life and worship since.  God also began to fill me with a profound sense of burden for the lostness of my city and I became very active in ministry to street people of Columbia.  And, by His grace, a dear brother and now life friend Richard Greenfield, took me on in a discipling relationship through which I came more and more able to apply my new faith to many of the personal and family and relational matters which I faced. 

My hunger for a time to study and to prepare for whatever ministry God had ahead for me led me to Regent College in Vancouver to pursue the one year certificate in Christian studies.  What a rich and foundation-building time that was for me! Courses with Bruce Waltke, J. I. Packer, James Houston, and Klaus Bochmuel were challenging and transformative, and gave me a great sense of the landscape of the Bible and of Christian theology.  I was also encouraged to think, and to think hard, about the relationship between one’s Christian faith and all other parts of one’s life.  This was an exciting time indeed.

Yet, Regent’s emphasis on lay ministry seemed to confuse my rather vague sense of direction, and so I went back to Columbia and entered into a few more years of pursuing and contemplating various vocational options.  While at Regent I had met and gotten to know Susan MacRobie, a Canadian young lady from Toronto Ontario. Toward the end of my time at Regent our friendship blossomed into a romance, and shortly after my return to Columbia, we became engaged. A year later, after she finished her Master’s degree at Regent, we were married, and set up our new home in Columbia.  I had begun teaching physics and chemistry in a high school in Columbia, and what originally I had intended as a two years stint stretched out to five years as two children came (Shannon, then Heather), and my sense of vocational direction remained unclear.  God used those five years of teaching high school to grow me up in Him, and with the help of many bold Christian colleagues, to knock off many of the very rough edges to my somewhat brooding and hard personality.

During that time God also chose to grant to me the gift of assurance of salvation, which despite all that had transpired in my life, had continued to elude me. I was sitting out on the porch of our second floor flat, my feet propped up on a railing, surrounded by limbs of a large willow oak tree, and reading Romans 5:1-5 over and over, praying for the peace and security in the Holy Spirit which that passage described, when a dove, yes, a real dove, flew from somewhere and alighted on a branch of the willow oak a foot or so from my feet. The bird sat there and looked at me, as if to say something, and then flew away. Inside of me something changed, and I was, and have been, assured and at peace in the Spirit, ever since. 

God was also very good to me in granting help during this time of searching and decision-making as I met with pastor Mark Ross and discussed the various vocational options before me.  What did become exceedingly obvious – gradually I must say, as I looked into one  vocational option after another – was that nothing else at all would fit for me except some sort of pastoral ministry. So through the initiating counsel and work of Dr. Ross and other elders at First Presbyterian Church, I became a candidate for the pastoral ministry, and through the financial support of that church was able to move with my family back to Vancouver to complete my Masters of Divinity at Regent College. 

Part II of my testimony will pick up from the time we arrived in Vancouver for our second stint at Regent College. But as look back now and consider those six years “between Regent and Regent,” I rejoice in that period of waiting, maturation, growth, and perseverance, not all of which was pleasant at the time.  God provided over these five years not only a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters, but a church home, experience in a non-church work setting, and a foundation of incredible teaching from Glen Knecht and Mark Ross and others at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia. It was a rich and deeply helpful period of preparation for future life and ministry.  

As I contemplate this first decade of my walk of faith, I am struck by two things. First is God’s ever patient yet persevering work to care for, mold, and transform me, bit by bit, ever more into his image. Second is the role of so many committed Christian friends – none of whom had to care for, reach out to, or love me. Yet they did. It seems in my case that it has indeed “taken a village,” and I give thanks to God for the many saints who took the time to make a difference in my life.