Paul Washer tells the story of his life and the time of his conversion. This is a story of many mercies of God converging upon a soul until finally, everything changed - in an instant. You never know how or when the Lord will capture a sinner. But when it happened to Paul, it was unexpected, he knew it and so did everyone else.

Hey, welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Let me tell you a couple of things real quick before we get going. Hope you can come to our Theology of the Family Conference at Richcrest, North Carolina, May 20 through 23. Just Before that, a singles conference called Holiness to the Lord, May 19 and 20. Also go to our website.

We have lots of resources, over 5,000. Churchandfamilylife.com. Also, I just published a book called The Family at Church, How Parents Are Tour Guides for Joy. I think this book could really help sweeten your local church experience. Okay, let's get on now with the podcast.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life is dedicated to proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. And today we have with us Paul Washer. He's gonna give his testimony. We do all kinds of didactic things around here.

But we have had such delight in hearing the stories of brethren whom the Lord rescued who are now preaching and and so Jason Dome we get to talk to Paul Washer about this today what a joy I can't wait it's always a pleasure this is really nice and so you know the Lord Jesus Christ is so kind to save sinners, and so we're just doing lots of broadcasts with brothers whose souls have been saved by the Lord. So Paul, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. My privilege. So I guess we should say, you know, that you're with HeartCry Missionary Society and trying to deploy and encourage and resource the brethren around the world to preach the gospel.

You preach the gospel all over the world, but actually the gospel was preached to you. So I want you to just go back, just tell us your life story. Just start at the beginning, you know, and then just bring us right up to the moment. All right, well, I was born in a small, very small town of about a thousand in in southern Illinois and my my father worked for Union Carbide and my mother was at home and we also had a a farm with we raised charlie cattle and quarter horses and that took up a big part of my life and my mother's christian heritage was my my grandmother became a christian croatian and became a christian and to be Croatian and become a Christian was very difficult because it meant you were no longer associated with Catholicism and Croatianism in those Catholic countries in the world. And she suffered greatly.

But she remained faithful. She died when my mother was 12, but she had constantly shared the gospel with my mother. And when my mother was a little girl, She was over at a family house and they were upstairs playing with dolls, but the family was downstairs and they were singing hymns around the piano. And my mother said she heard a hymn that talked about the death of Christ, and it struck her almost just, she said she just wept and wept and wept. There was no one in her family who was evangelical or anything because her mother had died.

She said the family talked to her and she came to a faith in Christ. And you know, there wasn't hardly any discipleship or anything as years went by. But she knew that salvation was not in the church, it was not in the sacraments, it was in Jesus Christ and his atoning death. And then she married my father, who was not a Christian, but came from a missionary background. My grandparents were some of the first Baptist missionaries to Brazil in Manaus on the Amazon.

And so she began to go to a Baptist church. And in time I was born, And my mother had lost her first son when he was six years old. He was struck by a car and killed. And it had a decisive impact on our family. And my mom really prayed to have another son.

I came along. And there was, you know, how we always want to find something exceptional about our life, about our story, but there really wasn't anything exceptional. When I was young, I was a farm boy. I was weak, really not that smart, just a little bit sub normal, I guess. Stayed to myself, read books, drew pictures.

But then in time, it came where you started wrangling horses and wrangling cattle and doing all that kind of stuff and going to school and participating in sports. When I was nine years old, I was sitting in church and the preacher was preaching on the gospel and it just seemed like I could see this. All I saw was just pitch blackness and I saw this man hanging on a cross, whether it was just in my mind. And I just wept and wept and wept and some people took me up forward and I just remember weeping about that man on that cross. But I can't recall anyone sharing the gospel with me.

They told me to pray a prayer, but no one shared the gospel with me. The meaning of atonement or substitution or Christ suffering wrath, nothing. In school and everything, I was pretty much just a normal kid, good kid, went to church. As I got 12, 13, 14, there was just fell in with my kind, you know, and we, there was nothing about Christ in my life, nothing. Just playing and sports and everything else.

16 17 drinking cars. And then when I was 17, my father and I was right before the basketball season was starting when I was 17. And he loved the fact that I played sports. It meant a lot to him. We were rolling out wire.

Each of us had one side of the wire bale and we're rolling out wire to build a fence on the horse farm. And he screamed and I turned around, he dropped the wire and I looked at him, I saw he was falling, I caught him. He was six foot one, kind of like me, I'm a little taller, but he was a lot thicker, a lot more muscular man. And he, remember fall into the ground with him. And when I turned him over, he, he was dead.

And I worked there for, you know, several minutes trying to revive him. Then I jumped across this fence and pulled somebody over and ambulance was called, but he had died. I had spent most of my life just wanting to impress my dad. He was a very intelligent man, very strong man, very courageous, wasn't afraid of anything. And I realized something that day.

I realized that it didn't matter how strong you were, you would die. My dad was successful. It didn't matter how successful you were, you would die. If you fell in love, you would die. The death was the end of everything.

And now I could say right now, saying that, you know, OK, now I'm this boy traumatized by death, looking for a real answer. And that was in there somewhere. But I was a fallen human being, a sinful human being with a sinful nature. And my father's death in my arms so dramatically gave me a license to be angry, gave me a license to be self-centered, gave me a license to be sinful. And everyone, you know, able to say, this traumatic thing happened to me, therefore I drink so much or I'm so angry or I'm always thinking about myself.

We always have this way of turning things around and victimizing ourselves, but the fact of the matter is my father's death gave my flesh an opportunity just to run wild. And for the next four years, I did. And you know, I heard Vodi Bakum say one time, everyone, you know, tries to make themselves appear like this great sinner and this, you know, larger than life sinful character. And With me, I was a sinner. I was a sinner.

I was insecure. I was proud. I was arrogant. I was a liar. I guess in modern vernacular I could say if you look jerk up in the dictionary they would have had my picture there.

That's all you could say, was just self-centered, always trying to be something I wasn't. And I went to college for the first three years at the University, Murray State University, and I made really good grades, really good grades. I would study all the time, And I don't even know why. I just, I thought I was going to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a lawyer.

I thought, but I would just drink all the time. I would, you know, party. I would just lie. You know, I mean, just like I said, just simple, nothing noble about it, nothing heroic, just simple. One day a professor told me, said, look, you need to think about maybe trying to get into an Ivy League school or something like that.

Because I work so hard. I'm not real intelligent. I don't have a high IQ. My dad taught me one thing. You can just outwork everybody.

And that's the gift my father gave me. And I ended up going to the University of Texas because for some reason I thought I wanted to be an oil and gas lawyer. I don't even know how that popped in my head, to be honest with you. It's the Lord's Providence just taking me to there, to Texas. When I got there, I drove all night and I got there at wee hours in the morning and slept out in the foyer, kind of, because I didn't have a room ready.

About, I don't know, seven o'clock in the morning, this big dudes tugging on my arm saying, Hey, man, get up. He was kind of like an Apollo Creed or something that fought Rocky, you know, and I thought, oh my gosh, the guy's gonna beat me up. And he turned out to be a guy that became a really good friend of mine. He was a Christian. And there was a whole group of young men and women in this dorm slash apartment complex.

And the only thing I could say about them is that they seem so happy and they seem clean. That's the only word. I mean, in all their joy and the Tom foolery of being a college student, but it was clean. It wasn't dirty. And I had got to the point where I didn't really even like party or anything anymore.

I would just like you'd see, you know, a tavern where you'd see, you know, senior men who are drunk, sit in there and just with their head down and drink. I would just go to a place like that and sit and drink. I would study all day all night and then drink. And one day someone come by and start sharing the gospel with me and I gave all kinds of silly reasons of why I didn't believe and didn't even know what I was saying. And then one night I loved, I'm not naturally a strong person, But I found out like everything else you can make yourself if you just work hard.

But I had gotten to where weightlifting was everything to me. And I was on steroids really, really heavy. And One night about one in the morning in my dorm room or apartment room, I just had a big, I had some steroids and I thought, you know, these things will kill you over time. But I wish they were the type of thing that you could just take them all at once and they would kill you. And, And I just kept saying to myself, I'm so miserable.

I'm so miserable. I had ruined so many relationships, friendships. I'd lied so much. I've done so many things. And I just kept saying, I'm miserable.

And someone knocked at the door. I'm not exaggerating or making this up. And someone knocked on the door. And it was this young freshman. And he was really nervous.

And I thought we'd had some crime in the building. I thought maybe someone had tried to rob somebody. And so I said, you know, what's what's wrong? He said, I need to talk to you. And he said, you're probably going to be mad at me, something like that.

And I said, well, yeah, it's one in the morning. I probably will be mad. I mean, what's wrong? And he said, for two weeks, you know, using kind of the loose language you would use in evangelicalism, He said, for two weeks, God's been telling me to come over here and talk to you. And I kind of laughed and he said, I can't take it anymore.

He says, I'm afraid of you. He was a little guy. I was a lot bigger. He goes, I'm afraid. But I can't.

I can't sleep. I can't. I got to tell you something. And I laughed and I said, oh, I said, okay, well, what is God's message for me? You know, I was really smart.

Oh, and he said, just this. Your life is misery and it's going to continue to be miserable, just misery, until you turn your life over to Christ. And I just thought, was he listening? And then I thought, well, he couldn't have been listening. I didn't say it loud enough.

I was sitting on the edge of my bed saying I'm miserable. You know, I was like, and he ended up talking to me, like until four in the morning, we walked around campus. And he said something because I brought up the fact that part of my family was Catholic, part of them were Baptist and hypocrisy. And you always, you know, go that route, the work, you know, the route of the slanderer. And he looked at me and he said, have you not heard a word I've said?

He goes, I have not said one thing about church. I haven't talked about Catholicism. I haven't talked about Baptist. I have talked about the person of Jesus Christ. And you either going to reject him or accept him, but you have no excuse.

And then kind of like that C.S. Lewis thing, you know, he's either Lord, liar or lunatic. I'm talking about Christ. And that struck me. And then, you know, they've talked back and forth for a few weeks and he had me go play ball and stuff like that with a few of his Christian friends and again I just noticed how clean and happy they were.

Then one day I was in the undergraduate library and we were running off some oil surveys or something on the coffee machine with this team of students I was working with and this girl asked me to go to a party and I had reached the point like I said where I didn't even do that anymore. I was just angry and I said I'm going to your party and she said why And there were a few other guys standing around there that knew me as classmates. And when she said why, I answered. And I don't even recall thinking about my answer. It just came out of my mouth.

I said, I'm not going to your party because it was something like, I'm a Christian and I'm going to follow Jesus. It was like the guys in the room turned around and looked at me like with a wince, you know, it was like, you know, Paul, that's even low for you that you'd make fun of. And have you ever seen all those cartoons where the guy stand there and the light bulb just goes off? You know, I see a light bulb. That's what it was like.

At that moment, it was, yes, I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus. And the thing that really, I think, it overwhelmed me was just, God loves me. God loves me. God loves me.

And I remember excusing myself. And I thought, I have got to get back to my apartment. I've got to find the guy who's always talking to me. And I made it to the door of the library and opened up and there was a girl there who had been praying for me for about six months. She was also in the dorm and she goes, Paul.

And I said, yes. She goes, what happened? And I said, Well, you mean what happened? She goes, you're different. And then I got scared and I walk ran all the way back to the thing and I found him and I said, I said, you got to help me.

And he said, what's wrong? I said, I don't know. I just know. A few minutes ago, I was one person, and now I'm another. I'm not the same man that went in that library.

And he took me down to one of the RAs who was an older, well, a couple years older than us, but had been a Christian a lot longer, big Texan. He's still a friend of mine. Knocked on the door, he opened the door and he said, yeah. And my friend told me said, Paul needs to tell you something. He said, what's up?

And I said, I don't know. I just know that I went in the library one way. I came out another way. And I believe in Jesus and God loves me and he in that, you know, true text and he goes, buddy, you just been born again. And I said, what, you know, what is that?

And they bought me a new American standard Ryrie study Bible the next day and gave it to me and I carry it to class. And I knew very quickly, I didn't want to do anything. I didn't care about my studies. I didn't. And I just didn't care.

All I wanted to do was read my Bible and then tell people about Jesus. And the guys that were around me were very outspoken about their faith. And to have those other young men around me that just witnessed everywhere was a great influence. And so that's how I became a Christian. Oh, that's wonderful.

You know, Luther wrote the hymn with the words, one little word shall fell him. It sounds like it was your own words that fell the devil. It was just amazing. There was so much sin. It was a real conversion, but there were so many struggles.

And I found that the evidence to me was that I couldn't get away with the things I could get away with. Not that I would be exposed, but that my heart, it was like things I would do before that that I would think was almost I was almost proud of it was like if I did the same thing it would be like someone stabbing me through the heart with a knife. And just time went on and I began to go down to a place called 6th Street in Austin where all the college students hang out and I would walk around there but I was so afraid to witness because of my pride. And I just walk around and walk around and sometimes go home so discouraged. And this old saint gave me books by Leonard Ravenhill, the autobiography of George Mueller, Hudson Taylor, and I would read them.

One day it just dawned on me that the answer would be found in prayer. I worked as a waiter. I would study all the time. I'd get home at like 11 o'clock at night, 10.30, 11. And I would heard these old writers talk about the prayer closet.

So I would literally get in the closet. And I'm just saying this because I don't know how it fits in with the rest of my life, but I would I'd stay in there often times. I got to the point I would pray for 15 minutes and fall asleep, so I brought an alarm clock in with me and I would set it for like 15 or 20 minutes. If I fell asleep in 15 minutes, it would go off, and I'd set it again for another 15 minutes and continue to pray. But then prayer got easier and easier to the point where it's very common for me every night to go in there at 10, 30, or 11, and come out at 2 in the morning until my roommate would actually said, look, something has to happen.

I can't sleep. And one night in prayer, You know, I am solidly reformed. I'm a cessationist. But one night in prayer something happens. And a reality that God became more real to me than even a physical person in the room.

And a boldness and an insight to witnessing, to things. And a lot of times, we hear this down through history, not from people with bad doctrine, but even men, good doctrine. I mean, it wasn't anything like I said, there was a tremendous power. At least for me, a difference in sharing the gospel and a difference in prayer and a difference in and just God became such a reality. And my entire ministry, everything, the fruit of it, everything began to change, and I can mark it down.

That type of praying went on for months and months and months. I even went out in the weekend to the hill country and just spent all night on a hill screaming. I mean, if someone would have saw me, they would have called the police. I mean, just screaming out to God. And just that in all our acquiring of wisdom, as the Bible commands in Proverbs chapter 4 There is There is a life to be had through prayer mmm Amen Paul one last thing So take yourself back, you're 17 years old.

Back to those days. What what what what what would you say to yourself as a 17 year old? I expect some 17 year olds whose hearts are running away from the Lord. You might listen to this. What would you say to that guy?

If you could only see the magnificence of Christ, the gospel, and to see that it is not just global or temporal, it is cosmic in turn. That the greatest thing that God has ever done, He has done through this person, Jesus of Nazareth, and He is absolutely everything. The world was made by him, the world was made for him, that he is not only the Savior of the redeemed, he's the Lord of all. There's nothing like the Son of God. Nothing.

Nothing. No one. Nothing. No. He is life.

That's what I would tell them. He's magnificent. He's utterly magnificent. And don't miss him, young person. Don't miss him.

Amen. Paul, thank you so much. We really appreciate you letting us in on those very intimate details of your life. And the greatest thing in life. Is that the Lord Jesus Christ would find you.

And open your heart in the craziest ways imaginable, isn't that something? Scott, we invite men to conferences to teach, and so many of these men have taught at conferences many times, and yet each one of them actually has a personal history of the grace of God in their life. So it's been very refreshing to hear Paul and other speakers that we've interviewed in the past and just hear that they are teachers of truth, but they're not just teachers of truth. They're recipients of the grace of God. Well, Paul, we're just so grateful for your time with us, and thank you for joining us on this podcast at Church and Family Life.

I hope you can join us next time around. Our desire is to proclaim the greatness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and His gift of a sufficient word for us. Praise the Lord and thank you so much, Paul. Okay, thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, God bless. Okay, thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye, God bless. You you