Hi. My name is Wayne Davies and I’d like to introduce myself. I’m a Christ follower and avid Bible reader. I’m also a writer, Bible teacher and street evangelist. You can access some of my writings about the Bible on this website.
First and foremost, what I’d like you to know is that I am a prodigal son. This is my story.
I first heard the gospel as a teenager by attending a Bible-believing church with a good friend and his family. At the age of 16, I made a profession of faith in Christ as Savior and was baptized. By my senior year of high school, I had a strong desire to enter the ministry, so I studied the Bible as much as I could in college and seminary to pursue that goal.
After graduating from seminary I got a job as an Assistant Pastor in an evangelical church. Ironically, that’s when the skepticism started to grow. Slowly but surely, my faith deteriorated. I found myself asking the questions I was supposed to have the answers to.
What began as a trickle of doubt soon became a flood of unbelief. And now I felt trapped in a life of hypocrisy: teaching the Bible on Sunday and ignoring God the rest of the week. The inner turmoil became unbearable and within two years of working in the church, I quit my job as Assistant Pastor, determined to run as far away from God as I could.
Not only did I resign my position, I left Christianity. I wanted nothing to do with the church or God or Jesus or the Bible. I followed my heart, which was telling me to make this my mantra: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
For the next 20 years I ignored God and lived as a practical atheist. As far as I was concerned, God did not exist. I didn’t need Him and I sure didn’t want to anything to do with Him, His Word or His people.
I went back to college, studied accounting and found a new career. And for the past 35 years I’ve made a living as a tax accountant.
But God is good. He let me wander off into a spiritual no-man’s land. Yet He remained in control of my life, whether I realized it or not. In 1984 God brought a wonderful woman into my life. I met Julie through the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization, where we both served as volunteers. We fell in love and were married seven months later.
Several years and three children later, Julie began looking for a church. I was OK with that, but had no desire to accompany her on this search. I was still quite content with my atheism.
One day Julie told me about a church she enjoyed. “You should come and listen to this preacher. I think you’d like him.” That was all she said. At first I declined. But within a few weeks, for some reason I found myself saying, “OK, I’ll go.”
Unbeknownst to me, God was at work in my heart. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44). The Father was drawing me to Jesus. As I look back, it is so beautifully obvious. At the time, I didn’t really understand what was happening. After all these years of ignoring God, now I had this desire to attend a church service with my wife and children!
By attending this evangelical church, I heard the gospel again, and the Good News of Jesus Christ was like a river of fresh water to my spiritually parched soul. What I needed to do became self-evident: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). By the grace of God the Father and the enabling of the Holy Spirit, I humbled myself before King Jesus and submitted to His Lordship, for “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3).
Many years later I see how God was doing what only He can do – convict me of my sin. Jesus told the apostles that the Holy Spirit “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me” (John 16:8). The weight of my sin came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks. He opened the eyes of my heart to see that 20 years of rebellion against God was the ultimate act of foolishness. Oh how I thank God every day that He had mercy on me and forgave me, all because the death of Jesus paid the penalty for my sin!
There is more to my story, which is really the story of the sovereignty of God. He orchestrated an amazing sequence of events to lead me to Himself. If you’d like to read more about it, I’ve written a longer account of my spiritual journey. It’s entitled, The Ultimate Communicator: One Man’s Search for the Meaning of Life.
You can access it free here:
www.GodWroteTheBook.com/journey.html
My story is also available in both Kindle and paperback.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WQAX0FO/
After you read The Ultimate Communicator, please feel free to contact me at wayne @ GodWroteTheBook.com with your comments or questions. I’m here to help you any way I can.