Vision Week Radio Special - Part E

Today we will connect with Linda Heights again the studio as we continue vision week on connect with Skip Heitzig when we will talk about her days as a coed atheist and what she's learned about saying yes to God and learn more and more my job and as long as I say yes doing things that only abundantly above all, and I think that that just say now we are willing to will recklessly abandon family lifestyle job etc. and we just kept saying yes to the next thing let's join Linda Heights studio or conversation which it was go on vision Linda you vision.

We husband. I know you've been with us on the majority of the journey through good to be together.

It really is the purpose of this week is really dear folks, just an idea of the past to look back to look around and look forward to tell his testimony will notice wonderful at last my turn up, you know, I know it, but I know the folks listening would like to hear it. So let's go back to Michigan which we we have roots in the Western Michigan and the rest walkers walk us through the yes if we go back to the Michigan days. My parents divorced when I was relatively young I was a bartender and a discotheque and college coed after that and started experimenting with sex drugs and rock 'n' roll. I think that's it. We all did.

During that time.

So I dropped acid tics speed loved bongs of tech stuff so it was a pretty wild background and during my sophomore year of college might have a doctor, he'd written a book on the power of positive thinking, and he is taking law classes wanted to become an attorney and during that semester in between heavy studying law.

He decided to read the Bible to see if Jesus was a positive person and he called us and said he got saved he went to check Smith's church was baptized in Pirates Cove. Chuck took him down there just he and his wife was a beautiful thing and is this college coed. I thought my dad like Festus, your much learning has made you mad and I just thought he's off the deep end but in the darkness of night in the quietness of my room. I think what if he's right and I'm wrong and I'm going to hell and it haunted me and yet I didn't see a compelling reason to believe in Christ all my friends were, you know, Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, whatever, but it didn't change their lives. We are smoking the same joint and I'd estimate my dad. He's become a Christian. So why are you a Christian.

And it didn't seem to move the needle. You know they were there was no true repentance, no true lifestyle that had changed and so I took a class at Western Michigan University on Eastern religions of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism, and they just didn't hammer me in any way. My high school friend became a Jesus freak and I got stuck in our car ride home from Kalamazoo to Ludington, Michigan, and I asked her about Jesus and it was the first time anyone explained to me in a articulate way the creation, the fall, the need for redemption.

The blood of Jesus Christ and so I understood for the first time what Christianity was, and it sounded appealing and as she left the four spiritual laws in my car.

Got back and I was smoking a joint with my friends and that track fell out and when I read the track. There's this picture at the end that has a throne with you on it and all the things in your life, marriage, finances, career kids are just kind of akimbo and then if you get off this throne in Jesus the crosses on the throne that everything works like in concentric circles from a positive thinking perspective to me.

It was like that.

That's the ultimate positive confession.

If I confess Jesus than everything in life comes into order, so that's kind of what I was thinking, but I was willing to say the sinners prayer at the end of the track and when I did. I started crying. I mean, it must've hit something deep even though I didn't know much more than that. And one of my friends came in the room wanted to play cards. While we were getting high and saw me crying and said so why are you crying, and these are the same people at the keg and smoking the joint. That would tell me I was going to hell and they were going to heaven simply because I did not believe in God but we were doing the same things.

So I said I don't know I just read this track and I asked to receive Jesus and I repented of my sins and immediately they turned on me and said what makes you think you're going to heaven and were going to hell.

So there was clearly you know, a dividing line in this moment, so after that I went to visit my dad in California. He was going to Calvary Costa Mesa and I was going to church with him to hear Pastor Chuck but I kept saying I don't feel saved, I'm coming here and I'm going to the motions but I don't feel saved and so one week they were doing an altar call and Malcolm Wilde was there and I went forward and as I was walking down the aisle. The weight of my sin was heavy.

I felt like the scarlet letter. You know all the things I'd ever done. Everybody could see what a sinner I was going down the aisle and so I got back to the prayer room and Malcolm said to me, so why are you here and I said well I had four spiritual laws track. I said the prayer but I don't feel saved and he said have you ever repented of your sins and we don't talk enough about that anymore and I said well know, but I don't even know the word repent means that I have no concept that the Christian ease word really from college coed so explain though your sins be as scarlet, he will make. He was white as snow that we confess those sins. And then Jesus gives us this new start and I started sobbing again and realized how much I needed that forgiveness and he said do you want to pray and I nodded my head and he said you want me to pray for you and I said yes because I couldn't even really articulate and he did. But from that day forward I never had a doubt that I was a Christian and where I was headed and what God was calling me to do and he gave me a voracious appetite for his word. I was going to Calvary, Costa Mesa six nights a week to the concert to Chuck Mesler's class to everything I could. After that moment, I'd like your thoughts on the care of your we went to comparable campuses during Kalamazoo. Roosevelt was in the same euro that I was. I thought back when you wanted like you saved earlier I thought what really hear about Jesus that much. I mean, I went to a comparative religion class with a girlfriend or never heard about you. I think once a year youth for Christ guys came running out for the doors. We just waited for the mock really.

Jesus was not a presence on my campus. Was he on yours now and I think that that's you know part of the issue. I can remember in my hometown, a Ludington not college campus some Jesus freak person came to town and were giving the smiley stickers smile.

God loves you kind of Forrest Gump that :-) you know, but on campus. There was no witness and it worked out for this friend who got saved and you know shared with me on this ride home, and that was a really good point chip because when I went to California to visit my dad and I was going to Calvary coastal Mesa. I had never been in a church because I went to church with these Baptist Catholics that Christmas time or whatever and it was just mumbo-jumbo to me. It was nothing at Calvary, Costa Mesa, X positionally teaching and the anointing that God had on Chuck's life was rivers of living water it. I was voracious for the truth and there was none of that, you know, back in Michigan at that time it was all in a formalized religion and it just seemed to be stuck dry have anything of any value, so yeah II didn't find it, but then of course going to California. As you know, the Jesus movement was really starting their so I just happened to land on. Maybe the end of the first wave of the Jesus movement said this was 76 so and it was just such fresh life you know God was doing something new and different and that was also what was endearing about the Calvary movement as you'd come in and there were barefooted hippies sitting on the front row and it was so different than these formalized Baptist with their slicked back hair and no Pat Boone patent leather white shoes or whatever and I got invited to a potluck and I got saved and my dad was a one out you saved, you have to make it Christian I was like I have never met a Christian, I would want to marry me. To me they were all really not appealing and so I said well be a Christian. Mom never marry a Christian I'm not sure he really liked that.

But then when you come to Calvary Costa Mesa and you see people that you relate to your life. All okay. Maybe this is something different than what I had expected and my dad and my grandpa had set me up unto blind dates that were absolute disasters. The first one. The guy was a very large guy like Chris Farley and he came in and a Pohlad suit and all was bad.

He had a T top Camaro and he took the top down, and that song Brandy terrifying girl but a good life came on and the dude start singing it to me and I'm like oh my gosh, please let me get out of the stop foods for Saturday Night Live skit and I'm stuck in it so that didn't go well. So then they set me up on this next one and it was a friend of the family and he was a pilot and they said he was a Christian so I'm still dying to meet a Christian unit.

Ask a million questions to so this guy. I keep saying so lovable blog, this question can Christians listen to rock 'n' roll music or whatever. And the guy dodged him and I went Christians don't talk about being Christian and I went to family wedding with this guy and his sister was there and she was born again and went to Costa Mesa so I'm telling her my story and she goes up, why are you dating my brother and I go will my my family said he's a Christian she's like now he is a girl in every port aboard a board so she invited me to a potluck at her house and in walked Skip. I think that's the Christian I was running I know you were and so yeah you and Skip are good friends way back in South Calvary South Bay and go back a long way yeah so Skip walked in.

You know tall blonde beautiful surfer and he just looked like.

Thank goodness someone I can relate to and so I did. I got to ask them the questions I was really grappling with. Can a Christian listen to rock 'n' roll music and so he he took me to his car and played Randy Stone Hill and Larry Norman as I call you know okay this is great and then I said, you know, I just think it's really hokey when Christians say price alone. Her yeah and again I had all the stereotypes and he said yeah me too, but I ride a motorcycle in one day I decided was riding my motorcycle I practice and side go on the motorcycle anointed here you are. Praise the Lord and then you know you kinda develop the sincerity of it you not just the awkwardness of it and so they're just a million questions like that that I was asking Skip and I was there with the girl that I had dated her brother and he was there because he had dated. The roommate and I was spending the night that night and after everybody left the girl that had dated Skip said.

Gosh I really feel sorry for Skip I went down think anyone should feel sorry for us to fight for. I got the dudes, you know, brilliant. He's got a good you know like he loves the Lord and he's handsome. You know I don't have to worry about him, which seemed either kinda condescending, but so anyway I went back home.

I staying with my dad in in the region and about a week later, Skip called.

He was out surfing and he just thought of me and put 1/4 in a phone box on Huntington Beach somewhere near the pier and asked his ex-girlfriend for my phone number and so he called and our first date was going to Randy Stone Hill concert so yeah let's move about 02 car you live 40 more Scripture patio ministry career building in Southern California easily. We we both know that we were there, but he elected to come to Albuquerque. It's interesting that God did such a parallel in our hearts.

Even though we were not together after this. Where I met Skip I went to use of the mission in Hawaii and then Skip stayed in California and while I was in use at the mission.

I recognize that my call was very unique. I was in a mission organization and never going on a mission was invited to go to Thailand praying God said no but Indonesia know the mission director brought me in and said so you know you're in a mission organization. He eventually up to say yes I said you know I think that's calling me to be a pastor's wife.

I think my gifts and callings are more discipleship than evangelism and inevitably if I was out street witnessing. I find a backslidden Christian and talk to them so my gifting isn't strong evangelism parallel to that skips in California and his heart is to take the gospel as we know it, the Calvary, the liberated Jesus freak nondenominational expression somewhere that didn't have it and us so he would going to check Smith's office and read letters from people in different regions. Can you start a Calvary here. Please send pastor there and he was praying where that would be and so you guys have mutual friend Kent bags are whom we love and I can't was being on a trip to come to Albuquerque to take over radio station here and he goes hey Skip why don't you come to Albuquerque with me and I'll do radio you can do a church and will see if God's. And so while I was in Hawaii. Skip and I started writing letters back and forth each other and he said hey I'm praying about Albuquerque. Now let's see… So I was praying for him. But there was no I love you baby. Let's get married. There was no understanding at all of that just you know praying for one another and that he came with Kent and he had a fleece before the Lord, where he said if I can get a job doing x-ray tech CAT scans, then I'll move and he got three offers so I mean that's history.

So in the meantime Skip had been riding me and he said yeah I think it's time for you to come home and see if God has anything in this relationship that you know kind of you to see what the Lord's doing, so I came home just before he was going to come to Albuquerque for the first time at our the second time and so he picks me up at the airport with a rose and everything's amazing and he comes back out with Kent to do this thing and look for an apartment and Kent says to so we knew that Col. would you bring all the way home from Hawaii just dumper.

There's plenty of fish in the sea. You know you're leaving just leave that all behind and he said no.

I think I'm in a merrier. I think having to marry her and move to New Mexico so he came home from that trip and within a couple days asked me to marry him.

And as you know we got that blue Datsun pickup truck with give Jesus a chance on the back of it packed everything up the Beverly hillbillies in reverse and the yes may get married two months later we were married, and then our honeymoon was driving to New Mexico for my look at the history of Calvary Chapel Moco, Richard Jarrell, the group know well that was smooth as blue up.

You were before Northfield or your legs although your composing people. It wasn't quite good wasn't no we were the lakes apartment which was fabulous. It was incredible to meet people who are longing for the experience that was happening. The Jesus movement in California, so that was neat to see that the spirit was moving other places and people were hungering for that also. We met a lot of older people who had been praying for that were going to other churches and just asking God you know to have that in their community.

So it was beautiful to see that God precedes you nuts like the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night that he's ahead of you, and he's leading you and so just finding other like-minded people. But Skip was working doing CAT scans. I had a job at the KK.

I am working for Kent at the radio station and so both of us are working you know to make this happen. Honestly Skip and I never thought we don't home. I mean, it was just this is our mission call and then at Bible study just kept growing until there were so many people in it that we said we go to the lakes apartment and not the lakes. The theater the partner theater and the far north theater. It was almost full. The first time and then it's like, oh where we can put kids in. You know that kind of expression. By the time we moved up on you bank it was just growing so fast that I was overwhelmed and I honestly prayed and said God make it stop like it's too much. I can't do it.

This is overwhelming and the largest reminded me you're not doing anything, you know, why are you struggling with this is kind of just like lay back and float just float on this.

What if, and it's going to be fine.

But of course there were seasons we had a friend come out that we thought we do worship and they just couldn't handle Albuquerque and the disappointment you thought you had another person who is going to be alongside of you on that journey so but in some ways it was hard in some ways it was like a fairytale you know you landed into a fairytale and you just said yes to God and God already had an amazing plan and I think I've learned more and more my job in life is to say yes to God and as long as I say yes he keeps doing things that are exceedingly abundantly above all I could ask her Hope and and I think that that's part of it, just say yes you know we were willing to if you will recklessly abandon family lifestyle jobs etc. and we just kept saying yes to the next thing you should learn the lows of being a pastor's wife. I know we have women lose been right now were involved in ministry at many different levels would you say a word of encouragement to Bill about the discouragement that can come yeah I think first of all, you should know the Lord for sure and then know your gifts and callings and have confidence and rest in those things because whom God anoints you points right if you have his anointing and he's called you to become a pastor's wife to start a mission to do whatever it is. Trust that you know. Don't let anybody else be a God pleaser.

Not a man pleaser and is a pastor's wife. So many people want to pick you out or tell you what you should be doing. You should be a soprano with the bouffant playing in Oregon or whatever it is, but God has a unique calling for you and we are not carbon copies were not cutter cookie-cutter. You know what I do is not what Katie did is not what Kathy Lori does is not what you know other people do it.

We each have our unique calling and expression and also know your husband that you are coming alongside of him to fulfill that. And so the complement that you are to that made mean Jenny and Levi have a beautiful relationship and the way they complement each other is just not the way someone else's because they have these different personalities so just rest and knowing some of those things and I think mostly please God don't please men know when you're in those critical situations. If you come back to knowing God and knowing what he's called you to rest and that sort through stage of life we we both have children involved in ministry up and I never push my kids with one inch towards would be adopted the idea.

You know, I was glad that I should. I know some of the pain and vigor going to face the inevitability about how if you tried to prepare your son for that.

I think it's I've heard actors say this, that they never tried to make the kids become actors because they know what the business is like. I would say it's the same for ministry.

I will never try and talk someone in the ministry. If God hasn't called you, you will not survive. Really it don't want to say it's bloodsport but it's not easy and you need the calling and and that that's super important and so as I was watching a finger up. Of course every son idolizes their dad right whether he's an attorney are a car salesman.

Whatever it is you think I'm to be like dad. You know it will be Lesko and sons, and that kind of thing. And Nathan I member around mid high road a report and when he grew up he was in a be a surf and he was in a play guitar and have a motorcycle and be a pastor like okay he wants to be his dad, which is a good thing but the important thing is the calling. And so a couple of really amazing things happen in our lives. One of them is Levi Lesko.

Levi was Nate's youth pastor and under Levi's ministry.

Nathan became real and honest about his relationship with Jesus and is a pastor's pastor's wife. You're afraid your kids, not the real thing. You know I mean I think every pastor's wife is is my God has no grandchildren right to test children and you cannot enforce that. So I saw Jesus moving and so I knew he was legit with the Lord much more to say in this conversation, including to help trips to the front lines of missions to Iraq Jordan qualities we have posted his phone conversation with 1 inch connect with script.com regular supporters to this program want to thank you for your support in the past few years. This teaching ministry is continued its growth trend want to do more and more, in which more people with those Bible verse, Bible teaching you help us do better during vision week. Please consider one time growth gift right now. It is easy to do you call 1-800-922-1888 or go online to connect with script.com and when you're doing good this week. We have a special resource package for you. The details were signed copy of scripts would support the biography of God will also receive a hardcover copy of Joel Rosenberg's excellent new book to be so script was reporting the story of seismic changes in the readily your coffee up" with your gift of $50 or more script to support the growth of these Bible teachers by scriptural messages your vote for growth or call 1-800-922-1888 was God call. I hope you will make a tax-deductible gift now can assure you will make a difference to call one 800 922 online.com join us next series so script connection, ever-changing time