Carol Hicks    

On one hot, June evening in 1957, in Biloxi, Ms., at the age of 11, I trusted Christ to forgive me of my sins and take me to Heaven someday.  This was the greatest day of my life!

My dad was stationed in Biloxi, at Kessler AFB at the time, and I attended school with two girls who were “saved” and attended a Southern Baptist church regularly.  They had asked me if I was “saved” and I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. My parents came from mixed denominations and neither denomination taught “salvation by grace.” There was no assurance taught in these denominations concerning whether there was a real Heaven or Hell. I had been taught that baptism and church membership were important but knew nothing about eternity.  It was a live this life as good as you could and maybe, just maybe, the Lord would take you to Heaven, if, in fact you met God’s standard; that there was a real Heaven, and a  literal Hell, based upon the Word of God, the Bible.

I attended the revival service that night, at the invitation of my friends, and heard about a very hot Hell, where I would spend eternity if I did not repent of my sins and trust Christ as my personal Savior.  I learned that Christ was not only a good person, but He was God, He was perfect and had come to earth to die for the sins of the world. His death was the perfect sacrifice required for the forgiveness of sin.  God’s standard for Heaven was that Christ’s blood was the sufficient sacrifice for my sin. I learned that God wanted a relationship with me; He wanted to come into my heart and take up residence.  Even if I was a sinner Christ would forgive me, but because God was holy, I had to ask Christ to forgive me of my sin of unbelief and then He would forgive my sin and would come in and dwell with me. I learned that according to the Bible, God’s Word, there was a literal  Heaven and Hell and that I could trust God’s Word to be true, as being a perfect God, He could not lie.

I went home that night “saved” and shared with my parents, around the dining room table, what God had done for me on Calvary and expressed my concern for their salvation. My dad was an alcoholic and mom, a very bitter person. Both expressed happiness for my decision and promised me they would think about what I had shared with them. My mom was saved in 1970; my dad was saved in 1971. We were  all baptized together the following year.

 A lot happened after our family left Biloxi and we moved to Germany, where God planted a Navigator Bible Study in our home for the teenagers in my neighborhood -through an outreach mission of a Servicemen’s Center.  Here my parents and I learned about the Bible and we memorized wonderful verses of scripture.  For my 16th birthday my dad gave me my first KJV hand pocket Bible. I must praise God for the ministry of Jan Janzen, a wonderful missionary of the Lord to our family. God is faithful.

I must share the praise of my husband’s salvation also, as he was not “saved” when we were married.

While my parents were not saved they had an appreciation for morality; and when I met my husband, Jim Hicks, a volunteer firefighter and emergency rescue person my parents had great respect for him.  They did not understand the principle of “being spiritually unequally yoked”. They gave their blessing to our union and we were married in 1964.

Jim and I discussed salvation prior to our marrying, and he assured me that he believed in God but didn’t choose to attend church regularly, because his job was so demanding. He was working several jobs at the time and I understood that many nights he was up most of the night and that on Sunday AM he needed to sleep. He had no problem however with me attending church and taking our children to church; that was until I began attending a fundamental Baptist church where salvation of the family was stressed.

He did promise me however that he would think about us attending church on a regular basis.  Because he was such a hard worker, I trusted that God would change his heart and that he would be saved. I claimed the Bible verse I Peter 3:1 that says, “Likewise, wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, that they also without the word be won, by the conversation of the wives while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear……” In the following years, I claimed that passage many times and I must say, I would never encourage another person to marry an unbeliever.  The struggle was lonely and I almost gave up many times, in those next 14 years.  But God’s Word remained my mainstay and the prayers of many of our friends, who knew Jim was not saved, and their prayers for us, I am convinced, made the difference. God is faithful. God is a loving God and does not want any to perish. I claimed that John 3:16 promise for my husband.

The second best day in my life occurred when Jim came to know Christ as his Personal Savior. From that point on, the struggle really began, because then, I had to trust him to make all decisions for our family. I had seen my mom be the leader in our family, in my father’s absence, and naturally carried my role with a husband so busy and working so hard to provide for his family. I had been the spiritual leader for so long and Satan really went to work on me.  I am so thankful that while I failed the Lord many times, He is faithful to forgive.  When I realized that God was holding Jim responsible, and not me, for our family and their salvation, I surrendered my strong will to the Lord and God has continued to lead us one step at a time, day by day to where we are today.  God continues to be faithful to us. The “icing on the cake”, so to speak, occurred as our children’s children have made decisions for Christ.  God is faithful, and His Word is the answer to all our life’s questions.