Whenever someone feels passionately about something, if you dig long and deep enough and if that someone can be honest with themselves, you’ll uncover a very personal reason behind their passion. I am passionate about spreading the whole counsel of God and I am ashamed at how miserably I have failed to do so. The main reason for my passion is the fact that I am utterly in love with Jesus and more and more the only things that matter to me are the things that matter to Him. And nothing matters more to Him than saving souls. But I have another reason that drives me as well…his name is Randy Gardner.

Randy and I met in seventh grade and soon became the best of friends. We were classmates as well as neighbors. I was new to the neighborhood and we wound up spending most of our free time together. I invited him to go with us to our new church (Rehoboth Baptist Church) where they actually played rock and roll Christian music (something very new for the Baptist church in 1972)!

It was at that church during a Freddie Gage crusade that both he and I gave our lives to Christ. We “walked the aisle” during the invitation and were baptized there shortly thereafter. We were new Christians and CCM (way before the phrase was ever coined) was new and the youth program was exploding and everything was so exciting! It’s a time that I’ll always cherish.

As I said, Randy and I spent most of our free time together and that usually involved spending the night at each others house during the weekend. One morning after Randy had spent the night at our house, we were having breakfast when the phone rang. I answered it and it was Randy’s Mom and she was crying incoherently, I couldn’t figure out what she was saying so I gave the phone to my mother. She couldn’t figure out what she was saying either so she told her that we’d be right over.

We rushed over and Randy’s Mom told her to come in the bedroom. My mother told us to stay where we were. When she came out she told us that Randy’s father had suffered a heart attack and that an ambulance was on the way. She told us to go up to the street and show the ambulance which house. As we went out she whispered to me that she thought he was dead. I remember waiting with Randy in silence at the top of their driveway and how the gentle wind that was blowing seemed laden with sadness.

The funeral was held in Woodbine, Georgia where he was to be buried and I was unable to attend. Randy took his father’s death very hard. He had only been 40 years old and had no major health problems. This massive coronary was right out of the blue. Randy was very depressed. We would spend hours together in his basement just sitting in the dark listening to sad music. Around this time Randy started experimenting with illegal drugs. One afternoon we went for a walk over at Fitzgerald Field and Randy told me that he was thinking about killing himself. We talked for a longtime and I don’t remember what was said. But I do remember that at the end of our conversation he took out and threw away the capsules filled with rat poison which he had intended to take.

In a matter of months after the death of Randy’s father, his mother married the only man that Randy’s father had ever told him he hated. They then moved to Woodbine. Randy and I were both devastated by this turn of events. But we tried to see each other when we could. The next summer I went down to visit him for a week. I was very involved with Campus Crusade for Christ (CCFC) at the time and I was always leaving tracks whenever I went somewhere. I had a gym bag I carried with me everywhere that contained my tracts, my Bible, a notebook with the lyrics from my favorite Christian songs, my Nave’s topical Bible, and a bright green and red book (whose title escapes me) put out by CCFC with a series of basic doctrinal teachings in it.

Randy was still dabbling with drugs but he was struggling to keep his faith as well. He was a member of a small local church and the Pastor came by every Sunday and picked him up for the morning service. That Sunday I went with them and like most Pastors I’ve known, he drove like the Devil himself was after him. Randy had told him about me so the Pastor asked (in what I know now was probably a joking way) if I’d like to preach that morning. I hesitated for a moment and then thought to myself “never pass up an opportunity to tell about Jesus” so I said “Sure!” I bet he never asked another 13 year-old “Jesus Freak” if he wanted to preach again! I don’t remember what I said that morning but I remember using one of the lessons from that bright green and red CCFC book!

Randy was spending most of his time away from home in a trailer that his family had down on the St. Mary’s River. I remember spending the rest of that week tubing down that lazy river and listening to my new Jesus music albums on his old record player.

The next time I saw Randy was at his mother’s funeral. Just a little over a year after his father’s death, his mother developed lung cancer and slowly died while Randy did what he could to care for her. I remember not knowing what to say to him. We rode in the back of the car after the service to the cemetery in silence. Wanting to make him feel better, I said “maybe it’ll just be for a little while…maybe the rapture will happen today.” It was a well-intended if ill-advised attempt to relieve my brother’s suffering.

Years went by after that with little contact between Randy and myself. I remember hearing about him overdosing on speed in the school bathroom trying to avoid getting busted and about him dealing drugs. But I was too involved with my own problems. I had a crisis of faith of my own during my junior and senior years in high school and I began to drift away from God.

One morning, I awoke in the basement of my parent’s home to a knocking on the back door. It was about 7:00 a.m. and I looked up out of bed to see some guy with really long hair peering in my window. Nervously, I went to see who it was. I opened the door…”Randy? Is it you?” I barely recognized the tall thin long-haired guy with sunglasses but we were soon hugging each other. I invited him in and he said he couldn’t stay long that he was just passing through. He quickly got to the point. He said, “Jim, I really don’t know if God exists anymore.” I felt really terrible and unprepared to respond to such a question because I had started to fall away from God myself. I told him as much but I did what I could. I told him that the best argument I had found that used simple facts to prove that God was real was a two book set called “Evidence That Demands A Verdict” by Josh McDowell. I gave him the two books and asked him to read them for me. He said that he would.

He said that he really needed to go because he had a friend out in the car. I went out with him and found an old convertible with the top down, a mostly empty bottle of tequila in the back, and another long-haired guy with sunglasses passed out in the passenger seat. We hugged and I watched as he pulled away. We exchanged a couple of letters after that but he said that the books hadn’t really helped him. I didn’t know what to say to him. But that was the last time I would ever see him.

A few months later I was waiting for my mother to pick me up from school. I was 18 but I wasn’t driving to school yet. When she drove up I noticed that she was crying. I got in the car and asked her what was wrong. She was having trouble telling me so I asked if she wanted me to drive. She declined and tried to pull herself together. I listened as she told me that Randy was dead. He had died of an apparent heart attack. Dead at 18. A sadness and a sense of inevitability sank into me and I said “I’ve been expecting this.” I shed no tears as we drove the rest of the way home in silence.

I was depressed but not surprised by what had happened. For some reason, no one thought to contact me concerning the funeral until the day it occurred. It was somewhere in North Georgia but I missed it. To this day, I have no idea where he is buried. One of the songs we would listen to in the dark was “Desperado” by The Eagles and I still think of him whenever I hear it. Just before he moved away, he wrote a lengthy entry in my high school annual (left). I hope that you’ll click on it and take heed to what it says.

The guilt and shame and irrevocable nature of Randy’s death poisoned my soul for many years. I wandered away from God and spent over two decades as an agnostic. Randy’s death wasn’t the only reason for that but it was a contributing factor. But God, once he got my attention once again by hitting me upside the head with a 2 x 4 (which I will be forever grateful for), has taken that wound and turned it into something for His kingdom. Metal that is heated and stressed can either break or become stronger depending on the skill of the Blacksmith. What was eating me up inside God has tempered into a tool for His Purpose.

2 Corinthians 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

Secondly, none of us have any hope of maintaining fellowship with God apart from His mercy and grace. When the inevitable trials of life come our way (John 16:33, 2 Tim. 3:12) we need to run TO God and not away from Him. The support of Christian brothers and sisters are a true balm in these times.

Thirdly, when we allow ourselves to drift away from God, we are not only hurting ourselves but those that God intended to help through us. When you do as I did and fail to trust God and let sin creep into your life, you are crippling your ability to respond when God sends someone into your life who needs your guidance. Those opportunities, once lost, can never be regained.

And finally, you never know when your last opportunity will be to share Jesus with someone you love. You wave goodbye just like you’ve done a thousand times before without knowing that you’ll never see their face again…just like I did with Randy. We sit back and comfort ourselves with the notion that we’re waiting for the right time or for the Spirit to lead us. We keep our mouths shut because we’re afraid of looking like a religious nut or of driving them away. So we “baby” our relationship with them because we lack the courage or conviction to put it at risk by showing them real love by sharing Jesus with them thinking that the “right” time will come somewhere down the road. But it never does and they die without Christ because we were afraid of risking our friendship. They spend eternity in Hell because we lacked the courage of our convictions.

I know this is a bitter pill but it is the truth! We are in a real war and the stakes and casualties are real. How many of us can rattle off the names of those who once walked with Christ but have now fallen by the wayside? How many friends and relatives do we know who have died and we have no idea if they had a relationship with Christ? I’m not trying to scare you…no, actually I AM trying to scare you! I’m trying to scare you into understanding the terrifying reality that we have loved ones who will spend eternity in Hell if we don’t share Jesus with them. Brothers and sisters, either Hell and Heaven are real or they aren’t. Either they are eternal or they don’t exist. Either we are Christ’s body in the world or we are not. What do you REALLY believe?

I don’t know if Randy is in Heaven or not. If those who say that you can lose your salvation are correct, then I guess Randy is in Hell. But I hope that as he said in my annual that he meets his father in heaven and that we will all meet again there someday. Only God knows for sure. But I beg you brethren, let’s keep the main thing the main thing and GO and tell others of Jesus! Don’t learn this lesson the hard way. God has given us a standing order to GO and tell others of Him (Matt. 28-19,20; Mark 16:15). Don’t wait for the “right moment” because it will never come! GO!