The Radio, the Static, and the Spark That Changed Everything
It was another unsettling day, which in my household was perfectly normal. Uncertainty ruled everything, even the small things. Would leaving the door open win the day, or closing it? Nobody knew. We were all just guessing, just surviving. And so I lay on my bed, restless, staring up at the ceiling, until my eyes settled on my radio.
On my bedroom dresser sat a little grey radio. It was how we knew the news of the day, how the world came to us when we couldn’t get out to meet it. But one afternoon, something unexpected broke through the static. It was something altogether different. Something I had no language for yet. A man’s voice broke through the static, calm and steady, speaking on creation. Creation always peaked my interest and I wanted to know more.
I didn’t know much about the Bible. But I knew Genesis. And something about it, that ancient beginning, arrested me. I tuned in. I leaned in. I listened keenly. And as the broadcast drew to a close, the man invited his listeners to pray what he called the most important prayer. I didn’t understand why a prayer could be the most important thing in a person’s life, but I prayed along anyway.
Nothing visibly changed. But I felt a weight lift off of me. As I looked past the little sliver of light coming through my curtain window, it felt like a new day. Something on the inside I could not explain, and have never stopped being grateful for. A joy unexplainable. I knew something had changed, though I couldn’t fully comprehend it.
My inquisitive mind, the same one that would later lead me to specialize in microbiology, left me with so many questions. Not the kind people talk about easily in church. Private questions. Quiet ones. What really happened when I got saved? Why did I not look different on the outside? I kept saying that salvation prayer for over two more years, not out of doubt exactly, but out of hunger. I wanted to understand what God had done in me.
I wish someone had handed me a book in those early days. A plain, honest, Scripture-filled book that simply said: here is what happened, here is who you are now, here is what comes next. Because I was a new creature and I had no idea. Those years of searching and studying eventually became the foundation for Biblical Answers and Guidance for New Christians, a book born directly out of the questions I was too self-conscious to ask anyone else.
That is how the salvation message found me. Not in a great cathedral. Not at a crusade. Through a little radio broadcast, a single spark that quietly changed everything.
I stepped out in faith before I fully understood what faith meant. The steps were feeble. The skies were cloudy. But those small, trembling steps shifted the entire trajectory of my life.
In those early years, the evenings could be long and heavy. But tucked inside the quiet was that same radio dial. On it, I discovered a program called Focus on the Family. The signal was not always clear. I had to keep reaching for it through the static. But what came through was the only warmth in the room. It became my oasis. A voice that told me a different kind of life was possible, long before I fully understood what I was searching for.
One of my favorite things to say is simply: “It is well.” The words of the Shunammite woman in 2 Kings 4:26, spoken not after the storm had passed, but right in the middle of it.
Life handed me more than a few sour grapes. And what I discovered is that with God, you can make the most extraordinary jelly.
It’s never about what’s placed in your hands. It’s about the God who stands with you right in the middle of it. Your mess is never the final word. Placed in His hands, it becomes the very tool that equips you to lift others, because you’ve been there, and you know the way through.
Everything I pour into my messages and books is rooted in the living Word, the very Word that, as Acts 20:32 declares, gives us an inheritance among the sanctified. Each teaching is grounded in Scripture and accompanied by real testimony, drawn from a life genuinely lived in God’s faithfulness, whether in how God guides, generational blessing, the sufficiency of Scripture itself, and so much more.
I shine the light on Jesus, my Lord and Savior, that we may draw closer to the One who gave it all for us.
That restless teen lying on a bed in a troubled house, staring at a radio, had no idea what God was doing. But He knew. He always knew. And if He could reach her through a crackling broadcast on an ordinary evening, He can reach anyone.