Pastor Rick's Testimony
From Casualty of War to Servant of God
I grew up in a small town in the northwest in a middle class "Christian" home, attending church on Sundays and living pretty much any way I wanted the rest of the week. God, in whom I believed, was distant, uninvolved, and unimportant in my life. I knew all of the religious rules, the" do's and don'ts", but had no relationship with God. Our church never encouraged us to read the Bible or to have a relationship with God or his son, Jesus. Reaching adulthood at age 18, I had religion (a form of self-righteousness) without holiness and had never even heard of being submitted to God or his will. All that changed on February 16th, 1970 when I landed in Vietnam the day before my 20th birthday.I spent the next 302 days in the bush as a hospital corpsman with a rifle squad of Marines and for the first time actually talked to God. I talked with him a lot during those months in the jungle, yet I still did not know him or his son. It was a one sided relationship where I expected him to listen to me, but never felt the need to listen to him, after all how could I listen to someone I didn't know? During the year that I spent in Vietnam, many of my buddies who were closer than my own family, were wounded horribly or died. I felt the weight of their lives on my shoulders since I was the only medical care available and each one that died added to the guilt and pain that I carried. If they died, it was my fault for not being able to save them, and so I began to carry this pain inside, adding to it with each passing day and week. Somehow (I later would see how God had shielded me) I survived and came home five days after my 21st birthday. The Navy pinned some medals to my uniform, told me what a great job I had done, and then sent me back out into civilian life where the ghosts, the guilt and the pain began to destroy me. I no longer talked to God, coming to the belief that no loving God would have allowed the things that had happened to me and my brothers in arms.
I turned to alcohol, but that didn't help. I crawled into a hole and tried to isolate myself from the rest of the world, but that didn't help either. After a little more than a year, I re-enlisted in the Navy and went back home. Things had changed and I found that my war experiences were then valued and other men wanted to learn from me. By all worldly measures, I became successful graduating from college, graduate school, becoming an officer and a trauma nurse. None of that changed me on the inside, where I was still filled with pain and was empty of any real emotion until things would periodically boil over and rage would take hold of me. Nightmares of the war plagued my sleep while guilt haunted my days and I thought that they would always be there as the price I had to pay for the things I had done and lived through. Driven by the need to never again let someone die because I was not prepared, I continually trained and devoted all energies to duty at the expense of my family. The next 14 years passed by in a blur as I experienced two failed marriages and raising my sons as a single parent, but duty still came first and God was nowhere to be found in my life. During these dark years I succumbed to the sins of the flesh in an attempt to feel something, anything, inside. Prescription drugs only blunted the edge of the pain and added to the guilt. Marital unfaithfulness added to the guilt and feelings of emptiness as well as the failed marriages. I became a hollow shell with a rotten core surrounded by polished veneer that tended to provide less and less coverage as time passed. The guilt increased as I failed as a husband, as a father, as a man, and in everything else except my work.
Married for the third time, my mother-in-law began to badger my wife and I about coming to church. I resisted at first, but she finally wore us down and we went to church. At this church, unlike the church I had grown up in, I heard the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time, preached clearly and powerfully. Still, stubborn I again resisted, but eventually went again and something began to work in me as I was more and more drawn to hear the preaching of the word of God. This preacher talked about a relationship with God and having Jesus Christ as my personal savior, not just a distant and uninvolved God off in heaven somewhere. He also preached about God's desire to heal us of the wounds inflicted by this world and Satan. Oh yes, I found out that Satan was real and not just a story made up to frighten children into being good at Sunday school. What really got to me was the story of the "Prodigal Son" where I saw myself as the son who had gone off to the far country and lost himself, losing his way and wallowing in sin and the muck of the world. I was mesmerized by the story, learning that when the son came to his senses and realized that he had sinned against God and men, he began to work his way back home. He thought that just being a slave on his father's farm would be better than the life he was living and was prepared to confess his sin and beg his father's forgiveness. The shocking point of the story was that the father had been watching for his son to return, having already made up his mind to forgive him. When he saw his son coming down the road, but still a long way off, the father ran to his son, wrapped his arms around him and welcomed him home. This, Jesus said, is a picture of our heavenly Father who longs for our return from the far country, having already made up his mind to forgive us and welcome us home. At the end of the message, with tears streaming down my face, I walked the aisle of the church to give my heart to Jesus, seek the Father's forgiveness and finally come home from the far country. As I prayed that day, I realized that Jesus Christ is my savior, that he wants to have a real relationship with me and that he died not only for the things that I have done but for the things that were done to me by others. From that day forward I was a changed man no longer needing the alcohol, medicines and sins of the flesh to make me feel alive. I was born again to new life in Jesus Christ.
At times, I felt as if God was calling me to do something more for him than attending church and studying. I began to feel pulled to the ministry, but resisted as I still had many things that I thought I had to finish before I could follow his leading. Pride was still an issue at times. Pride that no one could do my work as well as I could, pride that prevented me from truly being surrendered to his will. Predictably my third marriage also failed and I hit rock bottom as I examined myself and the many failures of my life.
Stripped of the last shred of pride, broken and hurting inside, I finally came to know what it meant to be surrendered to God. Coming before him at the foot of the cross, knowing and understanding my unworthiness in comparison to what he had done for me, I gave him my life and asked him to use me in any way that he wanted. He began by healing my broken heart, and showing me that pride had separated me from his best for me. He then brought my high school sweetheart back into my life and showed me how to lead her to him. During that time I experienced for the first time the power of the Holy Spirit as he worked through me to bring her to salvation in Jesus Christ. A year later, she was saved and we were married. For the first time in my life I have discovered the joy and peace of truly being one flesh with the woman I am married to, the love of my life. The trials of life and struggles continue but I know that I am never alone, never abandoned, never rejected because I have a loving Savior in Jesus Christ and a Father in heaven who is at his very nature love. The new life he has given me is a demonstration of the power of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ in my life or anyone’s life.
Over the next three years God trained me up and equipped me for his service. He has given me the privilege of being the shepherd for one of his flocks here at Calvary Chapel Moses Lake. He has changed my heart, and developed within me the thirst to know him even more clearly and closely as I walk with him. He is with me during the good times and the bad times. He walks with me and teaches me his ways. The Holy Spirit lives in me and empowers me to be the man God wants me to be. There is no other way that brings such contentment and peace inside because the once hollow center of my life has been filled by his love and by his Spirit.
If you feel that something is missing in your life, if you feel that there is an empty spot way down deep inside, then you are just like I used to be. I tried to fill that emptiness with alcohol, sex, power and pride. I was filled with rage and anger at the things I lived through and the pain I carried for seventeen years after the war. The only lasting way to fill the emptiness, to heal your broken heart and to find peace is through salvation in Jesus Christ who came to save us, restore us, and provide a way for us to have a relationship with our Father in heaven. The only thing standing between you and eternal life with Jesus Christ is pride. The only thing standing between you and a peace that passes all understanding is stubbornness and a belief that you don't deserve anything better than what you have now. God's grace, his unmerited favor and love, is given to us not because we deserve it but because he loves us. You can know his love, his peace and his plan for your life. All you have to do is ask him.
"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16)
Rick Doggett
Pastor - Calvary Chapel Moses Lake