College Years

I concluded my senior year in high school spending a lot of time with friends Mac Cook and Earl Holmes. They were both Christians. Earl and I shared baseball as an interest, and Mac and I discussed going to college as roommates. We all three were into weightlifting together after school. In these friendships I now see God’s providence at work, for I had planned to go to UT Austin for college – so did Mac. Earl was a staunch Aggie fan and somehow he managed to persuade Mac to go to A&M instead of UT. Since I wanted to room with Mac and he with me, I had to decide if I would also switch. I had never paid much attention to A&M but knew it was a military school. I reluctantly switched to A&M also. I believe it was God’s providence at work for a couple of reasons: (1) the military part of it provided needed discipline and oversight the first time in my life when I was going to be away from home for extended periods, and (2) it was an all-male school then which greatly restricted the female contact and potential sexual temptation that so easily besets college students, and thus, my love interest and focus remained Radene, and we continued our courtship through a lot of letter writing and occasional visits either at A&M or Weatherford our freshman year and at A&M or Houston our sophomore and junior years.

My Life’s Journey of Faith-Part 3-College Life

Soon after I started at A&M some older students invited me to attend the evening vesper services at the Baptist Student Union, which was just off-campus. I remember one of the students getting with me and sharing the plan of salvation using the Roman Road and bridge illustration. I had never seen and understood the plan of salvation as clearly as that before. If I had heard it in Sunday School or sermons, it had never registered as clearly as it did that night. My understanding of what God and Jesus had done for me leaped. Had I been asleep or so self-centered or distracted that I missed that depth of meaning? I knew that I had believed in Jesus since a young boy trusting in Him for forgiveness and saving me from my sins. But with this new, deeper understanding of the big picture of God’s plan, I felt a great need to re-affirm my belief in God and Christ and so I did. I prayed the sinner’s prayer again to affirm my belief and commitment. For years I wondered if I needed to be baptized again. But I have come to realize that what happened is that my faith had to grow as my ability to understand and level of understanding grew. At eight I had the faith of an 8-year-old with an 8-year-old’s intellect and inexperience. As I matured physically and mentally and my world enlarged, I found that my faith also had to grow and needed to be re-affirmed as it did.

Life during college was dominated by three things: (1) my engineering course load which was so heavy I was barely able to keep up – even failing a course for the only time in my life, (2) the demands of the A&M Corps of Cadets – especially the freshman year; this included required attendance at football game march-in’s and corps trips to away games and also included military drill every Saturday morning we didn’t have a football game and (3) my courtship with Radene. With Radene is where I wanted to be, but she was in Weatherford my freshman year and in Houston the sophomore through senior years while I was stuck in College Station. I went to see her whenever I could, and she came to College Station several times. I didn’t have a car until my senior year, so I had to find or hitch a ride to go see her. With these things taking up my time my involvement in church and BSU was spotty. On most Sundays, I was either studying or traveling to see Radene. I did get active for a while in the BSU ministry to local small churches. Several of us would go to a church on a weekday evening and conduct a children’s Bible study. My role was only supportive, and I never actually led a study.

Due to attention to the three areas mentioned above, I did not grow very much spiritually in my college years. But some growth did occur – particularly one spring when I read through the entire book of Matthew and much of the New Testament for the first time. Until then I had read or heard only bits and pieces in sermons, Sunday school lessons, and devotionals. Sitting down and reading the whole story of Jesus made the truth of Christ’s claims so evident. Account after account after account from godly men relating the actions of Jesus that He could only do if He were empowered by God or God Himself come to earth. My faith was stronger now because of the testimony of reliable eyewitnesses to these events – the same kind of evidence we use today in a court of law to prove something. Late that semester I gave my first devotional – it was to the opening assembly for college Sunday School at First Baptist College Station.

Another thing happened while in college and continues today to cause my faith to grow – I became aware that many well-educated people were claiming there was no God, that evolution was the explanation for our existence obviating the need for God. Now, no one likes to be thought ignorant, and to some – very well educated – I was now being seen as ignorant and superstitious for my belief in God. Was I a fool or are they the fools? After all, the Bible says, “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’”. My faith remained, but I was now more aware of atheist and agnostic views. It left me with questions about how to respond to such views. The growth was in realizing that as we become more educated about the world we live in – the world God created – it will be incumbent upon us as Christians to defend our faith and reconcile our religious views and doctrines with the truths scientific discovery reveals. One author I read recently put it this way: God has two books – the Bible and creation/nature, and we need to inform the study of each with the other. I couldn’t have put it in these terms back then, but I realize the feeling I had then was that questions needed to be answered, and I didn’t have the answers. My life at that time was too bogged down with the things mentioned above to take such things on, but the thought of it had been sewn. For more information please follow How to Find Peace with God.

Up next is “Marriage and Early Adulthood”

Dennis Christian