AUTHENTIC CHRISTIANITY
By Jerry Hale
Labor Day for my friends and me growing up in Michigan was significant, because it was always the last day of summer vacation. I particularly remember Labor Day prior to starting 8th grade. A number of us aspiring football players went down to the high school field to watch the high school team practice. We relaxed among the blocking and tackling dummies while the high school guys ran and sweated in the heat and humidity of late summer. For the next several years through high school and college I would be one of those guys running and sweating on Labor Day.
After college, I had more on my mind than playing football. I began a career in the Coast Guard, got married and my wife and I started a family soon after. I had become a follower of Jesus just prior to college and sought to become a “good Christian,” but I was absolutely clueless about how to integrate my faith into daily living. I prayed, read the Bible, went to church and tried to be a good husband. but life seemed to be a struggle. After 18 months, the Coast Guard sent me to the Aleutian Islands without my family to take command of LORAN Station Cape Sarichef on Unimak Island. I thought this would be the worst year of my life, but it turned out to be one of the best. It was one of my best, because I was in charge of everything that happened with the station including the lives of the 30 sailors who were there with me. I learned valuable lessons of civil engineering, logistics, accounting, and leadership and had the thrill of participating in a major Coast Guard search and rescue operation during a storm in the Bering Sea on Labor Day 1971 (we handled the radio communications for the units actually on scene assisting several fishing vessels in distress). I also reaffirmed that my faith was weak and I could not carry on a meaningful conversation with anyone about faith in Jesus.
Very frustrated by that realization, I asked God to show me how to really follow him. A very direct answer to that prayer came on Labor Day 1972. By then I had completed my year in Alaska and was assigned as the Assistant Director of Admissions at the Coast Guard Academy. I had a staff of 5 and worked for a Captain who left every day at 3:00 PM. The fact that I was personally responsible for recruiting the future leadership of the Coast Guard was not lost on me. That summer I worked continuously and didn’t get much sleep. My wife and I and our 2-year old daughter had signed up to accompany a group of 30 Coast Guard cadets to join 100 or so West Point cadets and staff for a Labor Day Retreat sponsored by the Officers Christian Fellowship at the Word of Life Camp at Schroon Lake, New York. I was so looking forward to a relaxing weekend and catching up on sleep.
Instead, I was energized and riveted by the teaching of Dr. Ray Stedman, pastor of Peninsula Bible Church of Palo Alto, CA. The theme for the weekend was Authentic Christianity. Over the course of the weekend, Dr. Stedman clearly laid out the tenets of the Christian life and answered the questions that had been plaguing me for many years. The Bible passage that got my attention was II Corinthians 3:4-6. “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The gist of this message is that we cannot live the Christian life in our own strength.
Essentially, nothing coming from us; everything coming from God! That simple message resonated with me in such a way that it seemed like scales fell from my eyes and I saw everything in a new light. It was no longer Jerry Hale trying to run the Admissions Office at CGA, it was God working through me. The Bible started to come alive for me and I read it voraciously, expecting to see things that applied to my life that very day. I started to pray expectantly and began to see specific answers to prayer as I began to commit my many daily issues to God. Rather than starting the day asking God to bless my efforts, I began asking God what he wanted me to do that day.
Looking back on that weekend now 48 years ago, it is easy to see patterns of success or disappointment over the years directly related to how closely I trusted God’s direction or took the reins myself. Now, today, I’m hopeful of trusting God in all things and following Jesus for the duration. Perhaps some of you were like me on that island in the Aleutians and could benefit by asking God to show you the way, as well.
(BTW Dr. Stedman later published his talks that weekend in a book aptly named Authentic Christianity – the book is still available on Amazon.)