I
grew up in a Christian home and saw my need for God's intervention in my life at an early age. However, I didn't really become convinced there was a difference in "mental assent" to God and "living out my faith" until I was in college. I went to church on Sundays and enjoyed what I learned, but I basically segmented my life into what happened on Sunday and what happened the rest of the week. When I began college I made a conscious decision. Either I need to live this out or leave it. Either God is who he says he is and deserves my worship or he isn't.

From there, and from the direction I received after attending Moody Bible Institute, I began to believe that God could use all of the experiences I've had to glorify himself. That's where I am right now.

Radio played a big part in my family's understanding of the gospel. We were going to a church (from when I was born until I was 8 or 9) that taught that you could never know if you were really a Christian. You had to be baptized in order to become a believer, but after that, you didn't know whether or not you were okay because your actions could separate you from God. Curse at a driver ahead of you and you had lost your salvation. That kind of thing. A friend of my mother, Mildred Blake, kept talking to her about what the Bible really taught. My mother would argue with her from Scripture, and she could do a pretty good job. But it was listening to Theodore Epp on Back to the Bible (at that time aired on WCHS out of Charleston, WV) that convinced her that God's love was given to us in Jesus Christ. He fully paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, dying in our place. So when we accept his forgiveness, God doesn't see me and all my sin, he sees the righteousness of Christ. I am totally "in Christ" as far as my standing with God.

That understanding changed things for her. It took me a while to discover what that meant for my life.

I met a lot of missionaries through my teenage and college years and figured this was the path God had for me. When Andrea and I moved to Chicago, it was not to do radio or anything else but study the Bible and become missionaries. We didn't know where we were supposed to go, just that God was calling us to do something other than radio/TV news. It surprised me when we felt no calling to Africa or Europe or even to seminary to be a pastor. I was flummoxed with God's plan at the end of that year, wondering why God hadn't made it clear that we should go to Africa like our friends, the Scharpings, or to Dallas Seminary like some other friends. Through a couple of kind professors who counseled me and knew I had a background in radio, they asked, "Why don't you think God could use this?" That set us on a path to investigate what God might have for us in Christian radio.