My Walk Twords Christ

by Newton Stucker Jr

I would like to tell you about how God has brought me to the place I am today. God has taught me so many things about Christianity, different demoninations and how they believe.

As a young boy I went to Camp Flamingo. This was a camp that parents paid to send their children for a couple of weeks of vacation in the summertime. My Father had major surgury and welfare sent my brother and myself to the camp for two weeks. There were mostly inter-city kids there and it was a great time for me! This camp opened up my eyes to see different religions and how they worship.

On Sunday we would have religious services. First they would have a Catholic service early in the morning and then we would have services for the Baptists a little bit later. I met some Catholic friends there and I enjoyed their company and they asked me to go to church with them on Sunday morning and I did. And then I went to church with my other friends that were Babtist. So I got a picture of how everything was going in both churches. I liked parts of them both. But I found that the Catholics seemed to be more holy (reverant) in the way that they served the Lord. Now where holiness got into my spirit I don't know, but I do know that I had been looking for that all of my life.

When I would go to the Catholic church, everyone kneeled, everyone did things as a unit. But when I went into the Babtist church, there were people talking in the background and it didn't seem as if anyone was paying attention to what the preacher was saying. And I thought that this was not holy or reverant. And I believe that this inspired me all of my life to seek after holiness.

After I got out of the Armed Services, I came to Saint Ann's Catholic Church and I started taking Catholism classes. I also was engaged to be married, my wife to be was a Baptist. Once I had completed my classes and was about to be babtized as a Catholic, the priest said he would not baptize me until after we were married. So after we were married, he babtized me on a Sunday morning. It was a long service, it wasn't like the baptism's seen in Babtist churches. I was sprinkeled and it was a long drawn out service and I took several oaths.

I would go to the Catholic church on Sunday morning and my wife would go to the Baptist church and after a while I started to go with my wife to the Baptist church and the Catholic church every Sunday morning.

I remember my first confession, now that was exciting! I went in to the priest for the first confession and he asked me when was the last time that I had confessed and I said that I never had. He said, well you go back out and sit in the pew and when you have thought of something that you have done wrong, you ask God to forgive you and I did.

Everytime I asked God to forgive me a cold chill would come over my whole body. I began to hesitate before I asked forgiveness for something else. When I had the courage to ask again it happened again. After about three or four times, I just got up and left. I didn't go back in to see the priest.

My wife and I were renting an upstairs apartment. Our landlord lived in the apartment downstairs. This is where we spent our honeymoon. I rented this before we were married and we were ready to move our furniture and everything in at one time. The man and I would go to church on Sunday morning and even in the middle of the priest's messages I would again have cold chills come over me, I thought something is wrong here so I quit going to Catholic church and started going to the Baptist church with my wife.

We bought a house out of town. Our next door neighbor was a Catholic. Occassionly, I would go to Catholic Mass with him and then go to the Babtist church service with my wife. By this time we had a couple of children and I could see that this was beginning to be an influence on our children and I didn't want that. I wanted our family to be united as one in our religion.

So I decided that I would go to the Babtist church only. THen one Sunday morning, for one reason or the other I went down front and asked to be baptized. The Pastor said that was fine and they arranged a time for me to be baptized. The Pastor weighed about 150 pounds, and I weighed 265 pounds, alot larger than him. So when they got ready to take me down into the Baptism pool, they asked for one of the deacons who was about my size to come down and help. Also I have a stiff leg and there was no leverage for me. And as he started to baptize me and lower me beneath the water, my stiff leg went all the way up in the air and my head went all the way down to the bottom. And my wife said, "Oh my God they are drowning him!". Well I came up and I didnt drown, but I did believe!

FROM BAPTIST TO ASSEMBLIES OF GOD

God had taught me alot in the Babtist church. One Thanksgiving my sister asked me to come with her to an Assemblies of God church. Really at that time I didnt know there was any difference between protestant churches. I thought they were either Catholic or Protestant churches. So I went with my sister to this church and we sat and we sat and we sat. It was the longest service that I had ever been in. It was four hours and one half long!

We I got home, I told my wife tha I don't want to go to those services anymore. I told her I sat there until I had gotten numb from head to foot. We talked about it a while. A few weeks later, my wife said lets go out to that church you went to. I said ok, I guess by that time I had forgotten how long those services where. So we went.

In the middle of the service they were praising the Lord and everyone began to raise their hands towards heaven in their praise. Well if you are a Baptist, this seemed very unusual. We looked like sore thumbs sticking out being that we were the only ones not raising our hands. So I raised my hands up about shoulder high, of course the others had their hands as high as they could reach. I thought if I didn't raise them all the way up that everyone would know that I was a Baptist and that I was in the wrong place so I raised my hands all the way up too. They were all thanking God for everything and I was too. It was very unusual at the least.

I joined that Assemblies of God church, Evangel Tabernacle. We went there for several years. My daughter was the first homecoming queen at their school. There were some very exciting things that happened at this church.

I remember going to an all night prayer service one time. There was a man speaking and he was dogmatic about his belief. He was almost commanding everyone to come up and for him to lay hands on them that they would be slain in the spirit. Well I didn't know how to take that. I thought maybe they were somewhat hysterical or it was just some showbiz. But I had been working that night and I came right to the service. I had on a little snap jacket, I walked up to him after alot of encouragement. I went up there saying to myself If this was all hysterics or showbiz, they weren't going to make a fool out of me. I was just going to stand there, if God knocked me down well fine, but I wasn't going to play any games. After I got there, he reached up to touch me and before he could touch me, I was gone. There was a little Jewish woman behind me trying to hold me. She weighed probably 110 pounds and two other fellows helped her and they eased me down to the floor. When they did, my jacket slid up over my hairy belly and my arms were all stretched out over my head, there I laid. I wanted to reach down a pull my shirt and jacket down but I couldn't move. I just laid there. This was an experience I had never heard about or seen till that night. I thought that was the wildest thing I had ever seen!

Other experiences came later on, one time I went to a school that Evangel had. It was in an old shopping center. During the day they had school in there but on this particular weekend they cleaned out all of the benches and chairs and set it up for a service by the "Happy Hunters". This was a show by itself. Here was a little fellow, bald headed and a great big woman that did all of the talking. Now I was a little bit prejudice in that area, I thought that only men should preach. But this woman did all of the preaching in this particular service. They went through alot of crazy things, I thought at the time.

If you wanted to quit smoking, they had you throw all of your cigerettes up on the stage. People were throwing there cigerette packs on the stage. And they would say now you will be free of smoking and you will never smoke again. Finally it was the end of the service and they asked everyone to raise their hands and praise the Lord. By this time I was into that raising your hands and praising the Lord. I raised my hands and was praising the Lord, It was like I was seeing a vision, a whole balcony of angels clapping there hands and rejoiceing. Almost like you would see at a football game when somebody scored a touchdown. It was really exciting! I was looking at that in my mind's eye and at the same time I was thanking God for everything. Then I happened to look down and my wife was looking me right dead in the face. I was speaking in a foreign language! I was saying it in english but it was coming out in this foreign language. That was my experience with the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.

FROM THE ASSEMBLIES OF GOD CHURCH TO THE RADIO PROGRAM

I wanted to tell everyone that I could run into or see how God has done such a miracle for me in that freezer. How he made stainless steel bolts heads pop off and how a yale lock just snapped in two like it had been laser cut. It was just unbelievable and I wanted to tell everybody so while I was talking to a man in a new place of work and he said well, why don't you get on the radio and tell everybody.

I thought about it for a little while and inquired about how much it would cost and at this time I was making about $3.50 an hour doing basic labor work. I thought I could manage the cost. So I went up to the radio station and I asked to buy time and they said no problem. They asked what my format would be and I told him it would be about testimonies. That would be fine but I had to buy 3 weeks in advance for my time on the radio. That left me with just a little bit of a problem because all of mine (testimony) would have been done in one program.

One of fellows I was working with was going to the Babtist Seminary and I convinced him to come on and be my first guest on the radio. He did a good job and everything went well. This was a fifteen minute program on Saturdays. Then it was time for the next progam and the evening before I had went to an all nite prayer meeting at Evangel. I seen this little Jewish girl was there and I asked her if she would come on my program and share her testimony. She said "oh yes". She also did a good progam . Then the next week was supposed to me mine. Between the two weekends I found someone else and it when on like this for a long period of time.

Then finally I got caught, I had to knuckle down and go in and do it myself. Well being very shy at that time, I had a hard time doing it. I finally made the program up at home and I got it on the air. I felt very relieved. All the time I was supporting this radio program my salary was going up. I kept bringing on other people with their testimonies. Finally it hit me, what I really wanted to do. I wanted to show what true christian love was. But fifteen minutes wasn't quite enough. So I asked to enlarge my program to one half hour and I got it! The expense went up too. At the same time, my salary was going up as well. It was just unbelievable how it was working! So I went to different demoninations. I went to a Catholic retreat, Black Holiness church, Assemblies of God Church, Babtist Churches and just scattered it all around. Each one of those churches, had a particular part of the Bible that they emphasized. They seemed to leave out the rest of it. I wanted to have it all in this program.

I would go out into the crowd, and I would tell the Ministers whenever I would tape their programs that as long as they were lifting up Christ and not putting another Preacher or demonination down, I will play the whole tape. But if you put anyone down, I will bleep it out. Because I don't believe that is of God. I never did have to bleep anyone.

I did add some things that now I think was probably showbiz. I would always put a mic down by a woman with a baby so I could pick up the babys crying so it would seem more realistic. That was more of me and less of God. This programming went on for 6 months. I went from a fifteen minute program to two half an hour programs on two different radio stations. And then the big boom dropped! I got laid off from the job that I had. Not believing that God would have carried me through this problem, I got hostile about it and quit the program.

I found after a while I was a very miserable man and I was reading about David fasting for seven days for forgiveness for his adultress affair and begging God to let his son live. It dawned on me that I should fast for seven days and ask God to forgive me for not trusting him and giving up on him. I did that. It was a long time before anything happened, but there was some changes that happened. I got to do alot of things most people never get an opportunity to.

FROM THE RADIO PROGRAM TO A PRAYER MINISTRY

I have seen things most people never see. While I was praying for a woman, I saw the cancer inside of her. I saw it as its prongs were stretching out in all different directions. While praying for a man, I saw his heart. It appeared to be electrical shock waves bouncing off three quarters but not on the fourth quarter. Then after the prayer, I saw the fourth quarter of his heart begin to work. This woman that had the cancer in her body, she had asked me to pray that she would be able to go back to church every sunday. I prayed for her and God blessed her and she was able to get up and go back to church every Sunday and she lived for 2 more years before she finally went to be with Jesus. The cancer was all through her body. When she called me, and I didn't know this, she was in the hospital and they said that there was nothing they could do for her, but she got 2 good years. Because she asked for prayer and I honored her prayer request and prayed for her and God answered those prayers. That is is why I always say if someone asks you to pray for them, PRAY FOR THEM because the best thing could happen, they could be healed. You also recieve a blessing from that.

It is such a wonderful blessing to see someone to recieve a healing or answer to prayer of some sort. And to see them rejoicing and then watch them go out and tell others how great GOd is and what he did for them. It is amazing. It is like a ripple effect in the water. Drop a rock into the water, you see these little waves bounce further and further out. That is the way it goes when you start out just praying for one person, and watch the little ripple effect as it goes on down the line. People all over the lake will be blessed.

These things that I have seen are not isolated to just me, or something special that is given just to me. It is something that God uses. He can bestow any of the spiritual gifts on anyone of us as he sees fit. It all depends on what the situation is and how he thinks he can use you through it. You have to be obedient to what he tells you to do.

I know there was a time that I felt that if I prayed for someone and they didn't get healed, then I had failed. I was taking the credit for myself and I wasn't giving the credit to God. And I found out after awhile that no one I prayed for was healed because I was taking the credit. You must always remember that it is God who does the healing! You don't do anything. You are a piece of clay and God molds you to use you they way he wants you used. And when you obey him, you shine like bright silver, and when you disobey him you look like rusty steel. You have to make your choice in life and you have to remember that God is Holy. He has caravans standing before his throne speaking only HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. So if God loves this word Holy so much then we must worship him in that same manner. We have to be holy too.

And being holy is not just knowing all the bible verses or being able to quote the bible from Gensis to Revelations. Being Holy is Honoring God in all manner and in all ways. So I ask you know to let your spirit flow with God and not to oppose him. Give God all the credit and he will bless you even more!!!!!!!