God Gives More Grace To The Simple (Part 3)
What happens when an inexperienced young sailor who fails to plan realizes that he has no idea how to get back to his base mostly because he doesn’t know where he is and how he got there? While, by God’s grace, I had found the Youth for Christ meeting for which I had been looking, I had no idea how to find a bus that would get me back to Pearl Harbor.
Obviously, I needed help. Looking toward the front of the hall, I saw several sailors. One of them I recognized from Youth for Christ in San Diego. I went up to him and asked if he knew the way back to base, and he did. Even better, he was talking to other young sailors and one of them had an old Studebaker. He offered to take a whole carload of us back to the base. God’s grace in my time of need again!
On the way back, the driver had a couple of questions for me. First, he wanted to know if I was a real believer. I quoted a verse or two on the assurance of salvation that the Navigators had encouraged me to memorize and that seemed to satisfy him. It didn’t take long to learn that several of these men had also had some training with the Navigators and were involved in memorizing Scripture, too.
Second, he wanted to know if I would like to go to a meeting with them the next morning (Sunday). The meeting, as he tried to explain it, had to do with the way they remembered the Lord (communion). The people in this fellowship seemed to believe the Lord’s Supper was a very special way to worship. Frankly, I wasn’t too sold on the idea, but to my mind, it was an opportunity to scout the area for a good church, so I agreed to go.
Here is a condensed version of what happened then and how God’s grace was multiplied to me – and is still being multiplied.
The next morning, we drove to the other side of the island where I met a missionary who not only encouraged sailors in the Navigators’ memory system but also used Emmaus Correspondence Courses in his ministry. It was not long before he had me studying them, which was a step in my attending Emmaus Bible School, where, by the grace of God, I met a pretty little girl from Georgia named Judith Shaw. In due time, and by God’s grace, she agreed to give up her happy single life and spend the rest of her life taking care of me and our boys. A woman who has put up with me for most of my life! That is a true gift of God’s grace!
– Lee Swift
