Paul Washer's Story

My mother was converted when she was

about twelve years old

from a Croatian family.

Her parents had come through Ellis Island.

My grandmother on my mother's side

was oftentimes persecuted for her faith

because being Croatian and Catholic

were almost synonymous.

You're almost a traitor

if you leave Catholicism.

Plus, the only evangelical church

she could go to was Serbian,

and the Catholics and the Serbians

are constantly at war,

so for my grandmother to leave Catholicism

and then fellowship with Serbians

was oftentimes very looked down upon.

She suffered.

My mother was over
at her girlfriend's house

when she was twelve years old

and they happened to be Baptist.

And she was playing with dolls

up on the 2nd floor.

And the family was
gathered around the piano

and started singing hymns.

And my mother said she heard the hymns,

but all of a sudden, such a great remorse

and weeping of sin came over her

that she started weeping so hysterically

that they stopped playing piano.

They ran upstairs
thinking she was injured.

They shared the Gospel with her

with regard to her sin
and she was converted.

My mother eventually married my father.

Both his parents - my grandparents -

were some of the first
Baptist missionaries

to Brazil in Manaus back in, I think,

the '20's and '30's.

But my father was never converted

that I know of.

When I was 17,

we were out building a fence,

and he yelled and I grabbed him.

We fell to the ground and he was dead.

I had never known him
to profess faith in Christ.

At that point, basketball season
was beginning and such,

and I was one of the captains on the team.

I was president of the
Beta Club or Honor Society.

Within just a few months,

I digressed to finally getting
kicked off the team

and getting kicked out
of the honor society.

And I drank a lot.

People said that the trauma
of my father's death

lead to all that - in fact,
that's what I said.

When in fact, what I'd soon
come to understand,

after I was a Christian was
that my father's death

gave my flesh a wonderful opportunity

to do everything it had ever wanted to do.

It just manifested what I really was.

I was a liar - the best.

I don't know how to describe me

except look up "jerk" in the dictionary,

and it had my picture there.

Conceited, self-absorbed, jerk.

And I went to Murray State University

for a few years and then decided

that I wanted to be an oil and gas lawyer.

Wherever that idea popped
into my head I don't know.

Maybe it was because of the
program "Dallas" or something.

And the only place to do that

was either Oklahoma or Texas,

and I enrolled at the University of Texas.

While I was there, I thought to myself,

I can change my life

and not be such a jerk,

not be so self-absorbed,

not be such a liar.

And nothing changed.

Within a few months, I found myself

right back into the same
place I'd always been.

And I moved into a place called Plaza 25

there at the University of Texas,

and I noticed there was
a group of guys there

that just seemed different.

They just seemed very different.

After a while, I came to
understand they were Christians,

and they would have Bible
studies and things like that.

And I didn't pay much attention to them.

And then one night in February,

after I'd spent a semester there,

and just messed up my life altogether,

I was sitting on the edge of my bed.

It was like 1 in the morning.

And I was on steroids really heavy.

I lifted weights all the time.

I wasn't any good at it, but
I lifted weights all the time.

And I remember crying.

I hadn't cried, and I just
kept saying to myself,

I am so miserable.

I am so miserable.

And I looked down and I had some steroids

and I thought if only these
were some kind of pill

that I could just take and die.

But I knew enough from my mom -

I believe that there was something,

you know, you didn't do that.

And I just kept saying over and over,

I'm so miserable. I'm so miserable.

And it was like 1 or 1:30 in the morning

and someone knocked at my door.

And I thought, who's that?

So I opened the door

and here's this freshman.

His name was Mike Moore.

He was standing there -

not a very tall guy, maybe
5"8' or 5"9' or something.

He's standing there and
he was kind of scared.

I looked at him like... what?

And he said, "You're probably
going to beat me up."

I thought, "Yeah, you're probably right."

He said, "I've got to talk to you."

And although I knew him;
I knew he was a nice guy,

I didn't really know him.

I said, "Well, what do you
want to talk to me about?"

He said, "Look, God has been
dealing with me for two weeks

and I need to come over
here and talk to you.

I've been scared.
I can't take it any longer.

I've got to talk to you."

And I said, "Well, what?"

He goes, "I just feel like God
wants me to tell you something."

Now I'm thinking this is really strange.

This guy's coming over
with a word from God.

I said, "Okay, well, what?"

He goes, "You're just miserable

and you're going to keep being miserable

until you surrender
your life to Jesus Christ."

And we talked till like
4 or 5 in the morning.

And it really impacted me.

And then, I was reading -

my mom had given me a Bible

and I found it and I started reading it,

and I came to Psalm 103.

It says that man's days are like grass,

as the flower of the field,
so he flourishes;

when the wind passes over him,
he is no more

and the place acknowledges him no more.

And that made me angry because
that's exactly what I knew.

I remember going to my dad's funeral,

and he was a very brilliant man.

He was a powerful man in his own right.

Just many things about him,

but at his funeral, people were talking

about other things like the weather,

sports, what's going on in a company.

It was like this man just died.

Shouldn't everybody just
be quiet or something for awhile?

Shouldn't they think about him?

And that verse where it says the wind

passes over it and it's no more

and the place acknowledges it no more.

It's like he never even existed.

I got angry and I kind of threw the Bible

down on the bed.

Then I walked over and
I picked it up again.

And it said, "but the love
of the Lord is everlasting

on those who fear Him."

And that word "everlasting."

And then, I think maybe a couple times,

somebody visited me or something.

And one day I was at the library -

the undergraduate library
at the University of Texas -

and we were competing against
other oil companies supposedly,

other students,

and we were running off some oil surveys

and the girl on our team came up to me

and she said I'm going to have a party -

I think it was tomorrow night, she said.

Why don't you come to it?

And I had kind of gotten to the point

where I used to really party and things,

and I had gotten to the point

where I didn't do that anymore.

I would just sit in a bar
all by myself and drink.

And so I looked at her and I said,

"no, I'm not coming to your party."

And she said "why not?"

She goes, "you never do anything.

Why don't you come? Why not?"

And really this is what happened.

I didn't think about my answer.

I didn't design it.

Just all of a sudden it
came out of my mouth

and it shocked me as much as it
did anybody else in the room.

I said, "I'm not going to your party

because I'm a Christian now
and I'm going to follow Jesus."

And I looked at the guys.

They all kind of turned
around and looked at me

because they knew what I was.

I drank, lied...

And they looked at me.
And when they looked at me,

it's like all of a sudden
I realized what I said.

And it's like light just (went on).

It wasn't a literal light.

No, don't criticize me for that statement.

It's a metaphor.

It was just like all of a sudden,

it was like, that's exactly
what I'm going to do.

I believe in Jesus.

I do. I believe.

I'm sitting there in front of these guys

going, yeah, I believe in Jesus.

I really do believe in Jesus.

And I just walked out

and then I started walking quicker

because I was just like
what has happened to me?

I mean, what has happened?

I felt like I was just new.

And I remember getting
to the library doors -

the outside doors -

and I opened them up

and there was a girl coming in

who was in the same dorm.

And I didn't know this,

but a whole group of people
had been praying for me

since when I first moved into the dorm

like several months prior,

had been praying for me.
She was one of the girls.

When I opened up the door she goes,

"Paul! What's happened to you?"

And then I got scared.

I got real scared.

I was like, "I don't know."

And I just took off running.

I walked/ran as fast as I could

back to the apartment and I found that guy

and I said, "Mike, Mike,

I'm really scared.

Something happened to me in the library.

All I know is

I believe in Jesus and I am new."

He said, "You look new."

And so he took me down to the guy

who was like the RA

who had been leading a Bible study

named Mike Martin.

And all these guys, Mike Martin,

Stuart Depena, Mike Moore,

and all these different guys

that had been studying the Bible together

and were kind of leaders, you could say,

of like Campus Crusade and things.

I sat down and I started telling
them everything that happened.

I'll never forget, one of them goes,

"You've been born again!"

I was like, "What's that?"

And then here's something.

I had the filthiest mouth and it stopped.

It just stopped.

But I'll tell you what didn't stop.

Lying.

And after the joy of that day,

I began to think about

I had lied to people.

And then, so many things
in my life changed,

but then I would be talking

and something would
pop out that wasn't true.

And before, it didn't bother me.

I was proud of my lying.

I could make anybody believe anything.

And I would be so struck down

by the Holy Spirit

and so ashamed,

that I would have to go back

and say, "I lied. I lied."

And it went on.

It's amazing, some things -

drinking and cussing just stopped,

but other things were like this thing

that constantly broke me;

constantly broke me.

And the Lord then gave me victory over it.

And now, it's like one exaggeration...

my wife says that I speak in superlatives.

She says everything is
the greatest to you.

Everything is the biggest to you.

And that's true, but
even in that sometimes,

the Lord just gets me.

So that's why when some of you guys

get real fired up for the Lord,

and you see someone else

that maybe comes into your circles,

and yeah, it seems like God's done a work,

but in one area of his life,

he's really struggling for change,

don't discount him or
think he's unconverted.

Sometimes the Lord will
remove so many things,

but other things, we just deal with

throughout our life.

And then, so the next day,

this study group that was there

got together and they bought me

a big old Ryrie Study Bible.

New American Standard Ryrie Study Bible.

And I carried that thing to class.

(incomplete thought)

I remember my second day as a Christian,

I'm walking back though
the student mall there,

and I hear a bunch of people over here

and I go over there to look

and there's this guy talking.

And I thought is he preaching?

This guy isn't preaching.

He was sharing about why sex is good

and marriage is just
an artificial institution

and promoting wickedness.

And I'll never forget, all of a sudden

I just got so... and I just
went through the crowd.

"You're lying!"

"You're a liar!"

"That's not true!"

So that was the beginning

of my street preaching.

My ministry was defined.

Another thing, when I was a boy,

14 or 15,

I would have dreams all the time.

Well, not all the time, but frequently.

I would have dreams of me preaching.

And I would wake up crying

and telling God,

I'll get saved if you promise me

I don't have to preach.

And so when I became a Christian,

I also knew basically

that I was going to preach.

And I started going out

like at the student mall there

and handing out tracts and everything.

And it was a real change for me

because it went from being

a cool guy with a really nice car

to people taking your tracts - girls -

and laughing at you

and throwing them back at you.

And it was a time of killing the flesh.

But God has been faithful.

God's been faithful.