Life in the Fast Lane

Fast cars and parties were this man’s life. Then something most unusual happened to his wife.

By Gary Bertram

I was born into a good family where we were brought up carefully. As a child I attended Sunday school, but when I reached my teens, I lost interest in going. I had never had a relationship with the Lord, which isn’t surprising considering that even though I attended numerous churches, I do not remember hearing about salvation. So I quit going to Sunday school and church completely.

During my high school years, I did not go deep into sin because of my interest in sports. I played football and wanted to stay in shape. I didn’t care to drink or do any drugs. At that time, the kids who did such things were looked down on, and I didn’t want to have any part of that.

After graduating from high school, I went right to work at the post office. There I met a different type of people than the conservative crowd I was used to associating with. It wasn’t long before I started to do the things that they were doing—smoking, drinking, and partying.

Sandra’s sister was different

It was during this time that a friend of mine introduced me to a girl named Sandra. Not long after we started dating, I met the rest of her family. There was one sister named Linda who was different from the other girls. She didn’t wear miniskirts or makeup, she never used profanity, and she didn’t smoke or drink. When I took my rock music albums that contained profanity over to their house and played them, Linda let me know that they were wrong. This was news to me.

Sandra and I became interested in drag racing. I liked hot cars, and we would soup them up and go out and race every weekend. About that time, the government wanted me to enter the service, as the conflict was raging in Vietnam. I joined the Navy, and was sent to San Francisco, California. That’s where my life really started going downhill.

It felt good just being away from home and being my own master, so to speak, doing what I wanted to do. I went with my fellow servicemen into the streets of San Francisco to see what that place had to offer. There were many ways for a young sailor to get into trouble. We went out and drank at night, and then sometimes wondered the next day how we ever made it back to our barracks. That kind of life style really took hold of me and soon I was doing things that I never thought I would. Habits and appetites for sinful pleasures seemed to come on so naturally that I had no defenses against them.

Living a fast life

While I was in the Navy, Sandra and I were married. When I was discharged, we went home and picked up the same life style that we’d had prior to that—partying, cars, and a fast life. After our first son was born, I can remember feeling badly because our all-night parties would wake him up. But I didn’t know what to do about it, or how to get rid of that bad feeling that I had, so we just continued living that way.

One time, after going out fishing on a Sunday, I came home and my wife had a different look about her altogether. She said that she had watched a religious television program and felt conviction for the way she was living. She had prayed right there in our living room, and the Lord had saved her. I had never heard of such a thing before in my life, and I didn’t know what to think of it. I decided that it would probably be just a passing fad. But she had really received something from the Lord that day, and it stuck with her and she stuck with it. She lived a Christian life, and I was amazed at the difference in her. She didn’t want to party or go to the other places where we had been going.

Strangely enough, while her conversion had quite an impact on our life style, I didn’t hold it against her or get upset and go out on my own to do the things we’d been doing together. Before long the Lord began dealing with my heart. He showed me that my beliefs about the way I thought one was supposed to live were different from His. I had always thought I was a Christian, since I believed in God and knew there was a Lord and Savior who died for me. I just thought that as long as a person believed in God, that was all that was necessary.

I never held anybody’s religion against him. I felt that the way one believed was fine, so that was pretty much the stand that I took with my own wife. But she lived a different life in front of me, and I could see the definite change that was there. Pretty soon I found myself defending her convictions in front of our friends.

Conviction seized his soul

From the time she was saved, Sandra attended the Apostolic Faith Church in Tacoma. She had gone there to Sunday school as a young girl, and her sister also attended there. One year in November, the church held revival meetings, and Sandra really wanted me to go. I told her I would. I had never been in meetings where there were personal testimonies, so the service was unusual to me. As I sat in that meeting, I literally trembled with conviction, but I didn’t surrender to the Lord.

The next day at work I was upset at everybody. Nothing went right, and I almost got into a fight with someone. The Lord was dealing with me in such a way that I was so miserable I made everybody around me miserable. The next morning my wife asked if I was going to go to church again and I said I would. So I went that Sunday morning. I still didn’t pray, but I heard more of the Gospel, and it started getting through to me. All that day, at home, I was absolutely miserable. Nothing that I normally liked to do appealed to me. I ended up lying on the couch staring at the ceiling all afternoon.

That night I went to church again with my wife. Conviction came down upon me, and again I just shook. When the meeting was over, everyone was invited to pray. Satan told me to go out the door and not pay any attention to what I had heard or felt, but the Lord was calling me. Someone came back and asked me to pray. He said, “You know you want to.” I couldn’t say no to that. I knew I really did. So we went down to the altar of prayer. I didn’t even know how to pray, but I told the Lord that I was sick of the life I was living. I asked Him to come into my life and make me a Christian. He answered and made salvation very real to me that night. He made a complete change, a definite turnaround in my life. Then I understood what had happened to my wife, and those who I had heard testify.

Truly a new person!

I went to bed that night and sleep was so sweet. I felt so good! The next day, however, would really tell the story, and I knew that. I got up and went to work among the same guys that I had partied with so many times before. But I was truly a new person! The cigarette habit was completely gone. I didn’t want to go to the bars after work anymore. It wasn’t long before my co-workers knew that something was definitely different. They asked, “What’s the matter, did you get religion?” I said, I got saved,” and that gave me an opportunity to tell them about it.

Shortly after I was saved, one of the brothers in the church said to me, “You know you can’t live on that experience alone forever.” I told him it seemed as though I could. It felt so good and the change was so great. He said, “You need to pray that the Lord will sanctify you. You need to press on.” I found out that was absolutely the truth.

Before long I had such a deep desire to be sanctified wholly that I sat and wept in the meetings. Then one night the Lord opened the heavens and gave me a wonderful experience of sanctification. The Lord really did something for me. It was far greater than my experience of salvation, which I didn’t think anything could top.

I heard about the baptism of the Holy Ghost and said, “That is for me!” I didn’t want to question anything. I began to seek that experience and again a hunger came over me to where I knew I couldn’t be satisfied without it. We went to a special night of music at the Apostolic Faith Church in Puyallup, Washington. Although I knew it wasn’t going to be a regular church service, I was still hungry for my baptism. All of a sudden, during the concert, the Spirit of the Lord came down in that little church in an unprecedented way. It felt like electricity in the air. The musicians were singing, “To be like Jesus, all I ask, to be like Him,” and several of us just broke for the altar. I can remember people knocking over chairs getting to the altar. Oh, what a prayer meeting there was that night! The Lord gave both my wife and me the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Many others also received experiences from the Lord.

Exciting days

Those are wonderful days to remember, but we live in exciting days now too. It is great to be serving the Lord and seeing the prophecies being fulfilled before our eyes. I am just thankful that the Lord brought my wife and me to where we were receptive to the Gospel. So many people today are lost and don’t know which way to go. I count myself blest that the Lord went out into the world, found me, and gave me an opportunity to be saved and to live a Christian life.

Gary Bertram is a minister in the Apostolic Faith Church in Tacoma, Washington.