My Story

My name is Chris Randall, I’m 46 and have been married for 26 years. My wife and I have three adult daughters. I grew up in pseudo Christianity. My family was good at speaking Christanese and looking very Christian around other Christians, but if you saw us at home you would have likely called CPS. From the time I was a young child I knew that I wanted God in my life, but no one ever showed me what it looked like to be an authentic follower of Jesus. When I was 18 I asked my mom why I should believe what she believed, but she had no answer. She stood there silent, motionless, shocked, her jaw dropped. There was nothing authentic about her life or the brand of Christianity she had been selling me my entire life.

I spent the next 12 years trying to figure out how to do Christianity while simultaneously living for myself. By December 2008 my life was in shambles. I had trashed every part of my life and was desperate for change. Sitting at home alone one day I cried out to God and surrendered my life to Him. Instantly I became a different person. It was like God reached into my soul, took the DNA of who I was and changed it.

The Holy Spirit began leading me and I followed in complete obedience. I asked God to give me a life that was unexplainable apart from Him and did He! In March 2009 God led me to start a nonprofit mechanic company. My full time job was fixing cars for broke people for free. I never got a paycheck or asked anyone for money or had any type of financial backing. My life became a whirlwind of God’s activity, looking like something out of the book of Acts. I kept a journal and wrote down all the God encounters I had.

This is one of my favorite stories from that journal. In March 2010One day while driving to a job, I saw a truck stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire. I stopped and found that Richard, the man driving the truck, had a spare tire but didn’t have the tools to change it. While changing his tire I talked to him briefly about the gospel, but the conversation didn’t go anywhere. I gave him one of my business cards and wrote on it the name, address, and phone number of a local church I like, and went on my way.

Several weeks later, I received a phone call from Josh, a man who attended the church I had mentioned to Richard. He wanted to buy me a cup of coffee the next time I was in town but didn’t give me any details as to why except to tell me he wanted to talk to me about Richard. When I met with Josh, he told me that Richard had worked for gangs and a Mexican cartel as a drug enforcer meaning he made sure the people he worked for got paid and that drug runners made their drops on time, and when those people didn’t do those things, Richard metered out gang justice and did bad things to them.

Richard had been wanting to get out of that life altogether and the night before I changed his tire, he had had a dream where God warned him that if he didn’t quit what he was doing his life would be over. When I tried to talk to Richard about Jesus, it hit him like a lightning bolt and brought fresh to his memory his dream from the night before. It shook him so deeply that he went to the church I recommended and there he met Josh who shared the gospel with him. Richard gave his life to Jesus, was instantly and radically changed, and got out of the drug business altogether.

Richard and his girlfriend had several small children, and the road he was on was sure to leave his children fatherless. I believe that God caused this man to have a blowout and kept anyone else from stopping to help him before I showed up because God knew I would plant a seed.

God is constantly at work in the lives of people to bring them to Himself. In Luke 19:10, Jesus said that he came to seek and to save those who 46 are lost. God is still doing that today, and He uses us when we allow Him to. In Matthew 4:19 (KJV) when Jesus said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men,” He was making a promise that He would use anyone who follows Him to bring the lost to Him. God will do amazing things through the life of anyone who is surrendered to Him and follows Jesus by faith.

Jesus said in John 4:35-38 (NKJV), “Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.” We don’t have to lead everyone to Christ, but we are all called to plant seeds as frequently as possible. When we do that God rewards our obedience with more opportunities to be obedient. Sometimes gives us glimpses into the amazing ways He uses our obedience to impact eternity. ◆◆◆