You’ve got to be joking

Salvation

Chapter one

“Dustin,” I knew I heard what I heard, however the question was who had said it? And where did the voice come from? All I knew as I was minding my own business playing with my toys and out of nowhere someone or something was calling my name.
What would you do? You’re only six years old, you’ve barely entered kindergarten, your favorite thing in the world is star wars, the most important thing in your mind is whether mom or dad are gonna wash your Under Roos, and you just entered another world; one that Bible storybooks don’t explain, and Sunday school teachers don’t talk about.

Mom didn’t know what to say the first time I asked she’d called my name. But the second time I came to started to catch on. Son she said, “God is calling your name.” She very quickly told me the story of Samuel and how God had called his name. She told me that like Samuel, god was calling me to his service. She said Dustin, the Lord Jesus wants your heart. And she asked me, would you like to ask Jesus to come in your heart? What would you say? I mean God had just called your name, right? I said yes. After mom had led me through a prayer to accept the Lord Jesus as savior, she dedicated my life to the Lord’s service.
From that day I began to serve Jesus. It was an immediate reaction; I went to school and told everybody that they had to do it too. I felt so good inside I wanted everyone to feel the same way. And I still feel the same way today.

My story is a very unremarkable one. As a boy, I grew up on a large farm in Statesville, North Carolina out in the middle of the sticks. I was never addicted to drugs, I didn’t party, cause trouble, drink, and a stayed totally chaste (a virgin) until marriage. I played just about every sport I could and thought that was how I was going to spend my college career. I had no idea that God had other plans but that’s a later story. I still haven’t told you about my best friend Joseph.