Seventeen-year-old Justin Spencer was with a team of Texas Baptists when an unexpected thing happened. Standing on the front porch of a house in Chalmette, Louisiana, listening as his teammate Hailey gave a gospel presentation, his heart quickened.
When Hailey asked the resident if he wanted to pray to receive Christ, he said no. But Spencer said yes.
He waited until lunch break when he could talk to his youth pastor, Chris Godby, and then they prayed together: “I know that I’m a sinner, I know that I’m not perfect, I know that my sin separates me from You,” Spencer said as he repeated Godby’s words. “I believe that You sent Your Son to die on the cross for me to give me a way to be united with You, and right now I place my faith and trust in You and want You to be the boss of my life.”
Godby said, “And right after he made a profession of faith, he was like, ‘I want to tell people.’”
The youth pastor helped Spencer practice sharing his testimony and the gospel and they went out together door-to-door. That afternoon Spencer led four boys to Christ. A couple of weeks later he participated in a youth retreat at Pineywoods Baptist Camp in Woodlake, Texas, and led a friend to rededicate her life to the Lord. Now he regularly shares Christ with his peers in the skate park.
“I’ll skate and then sit down for a few and someone will be talking to me about what I did and then out of nowhere I’ll say, ‘Do you know Jesus? Let me tell you about Him,’” Spencer said.
“It’s great that I’m able to relate to some of these guys. Sometimes it can be testy because some are atheists, agnostics, anti-Christian — a mix of people. But if you let God speak through you, He’ll work because God’s Word never returns void.”
Growing up rough
Spencer is only a teen but in his short life he’s known poverty and abuse, abandonment and violence. He’s never met his real mom — she was imprisoned for child abuse when Spencer was 3 months old and, although she’s free now, she won’t pursue a relationship with him.
He lived with his father, who also was physically and emotionally abusive, until he was 14, growing up in anger. He watched his sister become a victim of violence, eventually defending her as well as himself and getting kicked out of the house. He got into drugs and alcohol, leading to an arrest.
He moved in with an aunt who has now adopted him and in that home he began to seek answers.
“I was sitting on the couch one day and I wanted some drugs and then I realized that drugs were just a way to run from my problems, that drugs weren’t a stress-reliever but a stress-postponer and that I needed something to help me carry that burden,” Spencer said. “I believe that God was pulling me toward His love.”
Spencer resisted at first because of his tragic upbringing.
“I figured if God was really real then He wouldn’t have let me grow up and watch my dad break my sister’s nose and beat her to the kitchen floor. I grew up believing God wasn’t real because a god is supposed to be caring and not let his children see things like that,” Spencer said.
But eventually a friend invited him to Magnolia Creek Baptist Church, League City, Texas, where he met Godby, the youth minister who helped change Spencer’s image of Christians and God.
“I always got the impression that Christians were really conservative, rude people,” Spencer said. “They were boots and wranglers and I was skinny jeans and skateboards, and so I couldn’t relate to them and couldn’t do anything they would agree with.
“But when Chris walked out of the sanctuary and smacked me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey man, how ya doin’?’ I was blown away.”
Little by little God began to reveal to Spencer that it wasn’t just Godby who liked him. It really hit home when they were in Chalmette — outside in 100-degree heat, canvassing neighborhoods, working to exhaustion.
“I felt so happy in spite of the conditions,” Spencer said. “The thing that kept sticking out to me was that God loves me and I couldn’t wait to talk about Him some more. Realizing God loves me was something that really pulled me toward [Him and] salvation.”
God continued to work in Spencer’s life at the youth camp and there some of his past began to make sense.
“I realized that God is very intentional in everything He does and nothing He does is an accident. He didn’t step in and prevent me from seeing the things I saw, not because He didn’t love me, but because He did and He wanted me to grow close to Him and He wanted to use me with other kids that have problems. It was great seeing that God had a plan for me even though I didn’t love Him at the time,” Spencer said.
Since that fateful day in Chalmette, Spencer said, “I’ve become more patient and less angry. I’m more friendly and can actually talk to people.”
Before his conversion, meeting new people or new situations caused him to stutter, but God has given him fluency now.
Now that he knows God and knows he is loved, Spencer is full of hope for the future.
“My problems don’t seem like big problems anymore,” he said.
(BP)
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