I thank God for this privilege to share why I believe in Him. God has spared my life and sought to reveal the truth about Himself to me throughout my life.
My life was first spared at age 4 when I was hit by a car in downtown Kansas City, MO. My father left the family when I was 8 years old. My grandmother (Dad’s mother) was the one who, like Naomi and Ruth in the Bible, introduced my mom to the only true God. I remember going to church with grandma twice. On the second visit, a lady put her hand on my shoulder and asked, “How old are you?” (I had a birthday since my first visit) When I told her, she said, “You aren’t supposed to be in this class, you need to go down the hall,” and out the door she ushered me. You know how it is when you’re a kid. Everything unfamiliar looks bigger and scarier than it should. I shuffled down the long hall to where I heard the singing. I was afraid to go in, and was so overwhelmed, I began to cry. A kind lady opened the door and said, “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?” “Because I don’t know where I’m supposed to be,” I said. She kindly guided me to a chair, and I remember the picture-roll painting of Jesus standing by the gate of heaven, welcoming a group of people, who were wearing white robes, while another group was standing outside the gate off to one side. Just as the teacher was explaining that the group going inside the city with Jesus were His sheep, and the group left on the outside, were the goats, I noticed I was seated on the side of the goats! Vividly, the conviction came to my heart, “I’m a goat! I don’t want to be a goat! How can I be a sheep?” Since then, I truly believe that God has been answering that question by His providential leading in my life.
Reared with my younger sister and brother by our single mom, I went to public school. During those years, my grandmother’s books with interesting pictures in them, intrigued me. The one with armor-clad soldiers holding torches and blowing trumpets but carrying no weapons, puzzled me, as I was into army soldiers and war. I remember one very dry July, being at her house, playing with my plastic army soldiers, using left-over fireworks to add to the realism. I was so thrilled at the experience that I just had to share it with someone, so I rushed in and told my grandmother all about the holes I was blowing in the cracked earth of her front yard. She said, “Ronnie, you know the Bible says that God will “…destroy them which destroy the earth.”(Revelation 11:18) I have never forgotten that, nor the many times that she would talk about Jesus coming again, and how the wicked will be “…destroyed with the brightness of His coming” 2 Thessalonians 2:8 She made it sound so real that I remember staring at lightbulbs to somehow build up endurance so I would not be destroyed with the brightness of His coming!
These memories stand out in my mind in stark contrast to the very common, worldly, life I lived then. When I was age 15, evangelistic meetings came to our area. Mom took us and invited others to come. We went every night to the “Airatorium”, a huge igloo-like structure that was literally held up by the forced air from the air-conditioning units. My mom, my younger brother, and I, were baptized at the end of those meetings, joining the newly formed Gladstone Church plant as charter members.
 I remember falling in love with the book of Jeremiah as it was the focus of the weekly Sabbath School lessons at the time. But I did not have a daily personal, devotional relationship with Jesus. As a result, sports and girls became my primary focus - I should say, my idols. On Friday evenings, when I was itching to go to “Teen Town” where there was a live rock band at my Junior High School, Mom would read a chapter from, “The Desire of Ages,” a book on the life of Jesus, that she had received during the meetings. Jesus became real to me as I listened to her read of Him from that book!
Soon after, I left public school to attend a Seventh-Day Adventist School. I rode to work with my mom, then walked down a busy 2-lane road in North Kansas City to the I-29 on-ramp. There I would walk up the ramp to the interstate where the rush hour traffic was always just barely creeping along. I would watch for my ride, then wander across the lanes to get in, and from there, ride an hour to the school. By that time, my mom had re-married, and my stepdad was scout master of the Boy Scout Troop I was in. He once told me that, “Religion is one of life’s little pleasures that I can live without.” This caused me to be more decided in my commitment to God, even though I went back to public school for a time before going to Sunnydale Academy in Centralia, Missouri.
At Sunnydale, the Boy’s Dean took an interest in me that led me to want to serve God like him, and we are friends to this day. Other relationships were formed there, that sadly pointed the opposite direction. Nevertheless, in the providence of God, my senior year, I met a girl who, had prayed a prayer to God before coming to that school, that if He wanted her to marry a Seventh-Day Adventist Christian, to please connect her with one as it would and she did not intend to go to college. I did not learn of that prayer until some years later.
A lot happened between that senior year and our wedding! That girl broke-up with me three different times! She even shocked me one day when she said, “I’m not sure that I want to be a Christian.” Then she explained, by saying, “I am not going to play church. We are either going to do this thing all the way, or not at all!” Her statement challenged me to seek God more earnestly. I read three books at the same time Steps to Christ, The Desire of Ages, and The Great Controversy. As a result, I studied the Bible more intently. The prayer of Jesus in John 17:3 became the desire of my heart and the foundation for my life and our relationship. “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,”
I was then, and am still, a work in progress. Jeremiah 15:16 expresses well the desire of my heart: “Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and Thy Word was unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart, for I am called by Thy name O Lord God of hosts.” And Jeremiah 18:1-4 “The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying, Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words. Then I went down to the potter’s house, and behold, he wrought a work on the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so, he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.” This verse expresses well, God’s mercy and unfailing love in His relentless efforts to save me. (See also His promises in Hebrews7:25 and Hebrews 9:28.)
God blessed us with a son and a daughter, and 6 precious grandchildren. Satan has tried to destroy them and our whole family but nevertheless, in His providence, God continues to sustain us. Time would fail me to share all the stories of His goodness, and His miracles, the greatest miracle being His working in the lives of my wife, and our son and daughter. God spared our lives in a car accident on an icy interstate in our first year of marriage. He called us from the blessing of teaching school into the blessings of Literature ministry. He has spared us many times. Like the time I was falling asleep at the wheel while my wife and two children were sleeping, when a voice called my name, waking me up just in time to see the water covering the road that would have lifted our car and taken it where we could have drowned! He called us to serve in Rwanda Africa where He spared my life on numerous occasions. When the genocide erupted in 1994, He kept us safe. The books of heaven contain the account of those stories that are forever imprinted on our minds and hearts.
Our family nearly fell apart completely after Rwanda, and my wife was diagnosed with cancer. Yet, God has been merciful. He delivered me from a diagnosed terminal illness, and removed my wife’s cancer by a miracle, then called us to serve Him in Egypt. So many precious people God has brought into our lives. He has spared our son’s life and called him into Pastoral Ministry, giving him a true pastor’s wife! He has spared our daughter’s life and is using her to relieve suffering. My wife now has stage 4 metastatic cancer and is a witness to me and to many of what it means to live by faith and prayer. I serve as her caregiver. God is faithful, and merciful!  We claim1 Corinthians 10:13 regularly!
Past experiences cannot replace a living connection with God! God loves us, Jesus is interceding for us, and the Holy Spirit is leading all who will listen. My father who left the family when I was a child came to know the Lord before he died. And my stepfather has since been converted to Christ and baptized. Jesus is coming soon! These days, instead of staring at lightbulbs I am praying, by God’s grace, to “…walk in the light as He is in the light…”and His promise is that: “we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ, cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7

Written by Ron Clark,  2025