New Words, New Life

Frederick W. Miller

Writing my life story is reasonably simple. I’m a journalist and write “the facts.” But writing about my spiritual journey and pinpointing dates or places or events is much more difficult. I don’t think I was paying attention during those times; at least they didn’t make a big, long-lasting impression on me.

The “church words” of today—evangelical, saved, born-again, Christian, come to Christ, take Christ as your Savior—were not part of my vocabulary when I was growing up, in the late 1930s and through the 1940s. We were a “church family” of mother, father and three sons, of which I was the middle one. We went to church and Sunday school each week at First Baptist Church in Royal Oak, Michigan. We did not work on Sundays.

At about age 13, as was somewhat traditional in our church, I attended a baptism class, and on an Easter morning, was baptized by emersion, as were my older brother John and my good friend Ralph Chambers. I remember suggesting to Ralph, that we buy a small gold cross and wear it to indicate to other people that we had been baptized.

I don’t think I really understood the meaning of baptism then, but my words to Ralph seem to indicate that I had undergone a “change” and wanted others to know about it. (That was 75 years ago. Who knows what I was thinking or feeling?)

We didn’t make such a purchase, but for many years during my working career, I wore an “Xuthus” fish label pin on my suit. There were opportunities to share my faith because of the pin.

During my high school years, I participated in Sunday evening youth group at a Congregational church – there were not enough young people in my Baptist church to make those Sunday nights attractive to me. Those weekly get-togethers were a growing time in my Christian life. We read Scripture out loud to the group and “taught” others what the words meant.

During the summers, for 17 years starting in 1939, my family owned and lived in a cottage in a Methodist-founded resortcommunity, Epworth Heights, on Lake Michigan. I remember going to Sunday school there one Sunday morning and singing “This is my Father’s world.” It certainly was for me because, upon reflection, I grew physically, spiritually, morally, and mentally during those years. And yet, I was still somewhat of a naive teenager.

At Hillsdale College in Michigan, I met a “farm girl” who was solid in her Christian faith. We sang in the college and church choirs together, took math classes together. And we spent weekends together on her family’s farm during the summer of 1954 when I was working as a reporter on a weekly newspaper near that farm in the Thumb area of Michigan.

She had a great influence in my life over the next 64 years, and now enjoys the pleasures of Heaven, with the words “Well done thou good and faithful servant” ringing in her ears and mine. (Carol Yvonne Evans Miller went to be with her Lord and Savior on April 12, 2021. We were married on August 18, 1956 and raised three daughters and a son.)

Looking back to remember that Easter when I was baptized, I recall quite vividly another Sunday morning, in about 1968, in the First Baptist Church of Newton, Massachusetts, when I “went forward” at the invitation of the pastor. With tears flowing down my face, and great sobbing, something happened. I don’t know what. But I would say, in retrospect, that my Christian walk has been much different since then.

Carol and I “ministered” together most of our married lives, first as sponsors of church youth groups and high school Sunday school classes, then as participants in a young-marrieds group at church and as teachers of adult Sunday school in several churches.

But our most rewarding ministry was as Bible teachers for more than 25 years in the DuPage County Jail (through JUST of DuPage) and in about 10 state prisons in Illinois (through Prison Fellowship) correcting prison inmate Bible study lessons weekly through Crossroads Prison Ministries of Grand Rapids, Michigan. All this work required a study and understanding of the Bible and lesson preparation, thus equipping me for so-called “front line” ministry and being “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16)

You cannot teach that message of salvation unless you believe that message, although at times I do a poor job of teaching it or of being a good representative of the transforming power of God in an individual’s life.

But as a minister and Moody professor friend of mine has said, “I am a saint who occasionally sins,” not necessarily “a sinner saved by grace,” although that fits too.

My life now is far different from my life as an early teenager, where this journey started. I may not always exemplify my Christian faith in all that I do, but I am well aware of what the Christian life is all about and how I am supposed to live it day by day to demonstrate that changed life and changed lifestyle. With God’s help, I can do that. “God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good!”