Our Team
Amos Martin’s Testimony
CONVICTION
I was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the 6th round of the NFL Draft. After a long training camp, I made the team and my dream had become a reality. That 1st year was all about me, although I had a wife and young child, I hung out with the guys and neglected my family.
During the off season, I reviewed my accomplishments. I had fame, money, a new car, and a new home, but something was missing. I could not figure out what it was. Then one day I read a statement. “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul.”
I realized at that moment, I was that man!
CONVERSION
After a week at training camp in my 2nd year, I called one of my buddies back home. He told me he had been in a swimming pool with some Christian girls and had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.
I had been attending chapel service with the Vikings prior to our Sunday afternoon games. At one of our meetings in Oakland, California, the speaker asked if anyone wanted to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, all you had to do was ask. I didn’t like who I was and the life I was living, so I asked God to forgive my sins and for Jesus Christ to come into my life. I wanted Jesus to take control.
CONFORMITY
As I took baby steps as a Christian, one of the first things the Holy Spirit impressed upon me was that my language was bad, I was drinking too much, and I was still hanging with the wrong crowd.
The next revelation that came to me was that the only way to fix those challenges was by spending more time in God’s Word.
During this critical juncture of my spiritual journey, I committed to a daily time with the Lord. That’s when the Holy Spirit really began putting the old me to death and transforming me little by little into the image of Christ.
That work continues now. Each time I pray, study my Bible, and share the love of Christ with others, I am aware of the amazing power of the Holy Spirit that should be evident in the life of every believer.
God has blessed me to have played in three Super Bowls. But the brightest spotlight in all of professional sports dims to a mere flicker when compared to the glory of Jesus Christ.
I look forward to basking in that heavenly light with you as together, we open God’s Word each week to Investigate Jesus!
Garry Gupton’s Testimony
CONVICTION
This is the confession of a teenage-fake. I was the most Christ-like non-christian you could imagine. I was popular with my teachers and team mates, made good grades, and was voted president of the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church youth group. Oftentimes, our pastor would invite me to the pulpit to share the story of how Jesus saved my life as a means of winning others to Christ.
It was all an act.
CONVERSION
When I was 16, our pastor, Thurman Eaton, preached a four-week sermon series about the horrors of hell. During the altar calls following each of the first three sermons, I felt a powerful tug in my soul. It was the Holy Spirit drawing me to salvation in Christ. But accepting Christ would require me to reveal my true self to my pastor and all those people sitting around me in church. I stubbornly stood my ground applying an aptly named death grip to the back rest of the wooden pew in front of me. At the conclusion of each sermon, I knew that if I died on the way home, I would spend eternity separated from the God who created me.
After the fourth and final sermon about hell, Pastor Eaton again gave an altar call. This time, I felt nothing. The urging of the Holy Spirit that I had fought successfully for three consecutive weeks was replaced by emptiness. Nothing. That scared me more than hell did. I remember thinking to myself, “Has God given up on me? Have I thrown away my opportunity for salvation?”
The only person who could answer those questions was standing right in front of the pulpit from where he had just wrapped up his sermon series. I ran down the aisle and confessed to my pastor that I was lost and needed Christ to save me. In that very moment, Jesus did! That is also the moment I started following Christ for real!
CONFORMITY
When most kids go off to college, they drift further away from God. I grew closer. Through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Campus Crusade for Christ, I made friends at Western Kentucky University with guys my age who were years ahead of me in Christian maturity. They taught me the spiritual disciplines of prayer, having a daily quiet time, and the privilege we have to share Christ with others. In the summer between my junior and senior years of college, a bunch of us moved to Florida where we served as missionaries. Those men and I remain close today.
The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 1:9 that God destined believers, including me, for salvation before the ages began. That means he orchestrated everything in my life to guide me to that life-changing Sunday at a rural Southern Baptist church in Campbellsville, Kentucky.
God’s purpose for my life has proven to be more exciting and fulfilling than my career as a television news anchor. God saved me from that too. But we’ll hold that story for another time!