Good morning and welcome back to the Word for Life broadcast brought to you by Brookside Baptist Church and my name is Ken Keltner. I'm the senior pastor at Brookside and I'm just filling in for Pastor Greg Huffman who is away from church at this time. He's in another state doing a wedding. He will be back and we'll look forward to more of the broadcast with Pastor Greg. He's our Senior's Pastor and also our Counseling Pastor at Brookside. We are so happy to have with us in the studio Steve Pettit, who is our Staff Evangelist, and he has been traveling with his team. They happen to be with us on Memorial Day weekend, and we wanted to get into the studio and do some recording. And we've been talking about the ministry that God's given to Steve in his travels with evangelism, to challenge God's people back to revival, holiness, and a walk with God that will honor and glorify Him, and then also to challenge and to give out the wonderful message that we've been commissioned by Jesus Christ to give, and that is the gospel. We're told it is the power of God unto salvation, and so I'm thankful for Steve and his team as they minister, and they minister to children, adults, teens. But God has given Steve a real burden for this group of 18- to 25-year-olds, and God's allowed him to be the director of Cross-Impact. And we've been discussing that, and I would encourage you to go back and maybe listen to some of our past broadcasts, as Steve has really locked in on that age group, and I think God has given him a great opportunity and desire to reach a very important age. But Steve, thank you for being with us, and we love to hear what God's doing in your life with this whole aspect of Cross-Impact. Maybe you haven't been with us. Why don't we just kind of wrap up a little bit, and then I'd like to get to your testimony, how the Lord brought you to salvation. We began in our ministry with Cross-Impact two years ago. I've been in full-time evangelistic work now for 28 years, and the Lord opened up a door out of the blue with a board of men who have a burden for reaching secular campuses through local churches. And so Cross Impact is an equipping ministry, helping churches revitalize singles ministry, and then to reach out to secular campuses by establishing a student organization. That's what Cross Impact is. And then bringing God's word to the campus. And that's possible all over the United States and literally today all over the world. I guess if you had one opportunity to just share, if you narrowed it down, that 18 to 25-year-old, there could be a mom or dad or grandma or grandpa driving today, or maybe even an 18, 25-year-old listening to us. I mean, is there one thing that really would stand out to you that you really have a burden and you want to share with that individual? Absolutely, and that is this. I really believe that the proper philosophy and methodology of reaching singles is rooted in one word, and that's called discipleship. If you're not going to be serious about following God in this age group, then the chances of you after that following God seriously will be fairly slim. And so our approach to singles is serious. It's time for you to become wholeheartedly, single-mindedly committed to the Lord. growing in the Lord, not being a nominal Christian, but actually believing God's Word to be as it is in truth, the Word of God, and then conforming your life to God's truth and walking with Christ and serving Him. So our challenge is discipleship. And I remember one word you used, and you probably still give it out to, whether it be young people or even when you speak to college-age young people, I remember one word you would always share. You would say, when you look across this audience or this group of young people or young adults, one word would always come to your mind. Potential. The potential for God to take a life, and I think it was the psalmist, who said, no good thing will the Lord withhold from them who walk uprightly. And he gets some young adults or young people that are serious in their walk with God and see what God can do in their life. And obviously, Steve, God saw potential in your life, and someone came to you and gave you the gospel, and why don't you share with us a little bit about your upbringing and how God has worked in your life. Oh, I'm so thankful to be able to really testify to God's grace. I'm the first of four children to be born into our family. My father, Bill Pettit, met my mother, Eleanor Jones, in Valdosta, Georgia, when my father was stationed at Moody Air Base as he served in the Air Force. He and my mother were married in 1954, and I was born exactly one year later, 1955. My dad finished his master's degree at the University of Georgia in Agricultural Economics, and we moved from there to Columbia, South Carolina, where I lived all of my life growing up from the time I was three years old until the time I went off to college. I would say that my home was a nominal Christian home in that we definitely believed in Christ. We attended a Protestant church, and my father was actually a deacon and a Sunday school teacher. So I grew up believing in the basic tenets of Christianity. I didn't really understand what the scripture means when it speaks about the new birth. I didn't really understand the word salvation very clearly, and so I would say I didn't really hear strong gospel preaching that calls people to repentance and faith. When I got up into my teenage years, my family pretty much dropped out of church. And so I followed suit and I would go to church a couple of times a year. And that was pretty much most of my high school years. When I got up into my junior year of high school, there was a group that came to our public school that was a religious organization, Christian organization, and God began to use them. And slowly but surely, the gospel started going out and students started coming to Christ. People started getting saved. And these were friends of mine, buddies that I had been with from elementary to junior high, now to high school. And of course, I saw the dramatic change in their life. And I realized that what had happened to them had never happened to me. And I was sitting out in front of my public school one day, and a friend of mine, who we had been buddies ever since the fourth grade, asked me a question. He said, Steve, if you died today, do you know for sure you would go to heaven? And I told him, I don't know. I said, I really would like to know. And so for the first time in my life, I had somebody clearly explain to me the gospel. And he followed a very simple format, and he shared the reality of my sins, that these sins will bring the judgment of God, that Jesus Christ died to pay for my sins and rose from the dead, and that I could be saved through faith in Christ. But I had to make a decision to receive Christ or reject Christ. And I remember that day as he shared that with me, I left and I didn't accept the Lord. I actually went away with an incredible fear that I would die and be separated from God. But as we know, conviction is God sent. But we can also reject the conviction, and I did. And so for the next couple of years, instead of getting better, I got worse. I finished high school in 1974, and I went off to college at a school in Charleston, South Carolina, called The Citadel. It's a military school, and I graduated from there in 1978. I played a lot of sports in high school growing up, and at The Citadel, I played soccer and made the varsity team my freshman year. And there was one other freshman on the team, and we roomed and traveled together. And his name was Maxie Birch, and Maxie had been saved for about a year, got saved as senior of high school. And he began to share the gospel with me, and God began to work in my life. And on Easter Sunday, 1975, I'd gone to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina for the big Easter party spring break weekend. And I got up Easter Sunday morning and it was really one of those weekends. Now I look back on it, I can see the hand of God and his conviction where I was just so empty. I was empty with my life. I was wondering, what's my purpose in life? Is there more to life than what I was experiencing? And as I was driving home on Easter Sunday morning, I turned the radio on and I listened to a preacher over the radio and he preached the gospel. The fact is, I thought somebody had tipped him off I was driving down the highway, because he definitely preached on all the sins that I had been committing in the last few days. But you know, that's the way the Lord works. God takes, he takes his message spoken through his instrument, and you feel like God is speaking to you. And then he really painted the picture of the crucifixion. And my mind was a canvas, and his words were like the paintbrush in the painter's hand, and he painted the crucifixion of Jesus in my mind. And I could see Christ dying for me. I could see Him personally being sacrificed for me. And I knew, how can I walk away from this? I knew it was true, but I still had to believe it and receive it. And so Easter Sunday, 1975, I prayed and asked the Lord Jesus Christ to be my Savior. God saved me on that day. I didn't see any visions, didn't have any bells and whistles go off, but I know, I know that I believe the Word. And as the years have gone by, the Holy Spirit of God has given me a comforting assurance that on that day I was born again. I went back to school, didn't grow a lot spiritually at first, didn't have a lot of Christian friends. God took me through a tough experience. I broke my ankle playing soccer, so it set me out of my whole sophomore year of playing, which was at the time a disaster and at the time was a blessing, because I know God used that to get my attention. And I really began to grow, started seeking the Lord, started seeking Christian friendships, and developed friendships with some of the finest Christians that I've ever known, who had a great love for the Lord and very committed to Christ as students at the Citadel. And as the years went by as a student, I got involved in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, started growing, became the chaplain of FCA, was discipled by a fellow today who's still discipling people all over the world. And his name is Jim Smith, and Jim was a wonderful mentor for me in college. So by the time I graduated from college and went off to seminary, I surrendered to go into the ministry between my sophomore and junior year of college, went ahead and finished the Citadel, and then I went off to seminary. And by the time I went to seminary, I had pretty much established patterns of biblical discipline, of growing and reading the Word and prayer. and the local church and sharing the gospel and even preaching. I'd even preached revivals while I was a student at the Citadel and went off to seminary and prepared for ministry and then went into the ministry in 1980 and have been in ever since. So that's really the working of God. So when the cross impact came to me, I almost without hesitation said, I'm interested in that because I'm going back to my roots. That's exactly where you were. And that's exactly where I was, and I know, I believe with all my heart, that if God is going to give revival today, it's going to come in the age group between 18 and 25. Oh boy, that's wonderful to hear how God worked in the many lives that you've touched since that time. The power of God. It's exciting. Well, we're about ready to wrap up. I don't know how quickly you could share this, but today you were sharing the story about being about a fellow down ministering in South Africa who was snatched by a crocodile. And you use that as far as the illustration that because of what Christ has done, he snatched us from the jaws of death and separation from God. Can you just share that quickly with us? Yes, we had the wonderful privilege of hearing the story of Mr. Daniel Minton, who is a youth pastor, and he was actually serving in South Africa as a young missionary, and they were crossing a river in South Africa going out into the bush, into a village to preach the gospel, when he was attacked by a crocodile. And literally, a 16-foot-long crocodile who bit him from his waist at an angle down from the left side over both legs down into his right knee. He turned him around in the water, and he knew that he was going to die. And he had remembered watching the television show The Crocodile Hunter, who said that if you ever bit by a croc, reach down in his throat, and there's literally a valve. If you'll reach it and grab it and turn it and twist it, he'll open his mouth. And that is exactly what he did. And sure enough, the crocodile opened his mouth, and he showed me the pictures of it, so I have the proof in my mind. And when he was telling me the story, I thought of how so many people's lives are in the clutches of the evil one, lost in sin, lost, they're one step away from eternity, and yet God is still in the miracle business of saving people out of the fire. And that's what Jesus Christ did. He died so that we could be saved. Amen. Steve, so glad that it worked out for you to be with us. And we trust that you've enjoyed these several broadcasts that we've been able to have with Steve Pettit, the staff evangelist at Brookside Baptist Church. So thank you so much for tuning in with us, and we trust you have a wonderful day.