I didn’t think I could ever live good enough to get to Heaven. So I just gave up and decided I was going to have as much fun on this Hell right here that I could have and I went after it. So the first time I went to church, I realized that I was rubbing the Bible. There was something different in this. This was the softest thing I think I have ever touched in my life. It doesn’t feel like a book. Then I read it and because I enjoyed reading Shakespeare and because it was King James version it sounded very similar in vernacular, so I enjoyed reading it.
Within the next two years, I had been asked to leave my first youth group and church for challenging the Pastor and Youth Minister. So, I found another church and by the time I was seventeen, I had been asked to leave my fourth church because I was going to hell because I wasn’t buying what you were selling. This book that is beautiful that I fell in love with says one thing and I hear people using it to manipulate people for an agenda. That made me angry. I couldn’t just sit there and let that happen without saying; “Hey, you know you are lying to these people. That is not what it actually says. You took a small part and you made it sound like that.” When you’re a seventeen-year-old kid Pastors do not want you holding them accountable to what they are telling people. I did an about-face standing right there and I said; “Satan from what I understand, I’m going to hell, let’s get there.” I went on with life at that point. I wanted to be made in the mafia by the time I was twenty-one. I’m glad I got close enough to know why I would never want that to happen to me. I did a lot of stuff, a whole lot of stuff that I’m not really proud of but I did. I am accountable to what I did. However, in that, I met my wife and she started going to church. I told her; “There is just a bunch of hypocrites in that place. If you want to know God, you need to get your Bible and go out in the woods. That’s how you get to know God. You are not going to get to know God by going in there listening to somebody be a hypocrite telling people how they are supposed to live when they can’t even live by the first two commandments.” So, I went with her once and I was not impressed. I left with a bad taste in my mouth. Three or four months later I went again. I left with a bad taste in my mouth and I wasn’t going back. That Pastor now is my spiritual surrogate father. We had an opportunity between then and me ever going back to that church I had my son. All that I had done against the Lord, for Him to gift me this way. I never stopped believing in God I just didn’t think that I could get there. I didn’t think I could ever live good enough to get to Heaven. So I just gave up and decided I was going to have the most fun on this Hell right here that I could have and I went after it. He let me get away with all that and He gave me this? You talk about the prodigal son. It wasn’t His inheritance that I had squandered and He gave me a party when I got home, I mean He gave me a son!
I walked outside that hospital and I laid back in the rain and I just said; “I’m done. God, I surrender. I give.” When we were done he did something that no pastor I had ever seen in my life. He said; “Well Scooter, you may be right about almost everything that you have said here today.” (it was 11:30 at that point). He said; “You may be right.” I swelled up inside like; “You darn skippy I’m right, you better believe it.” He said; “I guess you’ve got a decision to make.” I said; “What’s that?” He said; “Well, you can either stand out there and tell us what’s wrong with us in here or you can come in here and try to do something about it.” I said; “Move over cause here I come! I have been waiting for this.” I had never had a pastor challenge me to hold him accountable. That’s something I had never seen. So when I saw that, it excited me. Within six weeks, I was teaching Bible study class. Within six months I was preaching.
I’m a Barber by trade. What else do they call what I do? Hairdresser, Barber, Master Barber, Preacher. A lot of people call me Preacher around here, cause I do a lot of it.
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