Gateway Church's Podcast
Clark Whitten
It's a privilege to be here with my friends, so many friends here, privileged to share the stories about Jesus and what he's done in my life. It's not easy to do, but necessary, okay? I grew up in a little town over in Northeast Texas that we call Deep East Texas, kind of a different culture over there, especially in the days that I'll be talking about. We have a large family, I have five sisters and a twin brother, and everybody's always asking, "I say I have a twin brother there, so are you identical?" I say, "Unfortunately, for him, no, we aren't. He only wishes we were identical." And we were poor. I know a lot of people have poor stories, but we really were. And my daddy was a farmer when he did anything. My mother and fathers, we, kids were growing up, were both alcoholics, or radical alcoholics, especially toward the end of the time I'll be telling you about. They drank every day, they were drunk pretty much all the time. As you can imagine, some of you experienced that. I know that's nothing unique to our family, but it was traumatic. My daddy was an angry drunk, a mean one when he was drunk. And so my mother lived with black eyes and bloody noses and an abuse a lot of her life. The little place where I grew up was in a dry county. Meaning that alcoholic beverages couldn't be sold by law in that county. And there were many surrounding counties in those days over in each Texas that were dry also. So it was a central focus and a point of all kinds of things that were going on because of that. When it was an unlike prohibition in the early days of our nation. All kinds of violence, bootlegging, moonshining, those kinds of things were prominent there. When I was a kid, they did a front page story in the Dallas Morning News, which then was the largest circulated newspaper in the state. A front page story and it had more than one page of coverage on the violence and the things that were happening and going on in that part of the state. And frankly, my dad, my brother and I, to a lesser extent, but my dad more than any other person, I think, was a ringleader of a lot of the stuff that happened. When I was 10 years old, I was subpoenaed in a murder trial. I was eyewitness and I knew both these guys. One guy took out a knife and cut the ambulance throat and he bled to death right at my feet. I mean, I saw it so that happened. I knew him both when I was a kid. So there's all sorts of things like that that took place. In spiritual isolation, family, we lived in the country. You know, there were two kinds of people who lived where we did. There were country people in rural folks. You know what I mean? Rural people are really, really country and we were rural. No spiritual input at all into our lives. Growing up, we never went to church and never seen the inside of a church. I never seen a Bible. I probably did in a school library or something at times, but I don't remember a record like that. And so, the only time we ever went to church, my brother and I went to this little Methodist vacation Bible school where little boys, we walked down the road in a ways. And I remember about that experiences that we made a bird cage out of coat hangers out on the porch of the church building. Not against bird cages. I'm just saying, that's all I can remember. The spiritual isolation out of place, really, that you would expect God to be able to break in and do anything. I simply didn't know any Christians as far as I knew you. I wouldn't have known what the term meant. I had no understanding or idea, no wonder about God. I had no wonder about him, no desire, no seeking, no nothing concerning God. Didn't show up on my radar screen at all. After I graduated from high school, I went away to college, believe it or not. And toward the end of my freshman year in college, I started feeling something weird happening inside of me internally. I thought maybe you had a physical problem. I didn't know, but I had this mixture of emotions happen. I remember this clearly. I felt disturbed and depressed at times and angry and frustrated. All these different emotions were happening. I had no idea what was wrong. I know now that it was a spirit of God preparing me for what was about to happen, but I had no knowledge of that at the time. I just didn't know, but I just knew something was bothering me, something was agitating me. And just because we grew up in a rural setting and all of that, I wasn't stupid. I was ignorant about a lot of things, but I wasn't stupid. And then we weren't. Anyway, I remember going home to this little town to work in the fields for the summer. I had a haterock and I was hauling hay, and that's why I made money part of the time to go to school and make my living. And also during the winter months when I was a high school kid, I hauled whiskey to the bootleggers and it was pretty lucrative. It really was, and you ought to try. You don't want to get caught now. That was going to cut into your profits and a hurry as you get caught, believe me. But it was a good sideline of income for me. Anyhow, I came home and this little town is so small, there's only the gymnasium is the central focus of everything that happens. We played basketball 24/7, all year round. That's all we did was play basketball, so the kids gathered in the local gym. And contrary to what you're thinking, I was good too. (Laughter) The place that I grew up so small, there was only seven in my graduating class in high school. I was valedictorian of the class, by the way, if that impresses you any. (Laughter) My twin brother finished in the top ten. (Laughter) So did everybody else. (Laughter) Yeah. (Laughter) But I went with this little local gym where I knew some kids would be gathered and hadn't seen some of them in a while. And I went up there and I got involved in a pickup basketball game to some of them, you know. And I remember that I'd nearly gotten a fight with one of my friends there. It's emotional, frustration, and I didn't know what was happening to me. And finally I got a little tired and went over and sat down on the front bleacher of this little gymnasium and this little East Texas town. And I had my head down just wondering what was wrong with me. And all of a sudden I saw some shoes in front of me down my feet. And I looked up and this young lady was standing there, this little five foot tall girl. Her name was Sue. And Sue, her name is Sue. Sue is one of my older sister's friends. She's like three years older than I was. And I didn't know her very well. I mean, I grew up around her and knew her, but she's one of my older sister's friends. We didn't talk to each other, you know. But she's standing there with this look on her face and she looks down at me and she says, "I need to talk to you, real insistently. I need to talk to you right now." And I said, "What do you want to talk to me about?" She said, "I don't want to talk to you. Let's go outside." And it was hot in there and cool outside, so I thought that was a good deal if I'm going to have to talk. I'm outside on the porch of this little gymnasium. And for the first time in my life, somebody started telling me about Jesus. I mean, she just launched into the story. I mean, just launched, just gushed into the story. You know, about Jesus and God and the church and the Bible and all this stuff just pouring out of her. And I'm sure she wasn't very good at it, but she better than anybody else that had ever been that talked to me, you know. But I was frustrated. I couldn't understand. I simply could not connect the dots and what she was trying to say. Nor why she was saying it. So finally, I was in frustration. I broke into her gushing conversation here with me and herself. And I said, "I just want to know why me. Why did you drag me out here and tell me this? There's a lot of other ones in there. We need to get one of them and bring them out here. Why me?" She said, "You want to know why you?" I said, "Yeah. That's what I ask." She said, "Let me tell you why you." She said, "A minute ago, when I saw you sitting over there on that bleacher, she said, "All of a sudden, you just looked like Tommy to me. Tommy, short, was her nephew. And he had come down from Dallas. He lived up here, came down there, a couple of times of wood and made him. Mark and I knew him, and we're acquainted with him." And she said, "Two weeks ago, Tommy was drunk. Early in the morning, drunk driving on the Dallas footwork turnpike. And he ran off the road and he ran into this big, black standard out in the median. And she said he was killed instantly. She said, "I felt guilty." She starts crying. I felt guilty for two weeks. Two weeks I felt guilty because I never said anything to him about Jesus. And I couldn't let the same thing happen to you that happened to him. Tommy was a nice looking young man. You get the drip. And she launches into the story again. All this stuff, all this stuff. And I couldn't handle it. I couldn't digest it. I couldn't get it. And I was angry. And so again, I shut her up. And I said, "Listen, Sue, I don't want to hear this. I don't want to hear this. I'm not interested in this. I want you to leave me alone." And she said, "Okay." And she did. For a little while. As a course of that week, there was a couple of times that she saw me in different places. And she would take a Bible. I remember she had a Bible with her once. And she opened it up someplace. I don't even remember where it was. She said, "I want you to read this verse." I said, "What?" She said, "I want you to read this verse." And she points this verse out to him. He makes me read it. She'd make me. I mean, she could jolt me into reading it. She'd only five feet tall. And I did. But she'd keep in contact with me. Okay, I'm condensing this. On Friday night of that week, myself, my dad, and a lot of his drinking guy buddies, we were at the kitchen table of this little shack that we lived in. And we were playing poker. Now, this was also another little lucrative sideline for me simply because they all got drunk. And, you know, I didn't, not into poker games. I didn't get drunk. They got drunk at the poker games. And I didn't, so, you know, it's pretty easy pickings. So, we were in there playing poker. And I grew up from a little time with a little boy doing this. We were in there playing poker on Friday night with all the guys, you know. And all of a sudden, from the front door, the door's open. We didn't have any air conditioning, didn't any. Well, no screen door. I hear a voice shout through the door from the dark and it's outside calling my name. And I immediately recognize the voice. This is Sue calling outside. And, you know, it's embarrassing to me for all these guys to hear her calling my name or anybody, girl calling my name out there. And so I get up and decide they got a good hand, you know. So I get up and go outside and she's out there. And again, this insistence, this intensity, she said, you know, with tears in her voice. She said, I want you to promise me something. I said, I'm not promising you anything. What would it be that I promised you if I promised you something? She said, promise me you'll go somewhere with me tomorrow night. I said, no way, I'm not going anywhere with you tomorrow night. I mean, I'm thinking about my reputation at this point in time. You know, I mean, this is an old woman three years older and I don't want to be seen around town with her. Anybody see us with her? I said, where would we go if we went somewhere? She said, well, I just want you to promise me you'll go. I said, no, I know where we're going. She said, well, we're going to go to this thing where this guy, well, it's a crusade type thing. And I said, what's a crusade? I think these two armies fought a thousand years. You know, I'm thinking maybe we're going to see a war movie. Well, what is that? I said, so what is that? What are you talking about, a crusade? She said, well, it's sort of kind of this guy you're going to like him. He's a young man and he speaks and he talks and you're going to like him. I promise you're going to like him. He sort of kind of preaches. I said, oh, one of those religious things. She said, yeah, yeah, but please promise me. You'll go promising. I said, OK, I promise. I will. I'll go with you. If you just leave me alone. This one time, I'll do this one time. If you just not bother me again. She said, OK. And she left. Next morning, I get up. I get running this conversation through my line. I think I'm not going to this crusade thing. I don't want to do it. I feel coerced into it. I'm just, I'm not doing it. So I just left. I took off, drove to Dallas. About two and a half hours. And I desperately visit one of my sisters and her little family. And there's mostly to get away from Sue. I didn't want to go. She couldn't find me. All right. She can't find me where I am. And I sit down the lunch with my sister and so forth. And the phone rings. And my sister who knows Sue. She's the one that knows her. She goes and answers the phone. She comes back in there with a puzzle. Look on her face. She said, Sue's on the phone. And wants to talk to you. I said, dang. She found me. And I hate going there to talk to her. I pick up the phone and immediately when I say hello, she starts balling. I mean, crying, balling. I know you understand what balling means, don't you? You're from Texas. You understand balling. She balls and builders and boo-hoo's. And you promised me, you promised me, you'd go in there, you'd run away and try to hide. And by the way, you lied to me. You lied to me. You lied to me. I did lie. I did lie. That's what people that don't know Jesus do when people that do know him try to get them to meet him sometimes. You know what I mean? It is life. Finally, I broke in her ball and crying. I hate women crying. And she started crying again and I finally said, okay, I got time. I got time. I can come home and change clothes. It's not over. I'll come. I'll go. So I did. She quit balling and I went. I went by a picture. I went to this little high school baseball stadium in Sulphur Springs. We know where Sulphur Springs is. And there's a guy having a crusade there. I'm nervous. I don't want to go, but curious a little. Walking stands are full. Seats, metal chairs on the infield. We went and sat down in a metal, I did. And metal folding chair on the top of our first base would have been. The first base had been there. And curious, you know, he had a song sheet. We stood and sang and sat and stood and sang and did the deal. You know? Okay is okay. Nothing really. And then this young man comes up to speak. And it was just like Sue said. When he started speaking, I liked him. I liked his authoritative way of speaking. His demeanor, his passion, his honesty. By the way, the young man's name is James Robinson. By the way, who it was. Okay, you're wondering who it was. That's one thing you'll have to say about James is he's authoritative. I mean, he might be wrong, but he's never in doubt. (Laughter) Not that I think he's wrong. In case you're here today, James, forgive me for that because you're bigger than I am. Anyway, he started speaking. Last night of the crusade, the Saturday night, last night of the crusade, so everybody can go to their own church on Sunday. That's what worked in those days. And so this night, he's given his personal testimony, parts of it at least. He's giving that. He's telling him. And it captured me. You know, him growing up foster homes and, you know, alcoholism and the whole deal in some of you've heard his testimony just recently. And so I connected with what he was saying. Then James said something that made the first light that I ever received spiritually into my dark understanding. He said, "You don't, something like this." He said, "You don't have to be good to be saved." In other words, you don't have to be good enough to qualify. And I thought, "Maybe that's it. That's why I can't connect. That's why I can't understand. I know it's not because I'm stupid. It's because I can't understand it. I can't get it." And I thought, "That's it. That's probably the reason I can't understand it." It's because, see, I never felt good a day in my life. I felt well, but I never felt good. I didn't feel good because I wasn't good. From the time we were little boys, my daddy, who is as near to a perverted degenerate as anyone you would ever meet, took us places, took us around people and women, and they did things to us and said things to us. We saw things that little boys should never see and experience things. I just think about my grandkids, my grand son. Anyway, I never felt good. You say, "You don't have to be good to be safe." Hot talk, sweet. But I got it from my seat. I remember, you know, he gave me an altar call. I got it from my seat. Went down. I never remember walking and just standing there. All these people started coming. I got afraid. All these people, cradting around. And all of them looked like they were getting it. And I still wasn't getting it. And James had us pray. And I didn't know to pray. I didn't know to say the words. So I'm weeping. Just weeping. I'm still thinking, "This is passing me by. This is something is happening and I'm missing it. I'm not getting it. They are, but I'm not." And anyway, at the end of this, James did a wise thing. He said, "I want you to go over here to the side. There's some chairs set up. There'll be somebody talk to you." And so I just pushed along with the crowd weeping. And all of a sudden, I felt somebody grabbed me. I was his. He got me. And I looked up and this is old man. And he grabbed me. I mean, I'm truly about my age now. But he looked old then. He grabbed me. He got me. And I was his, you know. And we're walking along here and I'm weeping. I'm just broken, weeping. And he's got me by the shoulders. We get close to the chair over there and he stops. All of a sudden, he turns me around and grabs me by the shoulders. He turns me around and looks at me and says, "Stop that ball and boy so you can see me good." So he can understand me. That's a novel way of doing things now, isn't it? We go over to the chair. If you only got one chair and you're going to lead somebody to the Lord, what would you do? You let him sit in the chair, wouldn't you? He didn't. He sat down in the chair and said, "Get out in here in your knees in front of me boy. You need to see me." So I did. Didn't like being called boy. But anyway, old man sat down and put the Bible in his lap. I'm kneeling there. My face right there and kind of in the Bible. And I saw him look at the Bible, look at me. He looked the Bible, look at me back and forth two or three times. And he just snapped it shut right under my nose and pitched it down on the ground. I thought, "Well, I guess there's nothing in there that can help me." And then his tone softened. He was really a spiritual guy. His tone softened and he looked at me. And he said, "Son, if you'll be honest with God and you'll mean what you say, Jesus will come to your heart tonight. And when you die, you'll go to heaven." He said, "Well, you mean what you say?" I said, "Yes, sir. Tell me what to say." So he prayed this little prayer. I'm repeated after you're Jesus. You're Jesus. I know I'm the sinner. I know I'm the sinner. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. Give me the power to change. Give me the power to change. My Lord must say, "You're please come in and save me." Prayer is indelibly imprinted in my brain. And then he said, "You think Jesus will come into your heart." And I did it in my own words. And what before had been beyond my human capacity to comprehend seemed like. It became a living reality in my life. And I knew what James was talking about. And I knew what Sue had been trying to tell me. But the first emotion I felt was fear really was. A debilitating fear. And I thought, "What if this isn't real? What if this doesn't last until in the morning? What if I wake up in the morning when the sun's shining and it doesn't feel like it?" But it did. Sue comes up. She's all excited and made me feel a little better that she got so excited. She didn't know what I was. Just carrying on. On my way home. She said, "Okay. You need to go to church in the morning. Go to where I go to church and you need to get baptized." I said, "Okay. Whatever you tell me. I want to do whatever you all tell me to do." She didn't know what it meant. I asked her a question about dad. She said, "Well, it kind of has to do with water and you getting dunked." I said, "Okay. Whatever." I went home and I'm leaving a lot of this stuff out in here. But when I went home to the little shack that we lived in and I walked into the kitchen and my mama was in there washing dishes. No air conditioning. No running water inside the house. No interior bathrooms. I walked into the kitchen and leaned up against the cabinet. A little narrow place. My mom, to her back, was to me, she's been over. My mama, by this time, I called her so debilitated. She never left her at the house. She was emotionally, wouldn't go outside. She even, she was, she weighed about 90 pounds by this time. She was sick. She had some kind of disease. Some kind of blood disease. Things wouldn't heal. Her ring finger had a cut on it. I remember her ring cutting his shoulder. The cutting down into her finger and she didn't even know it. You know, she was sick. And she just hunched over the sink, methodically washing dishes in the dish pan, putting them over in the rinsing pan, you know, back and forth. Just 10 o'clock at night. Hot. Middle of the summer. She never acknowledged my presence in the room. But I leaned up against the cabinet behind her and I said, "Mama, something happened to me tonight." I didn't know how she was going to respond to this information. She never turned around and she said, "Oh, what? Tell me about it." I kept washing dishes. I said, "Well, I don't know really what happened. The old man that talked to me said that I got saved tonight. Mama, I reckon that's what happened. I reckon I got saved." And she just said, "That's good, son. I'm glad for you." And then I kind of been emboldened. I said, "Okay." And they told me that I'm going to church in the morning and I'm going to get baptized. And all of a sudden she froze. She didn't turn around but she froze. She said, "Your daddy's not going to like that." I said, "Mama, I don't care whether he likes it or not. I'm going to church in the morning. I'm going to get baptized." I have a long past carrying what he thought. So I'm going to go get baptized. And for the first time my mama turned around and looked at me and she said, "Can I go with you?" I said, "Sure, mama. It wouldn't have angelistic. I mean, it's just thinking, you know, I'm going to church. Mama said, "It'd be good to have somebody with me in case I mess up." So the next morning my mama, first thing she asked, her first thought. First thought, going to church, first thought was what? What do you think? A woman. I don't have anything to wear. That's her heart. She was right. She really didn't. But I told her, "It doesn't matter what you wear mama. They wear anything up there." And I'm thinking, I said, "This thing I went to tonight is kind of like church, you know?" And they just, people let them blue jeans and everything. It doesn't matter. And I'm thinking, "I hope this is true." Anyway, it was true. Next morning my mama, three of my sisters, one of my sisters' boyfriends, went to this little country church with me for the first time in our lives. I'm going to know people at this place. Everybody knows us. Our family, everybody knows us. Everybody knows us. I've worked for some of these people and done other things to these people. They're going to know, if you're part in the expression, well, I can't say it. I can't say the word in church. I can't. It's how we were known. But the good kids didn't play with us, and for good reason. I wouldn't let my kids play with us either if it was me. Anyway, we come in the church, you know, maybe seat about 100 people. Maybe 50 on each side, two little twos, middle aisle. We come in, sit down over here on this side and, you know, everybody's looking. They're okay. They do fine. They're friendly and so forth and seem to be relatively glad that we're there and all this. And I'm nervous and scared because Sue had said now, "Preach upon preaching at the end of that, you need to go down front and shake his hand and say, "My name's Clark Quinton. I got to say last night, James Rob's crusade meeting. I want to get baptized." I've got that memorized. So I'm waiting on my turn to go. And we did the song books. We stood and sat and sang. It did the deal. Preach your preachers. But I'm nervous. I don't know when to go. Every time he pauses, I think, "Is this the turn? Time? Is he going to have a stand-not?" I don't know. I mean, you know, somebody explain this to me. This works. I want to go, but I don't want to go at the right time. Anyway, it became obvious when the time to go was. And I stepped out in Ireland, taken several steps down here from the back of the auditorium. There's this rock-a-shout. I mean, it's loud. It sounded like a woman's voice. "Just blurry to God or hallelujah or something loud." Like that. And I'm thinking, "I've been to my first trip to church. I messed up and they're yelling at me." I turned around to see what she's like yelling about. And I saw her. When I turned around and saw her, she was yelling. My mama and my three sisters, three of my sisters, and the young man was all lined up behind me who were walking down the aisle toward the front. And they're thinking, "I'm going. I guess they're going too. Wherever I'm going, they're going." So I'm having my mama's crying. She's sick. She's sick. I mean, she didn't have anything to drink that morning. Understand? She didn't want anybody to smell it on her at church, so she didn't drink. She's sick. You don't drink in the morning. You're sick. She was sick. Weak, sick, trembling, weeping. And I go up. My name is Philip. I got saved last night at January. I'm going to get baptized. And I hear mama crying over my shoulder. I don't have time to talk to him about this much because I know she's about to faint. I know something's about to happen. Then I reach back to get her and I kind of gather her up here and proper up. She just baldens tears and snot. And I'm from the preacher. And I'm going to say, "Sir, this is my mama." And I said, "Sir, she's real bad. She's a real bad person." She was. And I said, "I honestly said, I don't know whether Jesus can save her or not, but you try to help my mama." And he took her hands and just stood there and stood there and looked at her. And I think he was overwhelmed. He didn't know what to do. He honestly didn't know what to do. His God wasn't quite big enough to handle somebody like my mama and me, I think. But anyway, he didn't even say anything. And I got angry about that. I'm saying to him, but seething, I'm thinking, "But she's not good enough. He didn't think she's good enough. I mean, she ain't caught." And I got mad and I thought, "Well, if she's not good enough, then I'm not even, I don't want to do it anymore." And then I just angrily kind of just took her away from him and took her over toward the front view. And I got to thinking to myself, "You know, I don't know where Jesus can save her or not either, but it's worth a shot. It's worth a try. It's not going to hurt your face. You're not going to need any worse off." And I intuitively knew two things. And new number one, Jesus was the only thing, person, this experience was the only thing that could ever help my mama. And secondly, if she didn't meet him that day she never would, I knew those two things. And I think I was right about both of them still. So I took her over to this pew, and she's balling and bellering. I set her down there, took her by their shoulders and looked in the face and said, "Mama, stop that balling so you understand what I'm saying." And she did. She did. She was always snuffling and I said, "Mama, mama, listen, mama, if you'll be honest with God, if you mean what you say," I'm thinking, "If you really, really mean what you say," Jesus would come into your heart today and you'll be saved and we need how you go to heaven. I mean, I just extended my theological education. And she said, "Yeah, I'll be honest, just tell me what to say." I said, "Do you understand that's all she's ever wanted, all she's ever been waiting for, I think, for years is just someone to tell her what to say, but they wouldn't tell her what to say." He wouldn't tell her what to say. We don't tell them what to say. We just don't tell them. And we'll let one of them get mad at us the first time and we won't ever go back. Sue didn't. She kept coming back. Anyway, my mama got saved that day. She prayed the prayer with me. She wept and wept and cried and I saw my mama week about 45 years of anger and pain and frustration and loneliness and hurt and rejection. She never drank another drop of alcohol, the Lord. She died two years ago. She was 82. All my sisters but one, met the Lord, their families. My twin brother got saved about 15 years later in prison. I led him to the Lord in prison on a visit. And he's doing great. But that he died without the Lord when he was 52. That's my story. Now, I'm telling you folks, there's some of you here today, some of you, and this is a divine appointment for you just like those of the world for me. Now, I can tell you two things. Jesus can change your life and your future and your eternity. As a matter of fact, he can change the future of many people around you, not just you. This is a divine appointment for you today. You thought it was happenstance but it's not. Secondly, there is a good chance that if you don't meet Jesus today, you never will. I'm not God so I don't know that ultimately, but I can tell you for certain there's a good chance you won't. If you don't today, it's a good chance. Light-rejected increases darkness. And somebody has told you today. You