Roads To Success 4.9

The New Guy

On a rainy, thundering Wednesday night, during a visit to a friend’s church, Wayne Huizenga, Jr. gave his life to Jesus Christ.  The Word of God spoken in the church that night finally energized all of Wayne, Jr.’s conversations with his friend, Captain Brad Fleetwood McDonald, all of the church sermons he had heard over the past months, and his own hours of elementary study of the Bible.

Arriving home that evening he shared the monumental news of his conversion to his wife, Fonda.  “My immediate reaction was, ‘Have you lost your mind?’” recalled Fonda with a warm laugh.

Wayne, Jr. was undaunted.  For the next eighteen months he made continued attempts to describe his experience to Fonda, and exactly what it meant.  “She told me at one point that I had been abducted by aliens,” Wayne, Jr. laughed.

Aliens certainly had been nowhere near Wayne, Jr. but he knew for certain he was a different man.  “I tried to go out to parties like I used to, and at first I felt terrible in the morning,” he related in his I Am Second interview.  “I called up my friends and I said, ‘I feel horrible!’  They’d say, ‘Well Junior, the way that you acted last night and the way you drank, you should.  You’re hung over, son!’”

But Wayne, Jr. knew there was more to it.  After only two or three such parties he called the friends who had invited him to the Wednesday evening church service.  After explaining what he had been experiencing his friends provided an answer.  It began with a reminder that he had invited God into his heart.  And then they explained that, when he prayed the prayer of acceptance, God entered his heart through the Holy Spirit.

“It all kind of clicked,” Wayne, Jr. remembered.  “Captain Brad, the hole in my heart, and my new relationship with Jesus.”

When his friends explained that the excessive drinking and other bad behavior saddened God, Wayne, Jr. in turn felt sadness.  His preference was to make God happy.

“I tried to drink less,” Wayne, Jr. told the I Am Second camera.  “Then I’d have a couple of drinks.  Then I’d say something that I knew was wrong.  And I’d set my drink down, and I’d find myself a quiet spot at the party, and I’d tell God I was sorry.”

The power of those confessions to God, along with the requests for forgiveness, would soon become evident.  “Eventually, years ago, I told Him [God] I don’t want to drink anymore,” Wayne, Jr. explained.  “And He said, ‘Okay Junior, you don’t have to drink anymore.’  And I got up the next morning haven’t had a drink since.  It’s power, the power to change.  At that point my wife still hadn’t come to know the Lord.”

Of course, no one was affected more by the changes in Wayne, Jr. than Fonda.  "The drinking stopped.  The carousing stopped.  He devoted himself to business in a way I had not seen before."

The bottom line was that Fonda's "new" husband worried her.  "The obvious changes were immediate," Fonda recalled.  "He had a change in attitude that was prfound.  And to me it was very frightening because this was the first time he had made such a radical change in his life without making me even vaguely a part of it."

"I had more patience with my wife.  I had more patience with my children, and with all those I came into contact with," Wayne, Jr. explained.  "I began to experience the peace I had seen in Captain Brad.  The sense of searching for something more began to subside."

Fonda may have found all of the changes in her husband unsettling, but she would soon see Wayne, Jr.’s new life put to the test when faced with a number of serious challenges.

 © 2012 Philip Kassel