A Gunshot & the Gospel

             The year—1978. My fiancé Brian and I served in leadership at Camp Hope for the disabled, located in Kent Cliffs, New York. Our counselors arrived. We had a great group of them and even some who lived with disabilities as well.

            One of the boys’ counselors was Tony! This fella won the hearts of us all and his campers as nothing seemed to stop him in his specially designed sports wheelchair. He wore a smile most if not all of the time.

            Brian and Tony became fast-friends, and that friendship has stayed sweet and strong over the decades from those days when we were all much younger … and thinner (ahem).

            I’ve asked Tony to be my guest blogger this week. May his testimony be a blessing to you!

             “I grew up in the ghettos of East Baltimore. There has always been high drug and illegal gun trafficking in the area. Most do not know that homicide in Baltimore is higher than New York City!

            I spent my pre-teen years listening to Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcom X publicly advocating for “black power” and equal rights for African Americans. Yes, I was around to hear them when they were actually alive! There was a Black Panther recruiting center just around the block from where I lived.

            As a result of illegal gun trafficking, I suffered a gunshot wound to my back which left me a T9-T10 paraplegic. The prognosis was that I would be permanently paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of my life, as told to me by the John’s Hopkins surgeon.

            When I sat in my wheelchair, I felt like I was suspended above a bowl of Jello. No feeling at all below my waist.

            My year and a half in rehabilitation was spent at Good Samaritan Hospital in Maryland. It was a shock to me and my physical therapist when I began to have feeling in my legs. Eventually, feeling and function returned in my right leg and waist.

            From my upbringing, I knew that only a “miracle” would have allowed me to gain mobility, so I began asking questions about the existence of God and what that had to do with me.

            As a result of being involved in a youth group Bible study, I discovered that the Lord Jesus Christ died a substitutionary death to pay for sins … my sins. There is no “scale of justice” here!  No good weighed against the bad. If that were the case, I would have been found wanting and sentenced to eternal separation from the God I love.

            Because the Lord Jesus Christ’s sacrifice was a substitute for me, I needed to accept and trust His sacrifice to be enough to buy my soul’s eternal safety.

            So, at a Youth for Christ meeting I acknowledged His sacrifice on my behalf and accepted it as a sufficient sacrifice. He volunteered to satisfy the price for sin I couldn’t pay.”

—Tony Hewitt

“Whoever has the Son has life;

whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,

that you may know that you have eternal life.” I John 5:12-13

            November 25^th that same year Tony sang at our wedding. The song? He Touched Me by Bill & Gloria Gaither. Here is a version you can listen to—although not Tony—sung by an okay group (smile):  

He Touched Me (Live At Bon Secours Wellness Arena, Greenville, SC/2018) - YouTube 

            In 1987 we shared in Tony and Teresa’s special day as they were joined in marriage! They’ve continued on through life with the joy of the Lord as their strength, being a blessing to so many lives around them.

            Thank You, God, for the lives of this brother and sister in Christ—for their zeal for you and their commitment—not only to each other—but to You for the cause of furthering the Gospel. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

 

*gunshot *paraplegic *Baltimore *miracle *YouthforChrist *Christssacrifice

*Hetouchedme *Gaither *commitment *Gospel 

Photo: Tony & Teresa Hewitt (used with permission)