30 years ago right here on this campus, God changed my life in a way that raises the hope that tonight some amazing things are going to happen.

Raise your hand if you're 20 years old.

Okay.

I was 20 years old in the summer of 1966 and I had come here from Greenville, South Carolina, Southern Baptist boy and I had grown up in White Oak Baptist Church and something happened. I don't know what it was, psychologically, physically,

relationally.

Along about the sixth grade, I began to be so nervous that I couldn't begin to speak in front of a group.

My throat would close up, my hands would shake, my knees would shake,

my heart would beat so fast that I could look down and see my shirt. I would be coming down

the row when you're supposed to read a paragraph in the eighth grade and I would get up and go to the bathroom and cry.

I had to give public book reports and civics and I didn't do it. took C's instead of that and I came to Wheaton College and I saw in

the catalog that you had to take a speech class and I hyperventilated and I said I'll put that off to the

very end and then and then maybe I'll drop out of college. And in the summer of 1966, as I was wondering how in the world I would make it through classes because some classes you had to do public things in.

Evan Welch, who was the chaplain in those days, came up to me during summer school as I was taking chemistry

trying to catch up with a pre-med course which God mercifully delivered me from with mononucleosis.

Got me on the track.

He said, you want to pray in chapel this summer?

Oh my goodness.

And I found myself saying, this is a divine moment, I found myself saying, this is a divine moment. I found myself saying, how long do you have to pray?

He said, 30 seconds. And out of my mouth came the most unbelievable okay.

You just can't imagine what this was like.

Maybe one or two or a half a dozen in this room know what I went through in high school.

I swore I'd never, if God gave me the opportunity,

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