In tough times, we need to remember why we are in the Christian products industry

I grew up with almost no knowledge of God. I was raised by wonderful, loving parents, both shaped by their parents and the Great Depression.

My mom and dad were both hard working, friendly, honest, giving of themselves and their time. They did everything they knew to raise my brothers, sister and me to be “good” kids.

But there was no emphasis in our home on God or His Word. I was raised in a certain branch of the Christian faith (which shall remain nameless) where we attended church almost every Sunday. It was all steeped in ritual, and nothing that I saw or heard there ever really grabbed my heart or my mind.

So somehow, by the age of 10, I decided that I was an atheist. I remember thinking that God and the supposed miracles I had heard about could not be true; after all, science had “proven” that.

When the Gideons handed out copies of their little New Testaments to students at our school in the fifth grade, I took one—all the while with my one atheist friend glaring at me as if I were giving up the good fight.

Throughout my early teens, I would sometimes lay awake at night gripped with sadness about what death would be like. I would think about my parents’ inevitable fate and my own, and lie there in fear. You see, an atheist has no hope beyond this life.

But I never really thought about turning to the Bible for answers to my questions. The New Testament I had accepted (from the Gideons)—because everyone else was taking one and I did not want to stand out from the crowd—still lay unread somewhere in my room.

Then, one day in my 15th year, I was at a yard sale with Mom. I had never been much of a reader growing up, so it was out of character for me to be drawn to books of any kind—let alone a book with a title like The Late Great Planet Earth. But somehow it was different with this little paperback that had taken the world by storm.

I bought the book for a whole 25 cents and began to read. Author Hal Lindsey told of the many prophecies in the Old Testament that all had their fulfillment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

The evidence set forth in those pages brought me intelligently to the point of taking a step of faith. The statistical impossibility of all of those biblical prophecies being fulfilled in one person made a believer out of me.

I thought: “So if ‘prophecy’ is real, then a creator God who knows the end from the beginning is possible. Who else could make such predictions except an all-knowing God?”

As I finished that book, I let the author and the Holy Spirit lead me in saving prayer—confessing Jesus as my Lord and Savior and believing that God, the Creator of the universe who I had once denied, loved me and the world so much that He sent Jesus to die for us and didn’t leave Him in the grave, but raised Him from the dead.

I had been born again.

After that, I started reading the Bible—the same small New Testament I had tucked away when I was in the fifth grade. Later, I took the step of buying my first full-sized Bible from a local Christian bookstore.

Why do I tell you all this? To encourage you, because you are a part of the story—maybe not mine directly, but certainly one of the thousands like it that can be told in communities across the country. These stories are still being written because of people like you.

Undoubtedly the book I read, by Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson, which I found in a yard sale in 1978, was first purchased from a Christian retail store. Had there been no Christian bookstore, there would have been no book lying there at the yard sale calling out to me and … well, I think you see the progression here.

God’s amazing grace and His wonderful Word—first illuminated to me through that cast-off book—have changed me forever.

So I thank Him for all the Christian retailers and all the others who serve the Christian product industry—not just for the impact on my life, but for the countless others who have also been reached as a result.

I consider it a privilege, too, to have been able to play a part in writing some other people’s stories since becoming a Christian.

I may never write a book like The Late Great Planet Earth, but many people have read the Christian messages we’ve printed on more than 10 million shirts created at Kerusso.

Earlier this year, we published our 2009 Christian Apparel Faith & Motivational Research Report, which revealed that 98% of respondents said they wanted the message on their Christian T-shirts to be noticed by unbelievers—and 56.8% actually had an unbeliever ask them about the message on their garment.

Even more dramatically, we discovered in the study that 7.4% of unbelievers who engaged in a conversation with someone wearing a Christian T-shirt that had sparked an exchange between the two had made a decision to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior immediately.

Recently, I heard from a store owner in Colorado who told of two women shoppers looking at the Kerusso apparel items on display in the shop. The owner continued to build a relationship with the pair as they regularly visited the store, and after a few weeks, one of the two made a decision to accept Christ.

I was thrilled to hear that. I am sure that I am not alone in believing that, in these difficult economic times, it’s important that we remind ourselves why we got into the Christian products industry in the first place.

So, please, take some time and think back to all the stories and testimonies you’ve heard like mine. Use them to encourage yourself in the Lord, or share a story in which you have had a part with someone else who needs a boost. Remind yourself and your colleagues that you and they are truly making a difference for eternity.

What we are doing has an impact in the lives of many today and in the next life. All of us who are involved in the Christian products world are part of the fulfillment of Romans 10:13-15 (NIV): “For, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ ”

Let’s renew our commitment to this work, because—standing together—we are making an eternal difference.

All of us who are involved in the Christian products world are part of the fulfillment of Romans 10:13-15.

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