I was shocked. It was April Fool’s Day! How could I EVER do something so scriptural on THIS day? Wouldn’t that be mocking God??? Wouldn’t I be committing sacrilege? I poured out my concerns to her.

She had the answer. Obeying God and His Word trumps every label, every date on the calendar, and every criticism that I could ever face.

So that evening, around 7:30 or so, a bunch of us trooped down to the rock quarry just outside of campus. Someone had a bundle of blankets for both me and the baptizer, Rick, to wrap each of us in after we stepped out of the cold April first water, and others built a blazing bonfire. Evidently, that group had everything down pat, having done this many times before, and I myself witnessed many baptisms after that in the very same quarry…some in the dead of winter when we had to break the ice!

I thought long and hard about that word “FOOL” many times after my April Fool’s Day baptism and discovered that the word frequents many passages and verses in the Bible. For example, Jesus told His disciples to stay away from rash name-calling in Matthew 5:22, “…everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.”  In other words, He nailed all of us on our attempts to crush others with weaponized labeling. OUCH!

However, the Word of God is not timid in the use of the word “fool”. In fact, scriptures use it multiple times to identify certain individuals—and not due to impulsive rage or outbursts. No, the word is used concerning a whole assortment of behaviors, and in particular, one unique point-of-view. I want to focus on that one perspective—brought to light more than once in the Bible—used to identify a certain type of fool. In this case, in the spirit of calm, reflective study, calling such a person a fool is NOT anti-Matthew 5:22.

“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ they are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; there is no one who does good.” (Psalm 53:1). If you look up Psalm 14:1, you’ll find almost the exact same declaration.

So—not my words, but the Words of the Psalmist—when someone declares that God does not exist; that He is a fairy tale or a Bronze age fabrication—they have effectively identified themselves as a fool. Good news is that right now multitudes of believers in Jesus once said the same thing and embraced the fool’s notion. However, somehow the Living God penetrated their worldview and made Himself known to them. For some, like me, it may take a few “visits” from the Spirit of God before they recognize “Wow! This is GOD! And He’s talking to ME!” but He knows how to work with hard cases. I challenge any of you in that category identified in the Bible as a “fool” (and I challenge agnostics as well, but He’s not so blunt in your case!) to simply ask Him to make Himself known to you. He will. But remember, He’s sovereign. He’s not a genie in a bottle, something you can conjure up in a spell or incantation, a magic 8 ball (do they still sell those things?), or a gum machine where you drop in the quarter and out pops the gumball. He is God, King of kings, Lord of lords, and is subject to no one’s commands. But He is also Love, and in love, He will reach out to you in the way He has determined best suits YOU. Remember, this is not about giving you a goosebump moment, but it’s all about preparing you for a lifelong (and beyond) relationship with Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ.

So, in honor of the 49^th anniversary of my water baptism in a cold rock quarry at 7:30 in the evening, I want to honor God and challenge you on this April Fool’s Day to open your heart and simply ask Him, “Will You reveal Yourself to me?” I will be praying for you in the meantime.

Dorothy

© 2024, Dorothy Frick

My testimony, Part 2

Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love. Because of your great mercy wipe away my sins! Wash away all my evil and make me clean from my sin! Psalm 51:1-2, Good News Translation

Repentance is a funny thing. It demands that you recognize your own sin; but it is also accompanied, very often, by an abhorrence of what you have allowed, done, or become; and true repentance will birth a change of heart and behavior in you as well.

When I was in high school, I quit drugging and drinking after the heavenly “vision” I had experienced my junior year one night while on opium. Some may consider this to be an act of repentance, but it wasn’t. Yes, I changed my behaviors; yet I, myself, remained unchanged.

Later, in college after I had resumed drinking (and became quite accomplished at it!), I realized late on Halloween night, 1974, after hours of partying without feeling any effect of all the liquor I’d consumed, that I had become an alcoholic. I wept and grieved about the control I had allowed alcohol to gain over my life (my dad had been an alcoholic as long as I’d been alive), and I told God how sorry I was…but even that was not full repentance. I sorrowed, but my behaviors remained stuck, unchanged.

After crying out to God on November first, I continued drinking but didn’t enjoy it; I felt enchained by it and couldn’t get free. In fact, a couple of days after Christmas, once again, there I was, getting drunk in a bar while my friends partied away with glee. As I sat alone, absentmindedly watching the band play song after song, I noticed that many of the partiers on the dance floor were swaying with their arms lifted up to the sky. Just then I heard a voice in my ear: Lifted hands are a sign of worship.

I dropped my head and said, “I’m in hell.” I acknowledged my sin but had no idea where to go from there.

But God had a plan, and He came through for me in the most unexpected way.

Two evenings later, on December 29, I received a phone call. I took it in my parents’ bedroom on their princess telephone while standing next to their full-length mirror. (For those of you much younger than me, princess phones were quite the thing back then.) My friend on the other end wanted to know if I was planning to get drunk on New Year’s Eve. Now remember, I had gotten smashed just two nights earlier and desperately wanted to quit but felt utterly unable to do so.

Out of nowhere, I heard my mouth saying, “Haven’t you heard? I quit drinking.”

“You WHAT?!” she bellowed. I WHAT?! my mind echoed.

“What are you talking about?” she persisted.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror and gave myself a puzzled look. I also noticed a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

“Drinking is so un-ecological! Think of it! You drink and drink and drink, and all those resources are just wasted! Trashed! It’s just not good for the environment!” I could feel my mind scrambling for some sort of excuse to cover for what my mouth had just announced.

“Oh man, are you ever messed up!” she exclaimed, and with that our conversation abruptly ended.

There I was, standing before my parents’ full-length mirror, and two things happened. First, I felt something literally leave my body, making me feel about two thousand pounds lighter. Second, as I looked into that mirror, my face was glowing. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. Something very profound had just happened to me, that’s for sure, and I had a feeling that Jesus was at the bottom of it.

I went to my bedroom and found a daily devotional I had just bought sometime in November to make sense of my spiritual condition. Instead of opening it to December 29, I opened to my birthday page. And there, in bold Living Bible terminology was Hebrews 10:19-20. It said, “And so, dear brothers, now we may walk right into the very Holy of Holies, where God is, because of the blood of Jesus. This is the fresh, new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us by tearing the curtain—his human body—to let us into the holy presence of God.”

And then I saw Him. There in my bedroom, all alone, I saw Jesus opening His chest with His two hands and beckoning me to enter through Him into the presence of the Father. And as I wept in thankfulness to Him, I said, “I believe I’m a Christian now!”

And thus my journey ended; and so my journey began.

Dorothy

“You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord…” Jeremiah 29:13-14a

“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation…for whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:9-10, 13

© 2015, Dorothy Frick, and updated 2017 and 2022.

I ran across this verse earlier this week and it hit me—the prophet was lamenting the seriously insignificant number of souls who simply heard the good news of God’s love and as a result embraced it in faith. To top it off, it seemed Isaiah was also expressing the sad fact that even when the Lord went further in His pursuit of people’s souls by “revealing His arm” (a metaphor for His intervening power), again, very few grasped the significance of His overture and then nonchalantly turned back to their own deal.

I had been one who heard the message…and scoffed. For years I scoffed those who conveyed this message—although internally I questioned, I prayed, I sought. I would listen to George Harrison singing “My Sweet Lord” as I hid away in my dark bedroom lit only by a red candle, and I’d whisper, “Come into my heart NOW!!” Nothing.

And yet, Someone was quite aware of my search despite my outward disdain.

And then one night He revealed His arm…

It was a snowy night late in January of 1972 after a high school basketball game. My date and I planned to go to a party, but he took a detour to a park where he showed me two joints that he wanted to share with me. I was game but told him that they would likely have no effect on me—I’d smoked pot eleven times before without any noticeable results. (Have I ever mentioned that one of my quirks is an OCD tendency to count things?) He assured me that these were different—they were laced with opium.

When we got back to his car after puffing them down to nothing, I said to him, “I told you these would have no effect…” And then my words echoed back at me, again and again.

As he drove to the party, I was in a virtual echo-chamber. I could see nothing but flashes and sparkles. He commented to me as he was driving, “That tree just turned into a pinecone.”

Unconcerned about having a hallucinating chauffeur driving me around the streets of our town, I replied, “Give my regards to its mother.” I was too busy in my echo-chamber to give much thought to safety.

And then a series of hallucinations happened that resulted in a type of “line in the sand” between the Lord and me. First, as I looked out of the big windshield on that dark January night, I saw my mom’s loving face filling a brilliant blue sky. I was horrified, realizing that I was breaking all of her rules, potentially hurting her very deeply. Then her face was gone, and I saw the dark expanse of the starry heavens and thought, “God can see me!” so I ducked below the dashboard in an attempt to hide from the Almighty.

What happened next forever changed the way I viewed Jesus. Immediately I was at my trial on Judgment Day (not a popular topic in the particular mainline denominational church I attended). I was about to be sentenced to Hell by a raging jury; they shouted at me with faces filled with fury, pounding their fists. I stood with my head hung down knowing I deserved no mercy. And then Jesus approached. He was robed in white with a gold cord around His waist and radiated golden liquid love. He first turned to the jury, raised both hands and then lowered them in a gesture of silence. Begrudgingly, the jury quieted as the Lord turned to me.

I will never forget the love I saw in His face as He gazed into my eyes while speaking to the jury. “This is My own dear daughter whom I love very much. She wants to be with Me. I think she will.”

With that, the hallucination/vision faded. I was back in the car, in a vehicle driven by someone who had just smoked the same stuff I had—and I was very aware of the dangerous position I was in. But a deep sense of peace and God’s protection came over me as I said to myself, “I’ll be a Christian someday.”

© 2015, Dorothy Frick, and updated 2017 and 2022.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish, so that he may become wise.1 Corinthians 3:18

I never would have planned it this way, but I was water baptized on April Fools’ Day. The last thing I would have ever dreamed of doing was to make such a serious act of commitment to Jesus on a day associated with pranks and practical jokes. But God sees things differently.

I had been saved barely three months; yet every time I turned on my newly-discovered Christian radio station, all I heard them talking about was water baptism. I soaked it up, but was utterly perplexed. How do I get someone to baptize me? I pondered. I didn’t go to a traditional church; my church was the Tuesday/Thursday night dorm Bible study. My pride was kicking in—I didn’t want to be laughed at for my ignorance about baptism—but nevertheless, I sought out a seasoned saint in the dorm. She was the ripe old age of 21 and about as learned as Moses. Sheepishly, I asked her to explain it to me.

Instead of teasing me for my limited knowledge, her face lit up. She got on the phone with Rick, the leader of our Bible study, and said, “We’re having baptism tonight. Get everything ready!”

The only problem: I was mortified that it was April Fools’ Day! Wouldn’t I dishonor God and open Him up to ridicule if—of all days—I was baptized on April Fools? I almost backed out.

When my wise counselor perceived my dilemma, she assured me that God would not be offended if I got baptized on April first. In fact, she shared, I was obeying Scripture—I was allowing myself to be foolish so that I could become truly wise (see 1 Corinthians 3:18). It was settled. I was getting baptized—that very night.

This was the first of many baptisms I attended while in college; every one of them was an event full of love, joy, camaraderie, and the first blush of commitment to Jesus Christ as new believers obeyed the command to be baptized in the name of Jesus.

Before I was saved I had watched this motley crew of Christians trek back to the dorm more than once after water baptisms late at night—that’s how I knew who the believers in the dorm were when I needed them later on—and here I was—on April Fools’ Day, 1975, doing the same thing. Who would have thought?

The group of fifteen or so of us hiked down to the rock quarry across campus. Some of the guys had gone ahead of us to build a huge bonfire on the bank. Several of the ladies were carrying towels and blankets. I invited three very special friends who didn’t attend our Bible study to witness my “burial and resurrection”—Linda, who was unsaved; Miriam, who was from a prominent family in her mainline Protestant church; and Carla, who was backslidden.

Rick shared on water baptism from the Bible: “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). By the light of the fire, I saw joy and expectation on everyone’s faces—except for Linda’s, Miriam’s, and Carla’s. Their heads hung low; none of them gave eye contact either to Rick or to me.

It was time. Around 8:30, with stars twinkling in the sky, I followed Rick (another Moses-type to me—he was nearly 22 and had been saved most of his life) into the quarry. The water took my breath away, it was so cold, but the joy I was experiencing warmed me to the core.

“Dorothy, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” Rick asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Then in front of these witnesses, I baptize you in the name of Jesus!” And with that, he dunked me under the nearly-freezing water and pulled me back up.

On the bank, I heard whooping and hollering, followed by guitar and the sound of loud, jubilant singing:

“Break forth into joy, oh my soul! Break forth into, oh my soul!

For in the presence of the Lord, there is joy forevermore;

Break forth, break forth into joy, oh my soul!”

As Rick and I emerged from the water, both of us were greeted with blankets wrapped around our shoulders; and as I stood by the fire, I received joyful hugs all around. Everyone was beaming ear to ear, worshiping around the crackling bonfire—everyone, that is, except Linda, Miriam, and Carla. All three of them—the unsaved, the religious, and the backslider—were weeping uncontrollably.

God was touching each one of them, very deeply, that April Fools night.

Linda got saved less than a year later, getting baptized in the quarry herself in the dead of winter when we had to break the ice covering it—and now she is a prominent businesswoman in my area; Miriam wrote me a beautiful letter describing how the Scriptures came alive to her that night and how “newness of life” meant something new to her now, as well; and Carla went on to return to her first love, Jesus—and she has been winning souls to Him ever since.

As for me, I was through with trying to appear wise. I realized that the wisdom of the world was absolute foolishness to God; if I truly wanted to be wise, I must become foolish first—with the foolishness of God. And then—and only then—would I become wise.

And that’s no April Fools.

Dorothy

© 2016, Dorothy Frick

© 2017, Dorothy Frick

My testimony part 3:

Be merciful to me, O God, because of your constant love. Because of your great mercy wipe away my sins! Wash away all my evil and make me clean from my sin! Psalm 51:1-2, Good News Translation

Repentance is a funny thing. It demands that you recognize your own sin; but it is also accompanied, very often, by an abhorrence of what you have allowed, done, or become; and true repentance will birth a change of heart and behavior in you as well.

When I was in high school and quit drugging and drinking due to the heavenly “vision”, some may have considered this to be an act of repentance, but it wasn’t. Yes, I changed my behaviors; yet I, myself, remained unchanged.

Later, in college when I recognized that I had become an alcoholic, I grieved terribly about the control I had allowed drinking to gain over my life and told God how sorry I was, but even that was not full repentance. I sorrowed, but my behaviors remained stuck, unchanged.

After crying out to God in November, 1974, I continued drinking but didn’t enjoy it; I felt enchained by it and couldn’t get free. In fact, a couple of days after Christmas, once again, I was getting drunk in a bar while my friends partied away with glee. As I sat alone, absentmindedly watching the band play song after song, I noticed that many of the folks on the dance floor were swaying with their arms lifted up to the sky. Just then I heard a voice in my ear: Lifted hands are a sign of worship.

I dropped my head and said, “I’m in hell.” I had acknowledged my sin but had no idea where to go from there.

But God had a plan, and He came through for me in the most unexpected way.

Two evenings later, on December 29, I received a phone call. I took it in my parents’ bedroom on their princess telephone while standing next to their full-length mirror. (For those of you much younger than me, princess phones were quite the thing back then.) My friend on the other end wanted to know if I was planning to get drunk on New Year’s Eve. Now remember, I had gotten smashed just two nights earlier and desperately wanted to quit but felt utterly unable to do so.

Out of nowhere, I heard my mouth saying, “Haven’t you heard? I quit drinking.”

“You WHAT?!” she bellowed. I WHAT?! my mind echoed.

“What are you talking about?” she persisted.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror and gave myself a puzzled look. I also noticed a small smile tugging at the corner of my mouth.

“Drinking is so un-ecological! Think of it! You drink and drink and drink, and all those resources are just wasted! Trashed! It’s just not good for the environment!” I could feel my mind scrambling for some sort of excuse to cover for what my mouth had just announced.

“Oh man, are you ever messed up!” and with that our conversation abruptly ended.

There I was, standing before my parents’ full-length mirror, and two things happened. First, I felt something literally leave my body, making me feel about two thousand pounds lighter. Second, as I looked into that mirror, my face was glowing. I’d never seen anything like it in my life. Something very profound had just happened to me, that’s for sure, and I had a feeling that Jesus was in the middle of it.

I went to my bedroom and found a daily devotional I had just bought sometime in November to make sense of my spiritual condition. Instead of opening it to December 29, I opened it to my birthday page. And there, in bold Living Bible terminology was Hebrews 10:19-20. It said, “And so, dear brothers, now we may walk right into the very Holy of Holies, where God is, because of the blood of Jesus. This is the fresh, new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us by tearing the curtain—his human body—to let us into the holy presence of God.”

And then I saw Him. There in my bedroom, all alone, I saw Jesus opening His chest with His two hands and beckoning me to enter through Him into the presence of the Father. And as I wept in gratefulness to Him, I said, “I must be a Christian now!”

And thus my journey ended; and so my journey began.

Dorothy

“You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord…” Jeremiah 29:13-14a

“…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation…for whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Romans 10:9-10, 13

© 2015, Dorothy Frick, and updated 2017.

My testimony Part 2:

After Jesus appeared to me while I was in an opium-induced hallucination back in January, 1972, I decided that I needed to stop all my drugging and drinking. After all, I would be a Christian some day. This began a very frustrating, legalistic season in my life. I stopped drinking; I stopped doing drugs; I was working my way to Heaven.

This lasted a good year and a half…but then I went to college. There was no way I could attend Party School, USA, and not join in on the fun! Therefore, I compromised with my savior (who was, frankly, me, myself, and I at the time): I could drink all I wanted to, but no dope.

Quite honestly, I learned something profound through that decision. Improving myself was not the same thing as being a new creature. I had tried to be good for God; however, I was terribly bored with that lifestyle, and deep down, I knew I still wanted to party.

I jumped into freshman year with gusto. Five of us—three gals and two guys—became a close-knit band, gallivanting from party to party, kegger to kegger, and bar to bar. I taught them camp songs that we sang at the top of our lungs through the streets of the campus following our nights of drinking; after that we would return to the dorm and buy chocolate milk as a chaser, always throwing the empty cartons on the roof of the dorm lobby. After the five of us parted ways for the evening, it was my practice to sit on the landing of the seventh floor stairwell and talk to God about the evening’s adventure.

Life was good; I was a good person—I wasn’t doing drugs and I was keeping the lines of communication open with God. I was pretty much in charge of life and doing a darn good job of it. And then came the summer.

I had been assigned the role of primitive camp director at my summer camp. I loved that camp, I loved the woods, I loved primitive camp, I loved the magic of it all. However, there was one problem. I made a lousy primitive camp director. I could build fires and shelters with the best of them; I could spit a watermelon seed further than most; however, I had no clue how to build a diving tower, the premier project every summer at primitive camp. You’d think I’d just tell the camp director that neither I nor the young man hired to assist me had any idea how to manage that job, but as a daughter of the seventies, “I was woman, hear me roar,” and I couldn’t swallow my pride enough to admit “WE NEED HELP OVER HERE!” Two sessions later—and no tower—sent up a big red flag back at main camp: Get a skilled male counselor over to primitive camp and do it now!

Although I felt relieved, the whole thing mortified me. No one else thought anything about it (except probably the male counselor who lost his job); however it left me feeling like a total failure. My fantasy of being a super woods-woman was crushed; frankly, by the end of that summer, I was spiraling into disillusionment and near self-loathing.

Sophomore year couldn’t come too quickly. My two female friends had joined sororities, but I still had my trusty partners-in-crime, John and Charlie. We partied our way through first semester, and on Halloween, I decided to take a little alcoholic trip down memory lane. I purchased a bottle of Boone’s Farm apple wine and a six-pack of beer—the first smorgasbord of liquor I got pass-out drunk on back in high school. Dressed as Mary Poppins, I downed all of it as I wandered the campus with Charlie, John, and a few others. And I discovered something that utterly shook my already-fragile frame of mind—I wasn’t getting drunk; I wasn’t even tipsy. I needed far more alcohol to achieve far less! And then it dawned on me—I had become an alcoholic, just like my dad.

The next morning, November first, I woke up early, fighting a growing, gnawing sense of panic—I’m out of control! I’m not in charge of my life; I’m a mess! My fantasy about my personal invincibility had been eroding rapidly ever since the diving tower fiasco; and now here I was—an alcoholic at nineteen years old. And I knew I could do nothing about it.

I grabbed a Good News for Modern Man: New Testament and Psalms which I had acquired earlier in my quest for truth and headed out to the only place of refuge I could think of—the woods toward the edge of campus.

I made my way to a creek, and with tears streaming down my face, I trudged down the dried up creek bed, ashamed to speak to the God I once thought I had all but figured out. The sense of guilt and unworthiness overwhelmed me as I carefully held the Bible, frightened of the contrast between its purity and my sin.

It fell open. Fearing to read it, but needing to with every fiber of my being, I saw the heading: Psalm 51.

¹Be merciful to me, O God,
    because of your constant love.
Because of your great mercy
    wipe away my sins!
² Wash away all my evil
    and make me clean from my sin!

³ I recognize my faults;
    I am always conscious of my sins.
⁴ I have sinned against you—only against you—
    and done what you consider evil.
So you are right in judging me;
    you are justified in condemning me.

I remembered the jury in that hallucination so long ago. I continued reading.

⁷Remove my sin, and I will be clean;
    wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

I wanted nothing more than to feel clean again.

¹⁰Create a pure heart in me, O God,
    and put a new and loyal spirit in me.
¹¹ Do not banish me from your presence;
    do not take your holy spirit away from me.
¹² Give me again the joy that comes from your salvation,
    and make me willing to obey you.
¹³ Then I will teach sinners your commands,
    and they will turn back to you.

With all my heart I desired that.

¹⁷ My sacrifice is a humble spirit, O God;
    you will not reject a humble and repentant heart. (Good News Translation)

Feeling lifted but still heavy-hearted, I picked my way back out of the creek bed, through the woods, and back to the dorm.

© 2015, Dorothy Frick, and updated 2017.

Next: December 29, 1974—Jesus to the rescue

One of the last stanzas in the carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” asks this of the Lord:

“O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.” (Phillips Brookes, 1868)

This birth is exactly what happened within me in 1974, four days after Christmas. I want to take a few days to share with you my personal journey to both the manger and the cross. Perhaps my story is somewhat non-traditional; however, as this same carol declares:

“No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.”

I was raised in a “Christian” family; we were Presbyterian, but the church we attended in the sixties focused more on issues of social relevance than it did the state of our souls. As far as I could tell, everyone went to Heaven if they were good; Hell was likely a really bad state of mind; and the devil was either an allegorical representation of evil or a red-pajama’d fairy tale, believed in only by the weak-minded.

My mom had been raised by a staunch southern Baptist. She and her sisters married intellectual men and shunned the more “primitive” demonstration of Christianity. Whereas Mom and Dad held to the ritual of denominational Protestantism, my aunts and their spouses ran as far away from religion as they could. Grandma was the “black sheep” of the family; we visited her only because we had to; we put up with her praying over the meals only because we had to; we tolerated her “are you saved?” inquiries only because that was part of the whole package of who she was—and the rules said we had to go see her.

I didn’t mind Grandma, though; I secretly admired her persistence in the face of eye-rolling, dismissive behavior, and condescending comments.

At home, however, with Mom and Dad, religion—especially talk of relationship with God (and even worse, with Jesus)—was taboo. If you wanted to see over-the-top discomfort, just drop the J-bomb. Talk of Jesus was fine at church—where it was safe—but you didn’t bring Him into the conversation at home unless you wanted to be branded a religious fanatic like Grandma.

One snowy night late in January of 1972 after a high school basketball game, my date and I planned to go to a party. He took a detour to a park where he showed me two joints that he wanted to share with me. I was game, but told him that they would likely have no effect on me—I’d smoked pot eleven times before without any noticeable results. (Have I ever mentioned that one of my quirks is an OCD tendency to count things?) He assured me that these were different—they were laced with opium.

When we got back to his car after puffing them down to nothing, I said to him, “I told you these would have no effect…” And then my words echoed back at me, again and again.

As he drove to the party, I was in a virtual echo-chamber. I could see nothing but flashes and sparkles. He commented to me as he was driving, “That tree just turned into a pine cone.”

Unconcerned about having a hallucinating chauffeur driving me around the streets of our town, I replied, “Give my regards to its mother.” I was too busy in my echo-chamber to give much thought to safety.

And then a series of hallucinations happened that resulted in a type of “line in the sand” between the Lord and me. First, as I looked out of the big windshield on that dark January night, I saw my mom’s loving face filling a brilliant blue sky. I became terribly convicted, realizing that I was breaking massive rules, potentially hurting her very deeply. Then her face was gone, and I saw the dark expanse of the starry heavens and thought, “God can see me!” so I ducked below the dashboard in an attempt to hide from the Almighty.

What happened next forever changed the way I viewed Jesus. Immediately I was at my trial on Judgment Day (not a popular topic in the particular mainline denominational church I attended). I was about to be sentenced to Hell by a raging jury; they shouted at me with faces filled with fury, pounding their fists. I stood with my head hung down knowing I deserved no mercy. And then Jesus approached. He was robed in white with a gold cord around His waist and radiated a golden liquid love. He first turned to the jury, raised both hands and then lowered them in a gesture of silence. Begrudgingly, the jury quieted as the Lord turned to me.

I will never forget the love I saw in His face as He gazed into my eyes while speaking to the jury. “This is My own dear daughter whom I love very much. She wants to be with Me. I think she will.”

With that, the hallucination/vision faded. I was back in the car, in a vehicle driven by someone who had just smoked the same stuff I had—and I was very aware of the dangerous position I was in. But a deep sense of peace and God’s protection came over me as I said to myself, “I’ll be a Christian someday.”

© 2015, Dorothy Frick, and updated 2017.

I never would have planned it this way, but I was water baptized on April Fools’ Day. The last thing I would have ever dreamed of doing was to make such a serious act of commitment to Jesus on a day associated with pranks and practical jokes. But God sees things differently.

I had been saved barely three months; yet every time I turned on my newly-discovered Christian radio station, all I heard them talking about was water baptism. I soaked it up, but was utterly perplexed. How do I get someone to baptize me? I pondered. I didn’t go to a traditional church; my church was the Tuesday/Thursday night dorm Bible study. My pride was kicking in—I didn’t want to be laughed at for my ignorance about baptism—but nevertheless, I sought out a seasoned saint in the dorm. She was the ripe old age of 21 and about as learned as Moses. Sheepishly, I asked her to explain it to me.

Instead of teasing me for my limited knowledge, her face lit up. She got on the phone with Rick, the leader of our Bible study, and said, “We’re having baptism tonight. Get everything ready!”

The only problem: I was mortified that it was April Fools’ Day! Wouldn’t I dishonor God and open Him up to ridicule if—of all days—I was baptized on April Fools? I almost backed out.

When my wise counselor perceived my dilemma, she assured me that God would not be offended if I got baptized on April first. In fact, she shared, I was obeying Scripture—I was allowing myself to be foolish so that I could become truly wise (see 1 Corinthians 3:18). It was settled. I was getting baptized—that very night.

This was the first of many baptisms I attended while in college; every one of them was an event full of love, joy, camaraderie, and the first blush of commitment to Jesus Christ as new believers obeyed the command to be baptized in the name of Jesus.

Before I was saved I had watched this motley crew of Christians trek back to the dorm more than once after water baptisms late at night—that’s how I knew who the believers in the dorm were when I needed them later on—and here I was—on April Fools’ Day, 1975, doing the same thing. Who would have thought?

The group of fifteen or so of us hiked down to the rock quarry across campus. Some of the guys had gone ahead of us to build a huge bonfire on the bank. Several of the ladies were carrying towels and blankets. I invited three very special friends who didn’t attend our Bible study to witness my “burial and resurrection”—Linda, who was unsaved; Miriam, who was from a prominent family in her mainline Protestant church; and Carla, who was backslidden.

Rick shared on water baptism from the Bible: “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). By the light of the fire, I saw joy and expectation on everyone’s faces—except for Linda’s, Miriam’s, and Carla’s. Their heads hung low; none of them gave eye contact either to Rick or to me.

It was time. Around 8:30, with stars twinkling in the sky, I followed Rick (another Moses-type to me—he was nearly 22 and had been saved most of his life) into the quarry. The water took my breath away, it was so cold, but the joy I was experiencing warmed me to the core.

“Dorothy, have you received Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” Rick asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

“Then in front of these witnesses, I baptize you in the name of Jesus!” And with that, he dunked me under the nearly-freezing water and pulled me back up.

On the bank, I heard whooping and hollering, followed by guitar and the sound of loud, jubilant singing:

“Break forth into joy, oh my soul! Break forth into, oh my soul!

For in the presence of the Lord, there is joy forevermore;

Break forth, break forth into joy, oh my soul!”

As Rick and I emerged from the water, both of us were greeted with blankets wrapped around our shoulders; and as I stood by the fire, I received joyful hugs all around. Everyone was beaming ear to ear, worshiping around the crackling bonfire—everyone, that is, except Linda, Miriam, and Carla. All three of them—the unsaved, the religious, and the backslider—were weeping uncontrollably.

God was touching each one of them, very deeply, that April Fools night.

Linda got saved less than a year later, getting baptized in the quarry herself in the dead of winter when we had to break the ice covering it—and now she is a prominent businesswoman in my area; Miriam wrote me a beautiful letter describing how the Scriptures came alive to her that night and how “newness of life” meant something new to her now, as well; and Carla went on to return to her first love, Jesus—and she has been winning souls to Him ever since.

As for me, I was through with trying to appear wise. I realized that the wisdom of the world was absolute foolishness to God; if I truly wanted to be wise, I must become foolish first—with the foolishness of God. And then—and only then—would I become wise.

And that’s no April Fools.

Dorothy

The Lord used Brother Capps in a very unusual way at a critical moment in my life, in a very tense situation long ago—and he wasn’t even there!

When I was born again, I jumped in with both feet. In my twenties, I frequently went out to the streets, along with other young Christians, to witness—sharing the Gospel and praying with the lost. The joy and freedom of expressing the good news with someone who was hungry for Jesus motivated my friends and me to continue going back, weekend after weekend.

As the church I attended grew to mega-church proportions, we were blessed to sit under the teaching of some of the finest Bible teachers in the country. One of those teachers was Charles Capps. At the same time that we were hosting a growing number of national speakers, just about everything else we did in that church was becoming more and more structured and organized. This included the weekend street-preaching jaunts.

Interest in this personal evangelism had spread in the church I was attending, and leadership was put in charge of this radical group of teens, twenties, and thirties for the sake of safety, oversight, and training for those who were new to one-on-one evangelism.

One weekend evening in my late twenties, we were ready to “hit the streets”. Small teams were assigned for the evening’s adventure, and two newer believers, a young man and woman, were assigned to accompany me.

When we arrived downtown, we met under the Gateway Arch and prayed together as a large group. We then made arrangements to meet back at McDonald’s—housed on a riverboat and anchored opposite the south leg of the Arch on the Mississippi River.

My little group took off together and each of us shared with various individuals as we walked along the cobblestone road that ran parallel to the river. Toward the end of the evening, we climbed up the wide set of steps that arced toward the south leg of the Arch and began sharing the gospel with a young woman we met near the top.

She was receptive to the message, and as I was about to ask her if she would like to pray with us, I noticed that my two companions had ditched me in favor of McDonald’s—an obvious Big Mac attack. Let ‘em go, I thought; this lady wants to receive Jesus.

But just as I was about to pray with her, her eyes nearly bugged out of her head, and backing away quickly, she just took off. Huh? I was wondering, perplexed. And as I turned around, I understood why that young woman had skedaddled so abruptly.

I found myself surrounded by six to eight young men, circling closely in on me. But before I had time to get frightened, something very unusual happened.

Suddenly, I was at my church. Oh, yeah, my body was still standing on the steps going up to the south leg of the Arch and I was still surrounded by six to eight strange young men, but in my spirit I was at church. I was at a meeting in which Charles Capps was speaking, and I could see and hear everything with crystal clarity. There he was, standing behind the pulpit preaching, and I could see the scalp on his head through his familiar crew cut—that’s just how vivid this “vision” was. And he was preaching a message about Jesus in a boat in the middle of a storm.

With my body still standing on the steps leading to the south leg of the Arch, Brother Capps was preaching in his Arkansas twang, “Jesus said, ‘Let us go to the other side of the lake’ and my brother, sister, if Jesus said, ‘Let us go to the other side of the lake,’ then nothing—no devil, no storm, no wind, no waves—nothing could stop Him from goin’ to the other side of the lake.”

And with that, there I was, back at the Arch, surrounded by this group of men. I noticed Riverboat McDonald’s, and I said out loud and with great authority, “I am going to McDonald’s.”

I don’t have a clue what those guys thought when I said this, but I passed through the midst of them without so much as a finger touching my body. As I stepped out of the circle and down the steps, the Holy Ghost spoke very clearly to my heart, “Walk, don’t run. Hold your head high, and don’t look back.”

I did as I was instructed, and walked, step by step, down that wide, curving stairway. Boom, boom, boom, my steps pounded decisively as I marched to the street below.

“Oooh, baby! You got fries with that shake?” they called out after me, along with other unmentionable “compliments”.

I never looked back. When I got to the street, I crossed it with my head held high. Boom, boom, boom, my marching feet blasted as I stomped across the gangplank bridge to McDonald’s. Walking tall and in the authority of Christ, I reached the threshold. Never before had the Golden Arches looked so good.

I opened the door and stepped into the wonderfully lit, French fry-soaked atmosphere. There, seated inside, were my two young team members and everyone else. “Hi, Dorothy! What took you so long? We’ve got a seat for you!”

And as the reality of what just happened dawned on me, my knees turned to Jello and buckled beneath me—and then I got up and ordered some fries.

Brother Capps returned to that church years later and I had the opportunity to share my story with him. He didn’t say a word; he just smiled, nodded his head, and then walked away.

May the help you need be made abundantly plain by the Holy Spirit in your time of trouble. The Lord is faithful.

Dorothy

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1b