Bill Stonebraker's Testimony, cont.

“Fortunately in Manhattan Beach I didn’t have the negative influences I had in Redondo."

FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH CHRIST

"One day I was at the beach and this group of Christians came down. I didn’t know anything about Christianity at the time; I didn’t know anything about Jesus. But these people came and set up a big umbrella and sang songs about being ‘fishers of men.’ They would sing the song and cast out an imaginary fishing line.”

Bill sat nearby, watching. Nobody spoke to him at all, but he could hear what the Christian kids were saying. They took out a book with no words in it. The first page was black. “Your heart is black because of sin,” they explained. “You’ve done wrong things and sinned against God.” They turned to a red page. “But the blood of Jesus Christ…” they continued, turning to a white page, “cleanses you from sin, making your heart white as snow.” Then they gave those listening an opportunity to pray to receive Jesus Christ into their hearts.

“As they said that prayer,” Bill recalls, “I can remember sitting off to the side, closing my eyes and repeating the prayer with this person standing 20 yards away. When I said that prayer, it was like a light went on in my life. Something happened to me. Nobody said anything to me, but something happened. And it was amazing – for the next couple years, my life really did change. As a little 10 year old, my life really started changing.”

In junior high school, Bill began to get involved with surfing. Because of Christ being in his life, there developed a genuineness about him that some of the surfer guys liked. It was a Christ-like innocence. However, as Bill got deeper and deeper into the surf scene, surfing began to be his god. Eventually he moved away from anything to do with Jesus.

SURF'S UP

In high school, with the demand to be cool, Bill started to become more and more antisocial, and moved further into the surfer subculture. It meant partying, drinking (drugs were not happening in the area at this time) and ditching school to go surfing. Soon the rebellious attitude he had as a little boy reared its head again. So along with the drinking, Bill got involved once again with sexual sin and rebellion.

The last three weeks of high school, the surf came up and Bill skipped school with some friends to surf all day. The Vice Principal suspected the four boys of cutting classes. Bill recalls: “He sat me in his office and asked, ‘Where were you?’ I knew how to lie, though. I looked him straight in the eye – because I knew if you looked someone in the eye, they would believe you – and I said, ‘Mr. Fisher, I was home with my sister’s kids, watching them because my sister needed me.’ And he believed me.”

“Then my other friends came in – the squealers. And the Vice Principal said, ‘I know you guys are lying, but Bill’s telling the truth. I can tell. A man who looks me in the eye when he answers me, I know he’s telling the truth.”

Eventually, because of Bill’s “squealer” friends, the man found out that Bill had been lying. “He took me into his office; he didn’t even want to look at me. He told me, ‘You are out of here. I don’t care if you’ve gone four years to Maricosa High, you can graduate from some other school. Get out!’” Fortunately, Bill’s mother was able to get him back into the school, and he did graduate.

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