Hi, I’m Scott Vernon, I’m the founder of Full Draw Ministries. I grew up in a loving home with a dad that instilled in me at a very early age that deer hunting is a privilege that we get to do. And I’m so thankful that for a father like him that taught me that deer hunting was a privilege that we got to enjoy. And if we were able to take something, if we were able to harvest an animal then it was just a bonus. And I’m privileged to pass that on to my son now and I’m just very thankful for that opportunity.

I grew up hunting on an island between the Alabama and the Tom Bigbee River. And it absolutely was a perfect place to grow up deer hunting—it had all kind of game. It had deer, it had turkeys, it had wild hogs and everything you could imagine. It had been in my family since the mid-1950’s, or at least my dad had been had been hunting there since the mid-1950’s. So I got to grow up virtually in a deer hunter’s, or more specifically, a bow hunter’s paradise.

It was absolutely perfect except for one thing. And that one thing was, well, it was between the Alabama and the Tom Bigbee River, and if upstate Alabama got a lot of rain, then that rain in about three or four days would wind up on top of my hunting land.

That normally was okay, except for in 1997, a hurricane named Danny blew across the panhandle of Florida and it went up the whole east coast of Alabama and sat on top of upstate Alabama for days and just rained and rained and rained. That normally wouldn’t be a problem with the exception of just in a few days bow season was going to open in Alabama and all of that rain wound up on top of our hunting land. Now, it didn’t completely flood it, but it made it so uncomfortable to hunt—it was hot, the mosquitoes were big—so it kind of messed up our bow season, but we figured it would be just like always, that it would go down in a few days and our hunting season would take off and it would be great.

The only problem was, it kept raining and it kept raining, and we kept getting more water, and by about the middle of November we were completely out of business—we couldn’t hunt at all. And you guys know how much money and time we spend getting ready for those three months of hunting season. We had spent all that money, all that time, planting fields, hanging stands, cutting shooting lanes; all those things we do to be able to enjoy that three or four months we get to enjoy our passion. And mine was over with that year before it even started.

I had grown up in a household where that’s what we did. If it was hunting season, we were in the woods. Saturday, Sunday, holiday, whatever the occasion, we didn’t do anything but hunt. So you’ve got to understand, that by about the middle of December, towards the end of December and Christmas, I had cabin fever like we normally do in March and February and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I literally didn’t know what to do. And I told my wife, “We’ve got to get a life.” I said, “Well, you know what, one thing I think we need to do, one of the things that I believe we need to do to make our family better, is we need to start going to church maybe. You can’t ever tell, our kids need it so bad.”

So the very next Sunday, we did what we felt like we were supposed to do, we got our best clothes on, we got in the car, we went to church, a church in our community we had heard a lot about. Five minutes into that message, the pastor had convinced me that my kids were probably all right—it was their dad that needed the help. See, it was kind of like an old hundred year-old house where we try to go in and make a hunting camp out of it, where for every good board we find, there were four or five that were rotten. That pretty much described me, I guess.

I had told people for years, “Oh, I’m just a good ole boy.” And, yeah, I would use some language and some words every now and then that I probably shouldn’t, but they were just words and, they were, in most cases, manly words and they didn’t hurt anybody. I drank enough beer to float a battle ship, I liked the way it tasted and I liked the way it made it feel. But at least I was at the hunting camp or in the privacy of my own home and I wasn’t out in some honky tonk chasing wild women.

A lot of words have been used to describe me these last nine years and jerk comes up a lot. I was the kind of person that if you offended me, I would look you in the eye and tell you exactly what I thought and it didn’t make any difference your feelings, as long as you got what I thought. I would just as soon start a fight, as I had anything—that was left up to you. You’ve heard the old saying, “You can justify anything if you try hard enough”, and that kind of describes my life.

And as we started going to church for a few weeks, I actually listened, for the first time in my life, at something the man had to say. See, I had been to church off and on all of my life. But I had always kind of done church and left. But I actually listened to what the man had to say. Now it’s not like I had a whole lot of choice, you understand, because I felt like I was the only person in that room of 700 or 800 people that he was talking too. He kept talking straight to my heart every weekend. And I kept telling my wife, “Man, I leave there and feel horrible”, but I couldn’t wait to get back and find out the rest of the story.

See, I realized through those several weeks of going to church that I was setting an example every day for my two children, Jessica and Brandon. And I didn’t like what I was seeing. See, I didn’t want my little boy to grow up and be like I was then. And I surely didn’t want my little girl to grow up and marry somebody like me. There had to be a change in my life—I just didn’t know what. I can remember, on several occasions, telling my wife, “Something’s missing in my life, something’s bothering me and I just don’t know what it is.”

So as we started going to church and I kept feeling like that there was something missing in my life. I kept asking the question, “What could it be? I’ve got everything in the world a man could ever ask for.” You see, I also told people I was the luckiest man in the world. I mean, I’ve a got a wife that I’ve been married to for 22 years, that supported me in anything and everything I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve got two very beautiful children, they’re healthy, they’re full of life, they love to deer hunt with their dad. We lived in a nice home, we always drove nice vehicles. I got paid good money to travel all over the country and shoot a bow. I get to deer hunt three or four days a week during hunting season. I own an archery shop, so my hobby and my job are all the same.

It doesn’t get any better than that, guys. I was living the American dream. Or, at least, my version of the American dream. A man couldn’t ask for or wish for any more than what I had. The problem was, is that with all this stuff, all these things I had, I was never happy, I was never satisfied. Nothing new stayed new. Nothing was ever enough and I always wanted more. Something was missing in my life and I didn’t know what it was.

As I say, we started going to church and, one Monday night, our pastor, the man that had been beatin’ up on me for six weeks, pulled up in my driveway. And I remember thinking, “I wonder what they want. They either want my money or they want those pork chops my wife was cooking”, and I wasn’t wanting to get rid of either one of them. But I invited him in my home, and we sat down, and for 45 minutes, I talked about my favorite subject in the whole wide world, I talked about me. I talked about what a lucky man I was, and all I had, and all that I was able to do. And I felt like I was impressing this preacher man. And then he asked me a question, right out of the blue, that nobody had loved me enough to ever ask me before. Sitting in my living room, he said, “Scott, do you know for certain, if you were to die today, where you would spend eternity?” And I didn’t know the answer to the question.

I mean, I had walked an aisle when I was a little boy, and I had prayed a prayer, but I knew that I hadn’t acted very much like a Christian in my life and there had never really been a change in my life and so I just didn’t know the answer. So I told him, “I don’t know.” And he said, “Scott, there was a man named Jesus that walked on this earth 2,000 years ago and He had the same temptations and the same troubles and trials that we have, but He never sinned, and He died on the Cross and rose from the dead to pay the penalty for our sins, so we can spend eternity in Heaven with Him.” And he explained to me how we could say a prayer in my living room right there and invite that same Jesus in my heart to be my Lord and to be my Savior.

And he invited me to do that, and at that point, I’m going to be honest with you, I counted the cost. I looked at what it was going to cost me. I looked at that on this hand, I couldn’t drink anymore, I couldn’t run with my buddies, I couldn’t have a good time, people were going to call me a Jesus freak and I had made fun enough of them in my life. And on this hand, I was going to get eternal life. Well, I was thirty-five years old and I didn’t need eternal life. And to top it all off, in one week, I was leaving to go to Daytona to Speed Week, for the whole week down there to watch the car races, and I didn’t need the ball and chain of being a Christian tied around my neck while I was down there trying to have a good time.

So I said, “No, Pastor, I don’t think so, I don’t think I want to turn over control of my life to anybody.” Well, he was very gracious and he said, “Can I pray for you?” and I said, “Yeah,” and we bowed our heads, and in my living room, he prayed that God would bless me and God would work on my heart and work in my heart. And he left, and I went to Daytona the next week, and I spent that whole week down there doing something, or should have been spending the whole week doing something that I’d wanted to do all my life, but instead I spent that week down there trying to figure out how I would get enough money to go back down there next year, and it just goes back to never being satisfied with anything. Well, I went down there and that was the year that Dale Earnhardt won the Daytona 500 and I was there.

And I got in my truck the next morning, and was coming back home, and my wife called me and she told me that a good friend of mine had gotten killed in a motorcycle accident Friday night. And, man, you know the emptiness you feel when someone you care about, you’re not ever going to see them again, and that was a long ride home from Daytona, Florida. I got to my home and my wife and my children were at work and at school, and I had never felt so by myself or so alone in my life.

And I was standing in my living room, so I decided to leave and go to my store and I passed by on the side of the interstate where my friend had died just two days before that, and that question came back to me, “Do you know where you’ll spend eternity if you were to die today?” And I knew the answer, or I’m pretty sure I knew the answer the night that he asked me, but the answer was that I would not spend eternity in Heaven with Jesus Christ if He were to choose to take me out right then like He did my friend.

So I went to my store and I got down on my knees and I asked Jesus to come into my heart and to be my Lord and to be my Savior, and to make me a better husband to my wife and a better daddy to my children, and just a better man overall. That was on February the 15th of 1998, and the next Sunday, with the support of my wife and two children, I walked down the aisle at my church and made the first public profession of faith in my adult life.

Now, I’m not going to stand here and tell you that my life’s been perfect since then, because, see, that’s not what the promise is. The promise is “I’ll never leave you and I’ll never forsake you”. The best way I can illustrate it is, if I use my life like a mountain, and I’ve been climbing a mountain for the last nine years, sometimes God has to go before me and clear out a way, sometimes He has to get behind me and push me up that mountain, and sometimes He has to put me on His shoulders and carry me up that mountain, but He’ll never leave me and He’ll never forsake me, and that’s a promise.

I was worried about all the things that I’d have to give up if I accepted Christ as my Savior. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, I haven’t given up anything in the last nine years that mattered. As a matter of fact, I could spend hours telling you how God has blessed my life and how He’s blessed me since I made that decision. So let me ask you that same question that Pastor loved me enough to ask me, “If you die today, do you know with 100% certainty where you’ll spend eternity?” See, because we’re all going to live forever, but it’s up to us where we live.

Suppose you die today, and you stand before a Holy God, and He asks you “Why should I let you into my Heaven?” What would you tell Him? Would you tell Him, “Well, I go to church, well, I’ve been better than average? What would you tell Him?” Because see, Heaven is a free gift. You can’t earn it or deserve it. The Bible says we’re all sinners; we’ve all at some time messed up. There’s nothing we can do to save ourselves.

See, God loves us and He doesn’t want to punish us. But He hates sin and He has to punish that. But God loved us so much, that He sent His only son, Jesus Christ, to die on a Cross to pay the penalty for my sins and your sins. Three days later He arose and He offers that to us as a free gift. All we have to do, is by faith, accept that gift. Faith is nothing more than believing something you can’t see. See, I didn’t see my Savior hang on a Cross 2,000 years ago, but I believe it with all of my heart. So if you’ve never asked Jesus to come into your heart, I’m going to give you an opportunity just like my Pastor did me nine years ago, to ask Jesus to come into your heart.

Let me ask you another question, “Suppose you die today and you stand before God and He asks you, ‘Why should I let you into Heaven?’ what would you tell Him? Would you tell Him, “Well, I go to church. Well, I volunteer. Well, I try to be as good as I can.” See, that’s where a lot of people don’t understand. Heaven is a free gift. There’s not anything we can do to earn it or deserve it, because the Bible says we all are sinners. At some point, we’ve all messed up. At some point, we’ve all sinned. So there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves. See, God loves us so much, but He hates sin and He must punish that. But He solved our problem with Jesus Christ.

See, this is the part of the story I have a hard time understanding sometimes. I don’t understand the kind of love that God has. Because, see, I’ve got a son. And I’ve got people I care an awful lot about. But there’s not a one of them I would kill my son for. But God loved us so much, He sent His one and only son to die a cruel death on a Cross to pay the penalty for our sins and He offers that to us as a free gift. All we have to do is accept that gift by faith. Now, faith is very simply believing something we’ve never seen or we can’t see. I didn’t see my Savior die on a Cross 2,000 years ago, but I believe it with all my heart. And I accepted that gift nine years ago and I’m going to spend the rest of my life telling Him thank you for it.

Now, let me ask you, “Are you ready to make that commitment, are you ready to make that decision?” Because there’s no disadvantage to it, guys. It’s the greatest decision and the best decision you can ever make and it’s very simply this, you can right here, in the privacy of your own home, or wherever it is you are, say this simple prayer with me:

“Dear Jesus, I admit that I’m a sinner. I believe You sent Your only son Jesus to die for my sins and I’m going to ask You to forgive me of my sins and to come into my heart and to be my Lord and to be my Savior. Make me a better husband. Make me a better father. Make me a better man. Make me the man that You designed me to be. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.”

Guys, if you said that prayer, and you meant it in your heart, it’s the best decision you’ll ever make, and I want to know about it. And if you’ll just email me at the email address below, I promise you I’ll send you some literature to help you better understand the decision you just made, and to give you a track to run on and more understanding about being a Christian man in this world today. Thank you so much for giving me these few minutes of your time. God bless you!