Personal Testimony of Pastor David Wayne Prewitt
Hello, my name is David Prewitt, I have been blessed to be
married to Theresa Prewitt, and we have been happily married for 19 years. We
have three boys: Michael, who is 24; David Jr., who is 12; and John Mark, who
is 11. And this is my testimony.
At the present it has been 14 years ago that I really gave
my life to the Lord. Before I accepted Christ, I had no idea what it meant to
really love someone and I really had no idea what it meant to be loved. Don’t
get me wrong—I grew up in a great family with very loving parents who devoted
their entire life to being Godly parents and doing the best they could to
follow God’s will and train me to be a Godly man; I just wasn’t interested.
Even though I was raised in a Christian home as the oldest son of a Baptist
Minister, and I went forward at the age of four and said the sinner’s prayer; I
don’t think I had a full enough understanding because there was really never
any fruit from that and when I hit adolescence I went off the deep end. I began
hanging around with the wrong crowd and started messing with various forms of
drugs and alcohol. The music I was listening to was nothing but depressing and
I was depressed. Many would say that just meant that I was a normal adolescent,
but I disagree. I purposely chose to live outside of everything I was raised to
believe and I purposely chose to ostracize myself from my family’s affection
and protection. I also became involved with gangs and all that that entails.
This eventually led to me getting deeper into trouble with my family and with
God. I joined the Army in 1987 to get out of town and away from everything that
I thought was wrong with my life. Unfortunately everything that was wrong with
my life was me, so my baggage went with me. While I was in the Army I became
more depressed and even more angry, and no matter how many different ways I
found to prove how tough and self-made I was I could not get rid of the anger
that I felt. After eleven years of service I left the army because of medical
problems with my knees and ankles.
I met a girl while I was stationed in Ft. Lewis, Washington,
before I received Christ as my Savior. We only knew each other for about six
months before we were married at a retired preacher’s house. The relationship
was doomed from the start; the only thing that we had in common was we both
liked to party and we enjoyed each other’s company in bed. It was a stereotypical
biker-style marriage—a life-style we both enjoyed. She left me every three or
four months and left the marriage for good after being married for a little
less than two years.
After I left the Army four years later, I met a young lady
(Terri) with whom I fell in love and eventually married after close to a
one-year engagement, who is my current wife and the mother of my three
children. After my first marriage, I was scared to death of ruining another
life and I point-blank told Terri not to fall in love with me, but that we
should walk into it together at a slow pace to make sure it was right.
While my wife and I were dating and neither of us had met
Christ yet, I started to experience something different with Terri: she was the
first girl I had ever known as an adult that had a brain; that I really wanted
to talk to, and really get to know who she was, what she believed in, and why.
Her mom had been pushing her to get me to go to Mass and I consistently
refused. I had no use for religion of any kind and I really didn’t want to be a
part of the Catholic Church.
As much as I hated the church and my Dad for what I thought
was shoving the Bible down my throat. I knew that the Catholic Church did not
line up with Scripture. By this point in my life I had tried many forms of
religion. I had experimented with Buddhism, Wicca and American Indian mysticism
as well as some other things.
Finally, Terri asked me why I would not go to Catholic Mass
with her and her parents. I told her that I did not agree with the Catholic
Church and because of that I would not attend Mass. She asked me what I
disagreed with; and so I told her that the Catholic Church did not believe we
were saved by grace through faith, which is how Scripture says we are saved.
She said that, no, they do not; they believe one receives grace through the
sacraments. I told her that this was works, which cannot save anyone and she
told me to prove it by showing her in the Bible. I had been recalling verses
from AWANA, and did not know the references so, the next day I called my dad,
to whom I had not spoken in quite some time, and asked him what the reference
was. Long story short, I showed her Ephesians 2:8-9, which says, “For by grace
you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the
gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (ESV). This led
to a lot of other questions, which meant that I had to ask my dad a lot more
questions and our relationship began to heal. After more questions, Bible study
and soul-searching that my wife did on her own, she asked Jesus Christ to come
into her life and be her Lord and Savior.
After that, the more she read, and talked to my mom, the
more she realized that I was not saved and the more she began to pray for me.
After roughly five years of marriage and prayer for me, during which time I
could hardly call myself a good father and husband (to this day I thank God
that He gave Terri the grace to put up with me during the first part of our
marriage when I would not come home until late) finally one night, while I
spent most of my time isolating myself from my son and my wife, around two
o’clock in the morning in February, God more or less grabbed me by the scruff
of the neck and, while it wasn’t an audible voice, basically told me that He
was done playing around with me. He told me that I knew better and if I wanted
to keep playing Russian roulette with my life and my responsibilities as a
husband and a father, then He was going to let it happen and be done with me. I
have never felt more alone than I did that night. After about 15 minutes of
just the absolute worst feeling of black despair I have ever felt, I went
upstairs, walked into our bedroom and as gently as I could woke Terri up and
told her that I was going to hell and I didn’t want to live another second
without the peace that she had and without the relationship that she had with
Christ and asked her to pray with me. So we knelt at the foot of our bed at
2:30 am, and I asked Christ to forgive me and to be my Savior.
That night I finally had peace for the first time in my
life. Just to recap, I am amazed that my Heavenly Father can use a reprobate to,
in essence, bring my wife to Him, and use her to begin to restore my
relationship with my parents and eventually bring me to a saving knowledge of
Him. And for reasons that I still don’t fully comprehend but completely accept,
He decided that in His grace and mercy He would grant me the blessing of being
called to be a pastor and counselor for His church. His love, wisdom, and mercy
amaze me more and more every day.
About a year after my salvation, I accepted the calling that
God had for me to be a pastor and be in full-time vocational ministry in July
of 2004. He had been pushing me in that direction for some time, but due to my
earlier divorce and history, I did not feel worthy of the calling. I finally
realized after much prayer and Bible Study that when we come to Christ we die
to the world, which means our mistakes and history are dead and buried with Him
when He died on the cross for us and are risen again with Him when He rose from
the grave. My life became a new life and a new creation, so I placed my faith
in Him and made the step to begin my education to become a Pastor and
Counselor. At that point, I began to attend Vennard Bible College in University
Park, Iowa. I have since completed my degree with a double major in Biblical
Studies and Clinical Psychology at Liberty University and have completed my Seminary
training with a Masters of Divinity in pastoral ministry, and Terri has completed
her Master of Arts in Marriage and Family Therapy and is working toward licensure
as a clinical therapist. My wife and I have dedicated ourselves to God’s
calling on our life to strengthen the family unit and create strong Christian
families that are dedicated to living their faith daily. I am now ordained
through the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia. I currently volunteer
as an outreach pastor and Terri volunteers as a counselor through our church. We
also and have an active biker ministry in South Central Virginia.
