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Each year during this week we are able to remember those who are serving as chaplains in the armed forces of our nation. Particularly we celebrate
the presence with us of one of our own alumni and this year it is our privilege to welcome Chaplain David H. Hicks. Chaplain Hicks is a native of Glen Cove, Long Island who enlisted in the army in October of 1958 and served an active duty until March of 1967. When he was discharged as an infantry staff sergeant I might say now as a fellow minister of the gospel I'm not awed by Chaplain Hicks rank as lieutenant
colonel. But as a former army PFC I am awed by his former rank as a staff sergeant. He is a graduate of Wesleyan College in Pennsylvania an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Th.M from the Divinity School of Duke University Chaplain Hicks, entered the army chaplaincy in August of 1974. He has served in Fort Dix, New Jersey, Friedberg, Germany In Italy, at Fort Bragg, at Fort Benning And presently serves as the 6th Infantry Division Chaplain
at Fort Richardson And resides in Eagle River, Alaska with his wife Janice and their three children. We are happy to welcome today to leadership in this chapel service Chaplain David H. Hicks. Thank you Dr. Massa. It's a pleasure, a real joy to be back here on Princeton Seminary campus again I remember the last time I stood here at this pulpit was during a preaching class And that was quite a few years ago But I'm delighted to
be here and I thank you so much for this opportunity To have this occasion to share with you one of the Old Testament characters who has spoken most to me about my own struggle to enter the ministry is Moses. Moses is true to life in his response to God's calling You will recall from the third chapter of the book of Exodus Moses accounted with God at the burning bush As God called him to lead his people
out of captivity in Egypt A rather lengthy conversation ensued between God and Moses As Moses continually expressed his reluctance to do as God had directed I'd like to have you now listen to a portion of that conversation As it's recorded over in the fourth chapter of the book of Exodus And I'm going to read the first 13 verses Exodus chapter 4 verses 1 through 13 Moses answered, What if they do not believe me or listen to
me and say, The Lord did not appear to you? Then the Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? A staff he replied, The Lord said, Throw it on the ground Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake and he ran from it Then the Lord said to him, Reach out your hand and take it by the tail So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back
into a staff in his hand This, said the Lord, is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you Then the Lord said, Put your hand inside your cloak So Moses put his hand into his cloak And when he took it out it was leprous like snow Now put it back into your cloak, he said So
Moses put his hand back into his cloak And when he took it out it was restored like the rest of his flesh Then the Lord said, If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign They may believe the second But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you Take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground The water you take from the river will
become blood on the ground Moses said to the Lord, Oh Lord, I have never been eloquent Neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant I am slow of speech and tongue The Lord said to him, Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or dumb? Who gives him his sight or makes him blind? Is it not I the Lord? Now go, I will help you to speak and will teach you what
to say But Moses said, Oh Lord, please send someone else to do it God wanted to obviously do some great things with Moses in setting his people free And God today still wants to do great things in our lives and in the lives of other people through us We here today stand with Moses and God addresses his question again to you and to me What is that in your hand and in your hand? What is that
in your hand and in your hand? It may be any number of things It may be the ability to teach, to minister to others with specific problems It may be counseling, working with the elderly or preaching Whatever it is, acknowledge it as a gift from God and develop it to the fullest potential Now let me illustrate what I am attempting to communicate to you by relating a summary of my own journey into the army chaplaincy When
I left home in 1958 to enlist in the army I left with the express purpose of spending 20 years in the army retiring in 1978 as a sergeant major I came from a family of 12 children, 9 boys and 3 girls All my life I had been a failure I was a failure so much so that I believed it myself and I had other folks telling me that But I thought if I could just get into
the army maybe I could do something that might put me on the winning side Well I did get into the army as you've heard from what was shared about my experience in the years that I've been in But my first several years in the army I began to experience life in its worst forms I tried to identify with men who were much older than I were and I thought in those days they were quite elderly They
were gentlemen 30 and 35 years of age I've long since left those years and will never see them again So those are not old people at all But I wanted to be a man and I wanted to identify with manhood and I wanted to be able to go back home and say that I am a man because I've done so many things out there in that world But life caught up with me after my first 3
years before I even got to the conclusion of those 3 years I decided that I would re-enlist for another 6 years which I did It was a time when we were involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis And I thought as a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division I was going to make that parachute assault into Cuba But that didn't happen As things began to develop my life began to continually move in that negative direction On
duty I was able to watch my tracks and I was promoted to Sergeant And I can remember one day after being in the army some 6 years and having made a parachute assault As a part of a joint operation with the Uranium Forces We as an American Brigade coming from the 101st at Fort Campbell, Kentucky Had parachuted into the desert over there in Iran along the Persian Gulf And I remember after several days on this exercise
reaching into my pocket and pulling out a little New Testament Trying to get through those first few verses of Matthew so and so beget so and so And I became frustrated and laid it down But something was happening down inside of me I really wanted to know something about this message and I had heard about Christ before And I had heard about religion but I really had nothing to do with it And coming from a family
of 12 it took everything in mom and dad's power to keep control of us And not to mention the idea of them trying to get us all into church So I didn't have a church background when I came into the army But as time went on some interesting things began to happen We returned to Fort Campbell, Kentucky And I began to feel within me a great emptiness But I couldn't put my finger on just exactly what
it was Because I felt like I had gotten a hold of some things in life I was a sergeant, I was to some degree successful But still that emptiness lurked in my life There was an army chaplain who discovered a way to get a hold of an unchurched soldier like myself He used what we used to call in the army in the early 60s character guidance lectures He didn't preach, we used to work on those Saturday
mornings And he invited us to come either to the Protestant chapel, to a Catholic chapel Or to listen to a rabbi give character guidance Or we had another option, we could stay in the company and listen to the company commander Talk to us about our character development While I was a sergeant I had come in that night off of one of my usual evening experiences And I hadn't had much sleep and I didn't really want to
get into anything religious at all But the appeal was made several times for a sergeant to march the volunteers over to the Protestant chapel And after some time I reluctantly decided that I would march these people over and let them listen to this chaplain It was a chapel, the sanctuary was not much smaller or much larger than this I brought those 35 or 40 soldiers up to the front and I stayed in the very back I
wanted to make sure everyone understood that what was happening there was not for me But I was just a means of getting those soldiers to that particular program But as the chaplain spoke and talked about the responsibility that we as individuals had for our lives I became convicted and really began, if he could see me, probably squirmed in my seat But I gave no indication to anyone that I was bothered or moved by what was happening
After the program was over with I took the soldiers back to the unit And I kind of made myself a way back over to the chapel because I wanted to talk to this chaplain I wanted to challenge him, but as I sat with him and as he pulled his little New Testament out of his pocket He knew that I didn't want to challenge him, he knew that I didn't really want to give him answers But that
I was looking for answers He was patient and quiet and gave me the room that I needed To open up and ask him about this Christ that he seemed to portray in his talk without really preaching I knew there was something behind him and his remarks and why he spoke the way that he did He shared with me what it meant to become a Christian And that morning in his office as a young hardened Army Airborne
Sergeant well set in my ways I swallowed my pride and invited Jesus Christ into my life Some exciting things began to happen from that time on I left the chapel, went back to my unit and then had to relate to soldiers Who I used to go off to some of those places that we hear about in some of these Army towns But I couldn't do that any longer My life was beginning to take a new course
After that experience the chaplain sometime later asked if I would share my testimony with some soldiers at a duty day with God I became very frightened and I gave him some excuse And again he was very patient and listened and understood But thought that it might be a good idea if I were willing to share my testimony That it might have some impact on the lives of some other soldiers I did that and then after the
program and I don't know what I said, how well I said it I wasn't even thinking about how well I said it But after the program was over with he mentioned to me the possibility of going into the ministry And he simply said, Dave, had you ever considered going into the ministry? I said no chaplain, I said I'm interested in finishing up my 20 years and retiring in 1978 as a sergeant major I was shipped from
Fort Campbell, Kentucky over to the DMZ in Korea Where I served as a combat patrol leader for a year There I was promoted to staff sergeant But no sooner had I gotten into Korea that I began to feel again this urge to do something a little bit different I felt comfortable with what I was doing I had a tremendous ministry with soldiers But I believe that God had called me to do something beyond being an army
sergeant And doing the things that I was doing Not that there was anything wrong with being an army sergeant But I believe that God had something else for me to do I listened, prayed, and tried to work through what God wanted me to do I tried unsuccessfully three times to go to Vietnam from Korea And was eventually sent to Germany after that one year tour I had six months remaining on my enlistment before I had to
re-enlist or get out of the army I decided that I was going to re-enlist and stay in Even though I felt God calling me to go into the ministry When I got to Germany I discovered that there was a chaplain there who had a Sunday evening service and a group of soldiers Whom he used to help facilitate that service I shied away from that and I went in attendance But I exposed myself a couple
of times as we talked about our needs and gave prayer requests And had an opportunity to work together in Bible studies And one time the chaplain asked if I would take one of those services and bring a five or ten minute message, which I did Thirty days before I was to re-enlist, I had taken my physical I was going back on jump status to Mainz, Germany I decided that God had surely called me to the
ministry And as I sat in this chaplain's office and almost trembling Because I knew that I had to go counter to what I wanted to really be all about I would have to give up my army career and I'd never be that army sergeant major I again swallowed my pride and recognized that there was someone greater than myself Who had called me and was calling me now into the ministry I looked up at the chaplain as
I was sitting there in his office And again it was almost as if that chaplain knew that I had been struggling with something Because it was after a Bible study and I had just sat beside his desk And we were talking and then it was a quiet time And I said, Chaplain Graham, I believe that God has called me into the ministry He says, wow David, he said that is really interesting He says, do you know
since you've been here, God has laid upon my heart and the heart of my wife The burden to pray for you in that specific direction How glad I was that he didn't say that to me in advance because I needed to struggle and to work through that I got out of the army, went to college and had such a bad first semester That I began to think that, Lord it must be a big, big mistake During
the Christmas break I went down to the recruiter and the recruiter startled me I thought I'd be a big catch, a staff sergeant, infantry Experienced as a combat patrol leader on the DMZ in Korea His response to me was after he found out what I was doing That I ought to go back home and think about this a little bit more I did that, I went home and I prayed And I come to the conclusion that
the same God who called me into life And the same God who called me into the ministry Was the same God who could give me the motivation and the inspiration That I needed to go back and to deal with those studies It wasn't more than two weeks after I was back That I was invited to head up a program to go out to a local church Where we would bring several students from the college And one
of us would bring a message And I needed a pianist to play for that service And it turned out to be my wife She and I began to study together, we prayed together And it wasn't very long that my studies began to improve Interesting how those kinds of things happen By the time I reached my senior year, my grades were high enough Where I felt confident enough that as I wrote my letters to seminaries I thought
I would also send one here to Princeton Theological Seminary But I just sent it, pushed it off and didn't think anything about it As president of the student body there at this Wesleyan college We went to Philadelphia one evening to see the Philadelphia Phillies play We lived, my wife and I did, in Perkasie, Pennsylvania And on the way back the bus was going to drop me off in Quaker Town And my wife was going to pick
me up And as I saw her, her face lit up And she shared with me the news that I had been accepted at Princeton Seminary I had mixed emotions On one side I was petrified On the other side I was rejoicing Because I realized that God again had moved decisively in my life I had been so reluctant to do so many things That I said, God, I'm not going to be reluctant Because I believe that you
want me to go to Princeton Seminary I came to Princeton Seminary and then in 1974 I left here, two months later I was on active duty in the chaplaincy And was ordained specifically to the Army Chaplaincy at Fort Dix, New Jersey I entered the chaplaincy with the reluctance of Moses Literally I entered the ministry with the reluctance of Moses And I had always recognized all along that God wanted to do some great things in my life
He wants to do great things in all of our lives But it's very difficult sometimes for us to see that And now I have had an opportunity and I continue to have that opportunity To minister to men and women in the Army and to their family members wherever they serve God has given me that great blessing to do that kind of thing I believe that God wants trust and obedience And a willingness to use whatever he
has given us That's what I believe God wants for you and what God wants for me As he addresses that question to each of us What is that in your hand? Amen.
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