Fathers & Brothers - "The Transforming Power of the Gospel" - Pastor David Sanders

“I just didn’t want Jesus to be Lord of everything.” That is how Pastor David Sanders sums up the first twenty-two years of his life—years spent in a pastor’s home, at a Christian camp, and inside a church where he knew all the right answers. He believed in God, knew he was a sinner, and had prayed to receive Christ many times. But he had not surrendered his whole life. In this conversation with host Jim McCarthy, recorded at Ridgehaven, the PCA’s mountain-top campground in Brevard, North Carolina, Sanders traces his journey from a self-centered young man who said he would never be a youth pastor to a senior pastor who still spends his summers pouring into junior high campers. The episode is a case study in what the transforming power of the gospel actually looks like—slow, patient, and often mediated through ordinary means like friendship, prayer, and repentance.

The Gospel That Finally Took Root

Sanders grew up as the seventh of eight children in the home of Rhett Sanders, a PCA pastor who had come to faith late in life through a college Bible study. David never doubted God’s existence or his own sinfulness. But assurance of salvation eluded him. He would pray to receive Christ repeatedly, then go back to living a compartmentalized life. “He could have my Sunday, he could have my Ridge Haven camp,” Sanders recalls, “but I didn’t want him to be Lord of all.”