Divine Appointments: How One Knock Impacted Generations

It was July 13, 1978 when Walt McCord sat on the bed in his freshman dorm room at Penn State and prayed for a sign from God.

Walt’s father had passed away when he was 13 years old, and since then, his life had spiraled out of control. Frequently getting into trouble, he left for college without a home to come back to. “I was just a mess,” Walt remembers. “I went off to college to party my life away. The day I left for college, my mom told me, ‘I don’t ever want you coming back here.’”

On July 12th, Walt got drunk with a friend and cried for the first time since his dad died. When his friend asked him why, Walt replied, “Mark, I have absolutely nothing to live for. But I’m scared to die.”

The next day, Walt got into a fight with another student playing basketball. As he sat in his dorm room after — still covered in the other students’ blood from breaking his nose — he hit a breaking point. Sending a desperate plea to God, he asked for a sign.

“Whoever You are, show me how I can be right with You,” Walt prayed. “Show me how I can deal with this anger, and I’ll give You my life.”

Several minutes later, Walt heard a knock on his door. On the other side stood Keith Hughes, a recent graduate who was involved with The Navigators on campus.

Earlier in the evening, Keith had planned to go to a baseball game on campus. When the game was canceled due to weather, he sat at a park nearby Walt’s dorm to spend some time with the Lord. During that time, he felt a calling from God — there was someone in the dorm he needed to talk to. He walked into the hall, got in the elevator, closed his eyes, and chose a random floor to visit. Two doors over, in room 402, Walt was ready for him.

That night, Keith shared the gospel with Walt, and it was a moment that forever changed the trajectory of Walt’s life.

“When God sent Keith to my door, I knew, it’s time,” Walt remembers. “God’s done his part. Now it’s time for me to bend my knee and come to the Lord. So that’s what I did.”

A Lasting Impact

Today, over four decades later, Walt still vividly remembers that night: the exact date, along with Keith’s name, are forever inscribed inside the front cover of Walt’s Bible — despite the fact that Walt and Keith lost touch a couple weeks later that summer.

In the years since, Walt has grown in his faith and passionately pursued the Lord, serving overseas and teaching the next generation of Christian leaders how to live out their faith around the world. Thousands of lives have been touched by the gospel through Walt’s faith — including his mom, whom he later led to Christ, and his three sons, who are now serving in ministry themselves. For Walt’s family, Keith Hughes is a household name — the man who led their father to Christ all those years ago and impacted their family for generations.

The funny part of the story, though? If you asked him today, Keith doesn’t remember that moment in the dorm room at all.

When Keith thinks back on that summer, he mostly recalls it as the months that he began to date his wife. At the time, he would go onto campus to practice evangelism as The Navigators had trained him to do in college, sharing the gospel with the students he met. He doesn’t remember Walt specifically, or that fateful night — just that he was trying to plant seeds for Christ.

“For me, it was all about obedience — God allowed me to plant a seed, and the ground was fertilized,” Keith says. “God had worked in Walt’s heart long before we crossed paths, and God had an impact through his life since. But for me, this was probably something I wouldn’t have found out about until glory.”

This past year, Walt and Keith were reconnected through Navigator Greg Bryan, who coincidentally met Walt, heard his story, and helped him track down Keith. When Walt shared with Keith the impact that he had on his life back in 1978 and that he had been wanting to meet him again ever since, Keith could barely believe it.

“It was a surreal conversation because this was the most important day of my life,” Walt says. “It changed the trajectory of my life forever. And Keith doesn’t even remember.”

Seeds Planted For Christ

“For when one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe — as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow” 1 Corinthians 3:4-7 (NIV). 

For Keith, 1 Corinthians 3:4-7 sums up his story with Walt: though he planted a seed, God watered it and transformed Walt into the faithful man he is today.

Like many believers, Keith may never have known the impact of the seed he planted that day. But through God’s grace of reconnecting with Walt years later, he has now been able to catch a glimpse of heaven, seeing how the Lord used his obedience that one night when he was a young man.

“To me, this is a story about divine appointments and a glimpse of heaven,” Greg says. “Keith had no idea what happened to that broken, angry young man he led to faith that night … they might not have even met until they stepped into eternity. But now Walt can say, ‘You touched my life, you changed my life. And because of that, I was able to go on and touch others’ lives with the gospel. The seed you’ve sown in my life produced fruit.’”

You can hear more of Walt and Keith’s story of divine appointments on Greg’s podcast Gospel Addict.

Discipleship Tip:

As disciplemakers, sometimes we don’t know how God will water the seeds we plant. Like Keith, we may never know how one conversation can lead to a chain reaction of impact years later. This week, invite God into your relationships and ask Him to water the seeds that you plant.