Pastor Dwayne Hinson and his wife Bernice both grew up in the Norwood areas and God brought them back to minister in their hometown. They were married February 26, 1984 and have been blessed with 12 chldren, 6 girls, 5 boys and one in heaven, and 12 grandchildren at the time of this writing (2019). Dwayne and Bernice (Lomax) Hinson are natives of southern Stanly County with Dwayne growing up in the Porter area and Bernice in Acorn Acres neighborhood of Norwood. Both attended Norwood Elementary and graduated from South Stanly High School. Evangelist Hinson is baptized, ordained and sent by the authority of Shiloh Baptist Church, Gwinn, MI. His personal testimony is posted below.
Hit by a Train
On July 4, 2005 after spending the day with our family in Georgia at a park, watching fireworks, and ending back at their church building, they left to go home. While tired and talking on the phone I did not realize I walked up on a train track. I turned around to see a train backing at a high rate of speed and less than 2 feet from me. I expected to see God….
Knocking me off the track I landed on my hands and knees with the cell phone still in my hand. I was carried to a trauma center in Augusta. After x-raying and scanning most of my body and finding not one broken bone they discharged me the next day. I know God took me off that track for by looking at the design of the train car, it should have plowed me under instead of knocking me off that track.
I frequently tell people I have been saved twice. God save me physically from death on the train tracks, but that was not biblical salvation.
As a 9 year old boy I walked down the aisle of a church and was baptized a few weeks later. However I do not remember anything that happened when I walked down the aisle and claiming salvation from that event lived without change. In 1989 while in Biloxi, MS to go to school for the military we began to attend a church there while knowing I was not right and my marriage was self-destructing. The church had planned a men’s retreat for a Friday evening and Saturday morning. I prayed and told God if he wanted me to go to that men’s retreat please send someone to personally ask me so I would know he wanted me to go. The next Sunday at church two men asked me and one offered to pay my way. I still tried to decline, using the excuse that my wife did not know her way around there and I could not leave her alone overnight. She was standing by my side and looked up and said, “I’ll be OK Honey.” So later I agreed to go.
Friday evening they had two preachers. The first one preached longer than I ever remember hearing a preacher preach and softened my heart with the preaching of the word. We then took a break and later the second preacher seemed to preach longer than the first. He preached something along the lines of how people can go to church and not be in the family of God. When they gave an invitation many men were on their knees praying and some were praying with others. Having attended that church for a short time and not knowing any of them well, but knowing God was dealing with me, I slipped out of the building by myself. It was raining very hard and I wanted to be alone with God, so I went around the corner of the building under the eve. The building did not have gutters and the rain was running down the back of my neck.
I feel on my knees and cried out to God and distinctly remember saying to God, “God, I have done it my way long enough. I want to do it your way.” I wasn’t out there long but went back in the building with joy unspeakable. When I walked in the house Saturday afternoon my wife knew when she saw me something was different. I began to get up early to read my Bible and soon threw away ungodly music and movies. I would get up before 4 am and read the Bible and pray and write sermons.
However, because I thought I was saved when I was nine I spent years in confusion, trying to serve God. When preachers would preach on hell, I would wonder if I was saved and I would pray and ask God and it seem then I would be fine. This continued for years, even continuing after submitting to God’s call to preach.
I began to see through old Baptist writings that, according to the Bible, repentance was the first thing that had to happen in a person for them to be saved. I began to study and preach much on repentance, but it was an understanding of the Milk of the Word in Hebrews 6:1,2 that brought great relief and joy like that Friday night in MS.
Hebrews 6:1 Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God,
Notice it is “repentance from dead works” followed by “faith toward God”. I finally saw in scripture that when I cried out to God, “I’ve done it my way long enough”, I was repenting from dead works. Dead works are our own attempts to make ourselves righteous, to make ourselves acceptable to God. We can never make ourselves acceptable to God.
Then I saw that when I continued and said to God, “I want to do it your way”, that confessed my faith toward God for his way is the finished work of Jesus Christ when he was crucified, buried and rose again, paying the penalty for our sins that we might have the righteousness of God.
These are the first two of 6 parts of the milk of the word of God. Would you allow us to help you more with these two or with all six from the Bible?
Harward Chapel Baptist Church
Pastor Dwayne Hinson
Norwood, NC