Saved at a Picnic Table Between 2 Wars
Phil Bivins is a three-time United States Navy veteran whose service spanned Vietnam to Desert Storm, including duty aboard the USS Nimitz during the Iran Hostage Crisis. A registered nurse for 40 years, he found faith in 1978 through a chance conversation outside a Navy chapel and has spent the past 15 to 17 years growing in his walk with God at Grace Church, where he leads a men's small group today.
He went back into the Navy to become a hospital corpsman. He didn't realize until years later that he actually went back to get saved. Phil Bivins served three separate enlistments in the United States Navy spanning Vietnam all the way to Desert Storm, and this conversation with Dan Black covers all of it.
Phil grew up an Air Force kid, moving between bases in Germany, Turkey, and Hawaii while his father fought a hidden battle with alcoholism that nearly ended his military career. Phil enlisted in the Navy on a whim after trying on a friend's dress blues, washed out of submarine school, and volunteered for Vietnam alongside his best friend, serving out the final months of Naval Support Facility Da Nang during the base drawdown. Years later, as a corpsman, he found himself aboard the USS Nimitz during the Iran Hostage Crisis, treating the pilot who could not complete the Operation Eagle Claw rescue mission, and helping rescue Vietnamese refugees adrift at sea.
But the real turning point in this episode happens at a picnic table outside a Navy chapel in 1978, when a submarine officer named Scotty Baldwin walked Phil through a gospel tract and he realized that being a good man was never going to be enough. Listeners will also hear Phil's honest account of two marriages that ended in divorce and death, the loss of his second wife to years of alcohol abuse, and the slow work of rebuilding his walk with God at Grace Church, where he still leads a men's small group today, still confessing pride the same way he did the day he got saved.
This is a raw, honest conversation about what it actually looks like to keep following God decades after most testimonies stop talking.
The Story
Phil Bivins grew up moving from base to base as the son of a career Air Force sergeant, watching Cold War alerts sound in the middle of the night and touring the Holy Land as a boy without knowing what any of it would come to mean. Underneath the constant relocations was a quieter story: his father's secret battle with alcohol, and the sobriety he found through Alcoholics Anonymous in Germany in 1961, a sobriety he credited entirely to the Lord.
Phil enlisted in the Navy on a whim after trying on a friend's dress blues, washed out of submarine school, and eventually volunteered for Vietnam, where he served out the final months of a naval base being handed over to the South Vietnamese, shredding letters of condolence and standing watches on the edge of a jungle he barely understood.
Years later, back stateside and re-enlisting as a hospital corpsman, Phil found himself worried the Navy would dig into his past drug use and end his career before it started. Out of anxiety more than faith, he wandered into a Bible study group on base and met a submarine officer named Scotty Baldwin. Reading a small gospel tract about a chasm between man and God bridged only by a cross, Phil realized for the first time that being "a pretty good guy" was not the same as being right with God. He walked to the base chapel garden, prayed with Scotty, and became a Christian. There was no dramatic sign, just a quiet shift he later described simply as feeling lighter.
"I went back in the Navy to get saved. I didn't know that at the time, but that's what happened."
What followed was not a straight line. He served aboard the USS Nimitz through the tense, grinding months of the Iran Hostage Crisis, and helped rescue dozens of Vietnamese refugees adrift at sea, yet two marriages that began outside the boundaries he now says God had clearly laid out both ended in heartbreak. That loss pushed Phil toward Grace Church, where he was baptized and eventually founded a men's small group that still meets today, built on the same daily discipline of confessing pride and waiting on God's word to go.
From This Episode
"You know what? I'm reading this thing and I... I always thought I was a pretty good guy."
Phil Bivins"If I felt anything, I probably felt lighter."
Phil Bivins"Nobody was there when Deb died. She died by herself, except the Lord was there."
Phil Bivins"If you think you're the smartest guy in the room, you're probably in the wrong room."
Phil BivinsScripture
Phil uses this narrative to illustrate that discerning God's will isn't enough on its own — believers must wait for explicit confirmation, the "word go," before acting, rather than presuming and moving on their own understanding.
Discussed through the lens of C.S. Lewis, this frames pride as the root sin behind personal and worldly dysfunction, not a minor character flaw.
A simple gospel tract depicting man and God separated by a chasm, bridged only by the cross — the vehicle through which Phil first understood his need for salvation.
Topics Covered