Born to a Christian family, Dwayna started praying and singing hymns before she could talk plainly. She was saved at the age of five and then baptized in First Baptist Church of Morristown, Tennessee. Dwayna grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and she traveled all over the world in crusade teams as a soloist in revival meetings affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention
Dwayna moved to Orlando, FL, as a teenager and was a member of First Baptist Orlando. She sang the old hymns as a soloist in evangelistic crusades in India, Haiti, and Korea from age thirteen to fifteen. She was awarded “Best in Show” in musical theater for the state of Florida in high school. She was also chosen to represent her high school, based on an essay that she wrote, as an intern for Congressman Lawton Chiles in Washington, D.C. when she was sixteen years old.
At the age of seventeen, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music as a singer and songwriter and had several production deals with producers affiliated with Arista and Warner Brothers and publishing contracts with various companies such as BMG. She lived in NYC from 1996 to 1997 and sang three nights a week around town with a song list of over one hundred songs from the forties and fifties. She found, however, that her love for Jesus and desire to obey the Bible didn’t help her succeed in the entertainment business. “He must increase, and I must decrease” didn’t go over very well when it came to scripts she was offered and potentially compromising situations. It was a very lonely place for a Christian. It was limiting, to say the least, having the desire to either succeed as an artist and entertainer in a way that was glorifying to God, or not succeed at all.
As the years passed, the music industry seemed less and less alluring until she grew to abhor the system altogether. She turned to Scripture memorization through those long days. The days were so difficult that she actually carried 3x5 cards around with Bible verses on them to memorize to just help her get through the hours of boring, unfulfilling jobs to make ends meet. Ostracized by “casting couch” managers and producers for not playing their game, she grew to truly hate the world’s system and the music industry she once held so dear and live more and more for heaven.
With no husband or record deal, and a season without even a best friend, one day at a time, Dwayna started to experience what it meant for Jesus to be everything to her. She would walk out of a movie, if it was not something He wanted to see, knowing that He was right there with her, too. Her first love became knowing Jesus through Bible study, and reading biographies of missionaries, and listening to sermons. She first heard Walter Martin, founder of the Christian Research Institute, on cassette and called CRI and announced enthusiastically, “I want everything he has ever done!” She had made the exciting discovery of apologetics.
Embarrassed by all of the ambition that she had once had to “make it big” in this world, she moved to Los Angeles in 2001 for the sole purpose of becoming a member of Grace Community Church and sitting under the expository teaching of John MacArthur. She joined the church the very first Sunday she was there and became a very active member. She roomed with two girls from the church for the first six months and then moved to Santa Monica, where she was working in an architectural firm. The job was paying a great salary, and she was able to afford a studio apartment right on the ocean.
As assistant to the Senior Partner, her boss was cheating the company, and one of her duties was to tally his expenses. She found herself starting out the days in a vacant parking lot praying before heading to the office, as the job became something she dreaded. When she finally questioned him about his expenses, he fired her. When he fired her he said, “You are a good person,” which gave her the perfect opportunity to share the Gospel with him replying with a smile, “Thank you for saying that, but I am really not. The Bible says no one is good…But He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf… I am really not good, but Jesus is.” Unfortunately, the Good News of the Gospel was apparently bad news to him, as he fumed out of the office, and she left in peace.
Dwayna Litz is a Christian, no better than the next, but serious about her walk with God through obedience to His Word and evangelism. She never went to college, much less seminary, but she is indebted to tell people about Jesus for all that she has been forgiven, and she is hungry to know Him more through the study of His Word. And the longer she serves Him, the more she loves Him and appreciates His unmerited favor toward her in calling her His own and making her a Christian. She wakes up everyday with excitement for what God has planned and all that God has in store. This work is as natural as breathing in and out for her, different than the hopes and dreams she once held dear, but oh, so much better.
