Today is chapter three in sharing pieces of my story. In the first two chapters I narrated the story of committing my life to Jesus and how decade later, an act of God and an earthquake (not a literal one) got me to moving closer to a life in ministry, even though at that time I did not know that.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Upon graduation from college in 1980, I had two short stints at two different companies and then for the next twenty years I worked at some sort of ag-related business, mostly involving chickens. My career was advancing nicely and by the mid-1990s I was managing not only the accounting department but also various aspects of the companies as well. In late 1997, I was asked by one of the country’s largest egg producers to join their team as CFO. This company was located near Columbus, Ohio. II had previously worked for two companies who built all this egg farm’s poultry houses. One of those two companies had helped start the egg farm back in the 1980s, so, I know this company well.

This egg farm has run afoul with numerous governmental and environmental agencies and was not well liked in the area or among the egg industry. The president of the company wanted me to be his CFO and help “clean things up.”

My wife and daughters and I lived in southcentral Pennsylvania. I had moved four times growing up and in those moves I never really felt settled. About the time I was beginning to feel settled we packed up and moved again. One of those four moves had landed us in Columbus, Ohio. Eventually my parents ended up in southcentral Pennsylvania.

The egg farm job sounded very enticing and would be a tremendous opportunity for us. However, it was four hundred miles away and would require us to move. My childhood memories of moving from city to city were not the most pleasant and I promised myself that I would never move my family. I was not too interested in leaving an environment in which my family was comfortable, stable, and content, into one that would be full of uncertainty. If truth be known, I did not want re-open my painful memories, and it was convenient to use my family’s “best interests” as an excuse.

I really struggled with the decision in front of us. My wife and I prayed fervently. Honestly, I prayed in selfish ways while she prayed for God’s guidance. Those selfish self-centered thoughts changed over a period of two nights. The first night, God interrupted a good night’s sleep and spoke to me in a dream, in which he said, “Dave, you are not going to Columbus because of the job but the job is a way to get you to Columbus.” We were not completely sure what that meant, but it got my wife’s attention. My thoughts, very different – not so God-focused.

The second night’s dream got “worse.” In it, I saw a wooden park bench on a brick pathway overlooking a river. I saw the park bench clearly, down to the blue color of the frame and the wooden lattice making up the seats and back. What the heck does that mean?

In continuing to pray and talk about what this would mean for our family, my wife felt this was God telling us something. To a lesser degree, I sensed that as well. However, just as in the first two previous chapters, my self-centered self-serving soul wasn’t too interested in giving up that much control to God.

I did eventually accept the job and in May 1998 I moved to Columbus, Ohio. My wife and daughters stayed back in Pennsylvania so our daughters could finish the school year, and then they would come sometime after that. There was also the little thing of selling our house.

Not long after moving to Columbus, God’s words in that first dream suddenly made sense. The image from my second dream, it would take about another ten years for that to make sense to us. More on both of those in upcoming chapters. 

I want you to see two things from today. First, God’s pursuit of each one of us is ongoing and endless. He made us. He knows us. He loves us. He pursues. He works in miraculous ways to soften our hearts. He knocks and knocks and knocks, waiting for us to open the door. I love these words from Psalm 139:5 – “You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head.”

Second, as you can easily garner from this and previous chapters, my wife and her very strong faith have been integral in every step of my faith journey.

In the next chapter I will share another piece of my story. In that one, God uses two worship songs to begin to solidify his call to me for ministry.

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Today is chapter two in sharing pieces of my story. In the first chapter, I described how I moved from thinking that I was a true follower of Jesus to beginning to actually become one. Let me again remind you that my purpose is not to shed light on me, but rather, to point us to God. The one who created us in his image and continues to pursue us.

I committed my life to Jesus in the summer of 1986. For the next nine years, I grew in my head knowledge of what walking with Jesus meant, but it truly hadn’t made the short trip down to my heart. If you read my first chapter, you also know that I said because of my speech impediment it would take an act of God and an earthquake to move me anywhere near public speaking.

As I continued to grow in my knowledge and understanding of faith and of God, I also was continuing to be content in being my own captain and walking out my well planned out path. Overall, life was good. My wife and I, along with our two daughters, were plugged into a local church. We are active in the life of the church and growing in our faith. However, for me, it was still more knowledge than experiential.

Then… in 1995, my wife and some friends encouraged me to attend that year’s Promise Keepers event at RFK Stadium in DC. A group of men from our church were planning to attend the conference, so, sounded like fun to me. Oh my, little did I know what I was about to get myself it to. That opening Friday night of the conference, 52,000 men stood, singing Amazing Grace, and the stadium was shaking from our collective voices. Oh crap. An act of God got to me this conference, and now, an “earthquake.”

I experienced something that night that still gives me goosebumps. God was softening and tenderizing my heart, and even though I didn’t have the words then, he was helping me begin to move my faith from simply knowing about Jesus to actually knowing Jesus, from knowledge to experiential.

On the bus trip home, I shared with a few men, one being our church’s pastor, that I didn’t know why, but I sensed God asking me to step out and be a lay leader. In our church, that was the person who welcomed people to a worship service, made announcements, and read that day’s scripture passages. At the time, I was the church board president and knew that ten or so people were on that rotating schedule, thus I would have more than two months to weasel my way out of speaking in church.

Whether what happened next actually happened as told to me, or I was “set up,” I do not know. That next morning after getting home from the conference, I walked into church and was greeted by our pastor. He looked as tired as me. What he said next changed the trajectory of our life completely. And it screwed with my well laid out plan. “Dave, Chuck is scheduled to be lay leader today, but he broke his glasses and cannot read without them, so would you fill in for him?”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down this train. Today? Me? Not so sure. I agreed to try this lay leader gig, but my plan didn’t include anything like this. Ignoring my self-centered self-serving will, I somewhat reluctantly said yes. I told my wife the plan, hoping she would help me manufacture some excuse, only to have her grab my hand and say, “you got this.” Comforting indeed, but not quite the answer I wanted.

So, as I prepared to do this “what was I thinking” thing. I was wheeling and dealing with God. “Okay God, I am stepping out in faith, doing my part, so your part is giving me perfect speech today. That’s the deal. Got it?”

I somehow bumbled my way through and as the service was ending, I looked out into the audience, only to see my wife and many others with tears streaming down their faces. “Oh no, did I do that bad?”  

As I questioned God as to why he didn’t keep his end of our bargain, I heard what I now know was his still small voice, say to me, “I kept my end of the bargain, I was with you up there on that stage, and this is just the beginning.” I wasn’t quite sure I bought “I was with you,” but, whatever. And if I had known then what “this is just the beginning” would come to mean, I would have checked out of Hotel California right then and there. What was happening, even though I did not understand it at the time – God was drawing nearer to me because I was first drawing nearer to him (James 4:8).

In my story that is still being written, it is God who is the protagonist, and me, simply an actor in the story, one who is learning from, and following, the play’s lead character. You have a similar story! A story unique to you! God wants to draw ever so close to you. Are you drawing yourself close to him? Don’t wait for an earthquake. Do it now!

The next chapter will see God continuing to reveal more and more of his plan, much of which comes in unexpected and surprising ways.

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Over the next few writings, I will be telling pieces of my story. Not to put focus on me, but to point us to God. A God who is madly in love with every one of us. A God who made us in his image. A God who pursues every one of us and wants to be in intimate relationship with us.

Allow me to provide some background and context. I have a speech impediment that for much of my life felt like a weight around my neck. I allowed it to define me – broken, and since the speech impediment continued, seemingly unfixable. According to me, my value, or lack thereof, was determined and defined by imperfect speech patterns. Whether at home or in the public space, I felt very self-conscious anytime I talked. Internally I cringed every time I talked. It would take an act of God and an earthquake to get me to want to be as public speaker. More on that in the next writing.

I grew up going to church regularly (late 1950s through early 70s). Looking back, I sense our going to church was more about the “acceptable societal thing to do” more so than it was about growing in our relationship with God or building community with other believers. The churches we attended were traditional mainline ones.

My remembrance is that the preachers talked more about the do’s and don’ts of “good clean living” and less about committing oneself to Jesus, letting him change us from the inside. I was baptized as a small boy, went through confirmation class in seventh grade, received giving envelopes, threw a few bucks in the offering plate from time to time, and “didn’t drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls who do.” So, in my mind, and from what I interpreted all this to mean, I was a “good” Christian. Whatever a Christian was.

Fast forward to my sophomore year in college (1977). I started dating a hot girl and early in the relationship she asked if I was a Christian. Without hesitation, I said yes. I was lying to her but didn’t know I was lying (refer back to the last paragraph). I am sure I would have said yes to her question regardless. I wanted to date her and was smart enough to know that my answer would probably determine whether or not this budding relationship had hope or would end right then and there. We never had another discussion about this and eventually got married in 1983.

Roll the tape even further and it takes us to early 1986. I began attending a series of men’s luncheons with a newly hired co-worker. These were meetings with food, fellowship, and a man sharing his testimony. I began hearing something new and strange sounding. Something about being “born again” by committing my life to Jesus Christ. God was pricking my tender heart and in the summer of that year, I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior. I had no clue what that actually meant but I knew at that moment that I needed Jesus in my life. Honestly, if I knew at that moment the ways God wanted to use me in years to come, I would have most likely bailed immediately. Oh, and I should mention that I believe God put this co-worker in my path for the sole purpose of pointing me to Christ – within weeks of my faith commitment he left the company.

For about the next nine years, I began to grow in head knowledge of what a life walking with Jesus looked like, but it wasn’t until May 1995 that it moved from my head to my heart, from intellectual to experiential. That story is next. Stay tuned.

I was not looking for God. Yet, God was still actively pursuing me.

In Isaiah 64, the unrepentant Israelites pray an impassioned prayer to God, through the prophet, crying out for his mercy. God begins his reply by telling the people that he permitted himself to be sought and found (Isaiah 65:1-5). The problem was with them, not with God. Then, in Romans 10, the apostle Paul applies those same verses to the Gentiles (v.20 – those not seeking) and the Jews (v. 21 – those who did not ask for him, i.e., unrepentant). I believe God making himself available to us is still his mode of operandi today. 

In the last book in the Bible, Revelation, after rebuking the church in Laodicea for being lukewarm (3:14-29), Jesus, speaking through John, extends an invitation to dine with him – “Listen! I stand at the door and knock; if any hear my voice and open the door, I will come into their house and eat with them, and they will eat with me” (3:20, GNT). That same “dinner date” invitation is extended to us today.

Ending as I began, why do I share all this? Certainly not to show my spiritual strength or awareness. For much of my life, I was both blind and ignorant to God’s relentless pursuit. Yet, in his great love for me, he knocked and knocked and knocked, patiently waiting for me to open the door. He is doing the same for you right now! Will you, maybe for the first time, open the door? Or, if you opened in the past but have sort of pushed Jesus out, will you open it again?

Note: This painting, The Light of the World, by William Holman Hunt, depicts Jesus knocking on an overgrown and long-unopened door. Notice the door has no handle and, thus, can only be opened from the inside.

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In my younger days I was a running back on the football team. As I took the ball from the quarterback, I rushed through the hole created by the hog-mollies, first running past the defensive lineman, along the way stiff arming the outside linebacker before outrunning the safety who was chasing me down, finally crossing the goal line for a touchdown, all to the cheers of the home crowd. Now that was as good as it gets.

However, on the next offensive series I took the handoff and quickly came face to face with that same outside linebacker, coming at me faster than an out of control freight train, who drove his helmet through my chest, causing me to fumble the ball, only to see his teammate pick up the loose ball take it to the house for six points. But this time, instead of cheers, that same enthusiastic crowd was quick to express a different kind of noise; their vocal displeasure at my failure to hold onto the football. If I wasn’t on the football field then you could find me on the track, using my speed to try and outrun the other sprinters.

I have a speech impediment that left a void in my soul, one that in my youth, and even into early adulthood, I attempted to fill through athletic accomplishments. However, my football career ended prematurely due to a serious neck injury and several years after that I finally gave up on sprinting due to nagging lower leg issues. I felt like I was “left with nothing.” You might not have played football or run track, but I’m sure you had and have success in whatever you are talented at, and if you are honest, you’ll agree that none of that brings lasting contentment. No amount of fame or fortune can permanently fill what is intended to be filled by God.   

Not only is it fame and fortune, but also more stuff, washboard abs, larger breasts, more friends, the nicest car in the neighborhood, or the latest technology gadget, that we seek after to help us fill the void that is within us. Enjoying life and the trappings that comes along with it is not a bad thing. God wants us to enjoy life. In 1 Timothy 6:17, among other things, we are told that God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” But Scripture also tells us that worldly “stuff” does not bring soul filling satisfaction that lasts a lifetime.

Scripture is filled with verses promising satisfaction to the discontented soul.

“Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’” (John 6:35).

Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things (Psalm 107:9).

C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity gives us this answer to why looking for happiness in places other than God is hopeless. Here is what Lewis says – “The reason it will never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering with religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”  

So, enjoy your success and your stuff for what is it intended, but look for and find permanent peace, joy, and happiness only in Jesus. He is your lasting and living water!

Stop looking in the wrong places and begin looking in the one place that offers just what you need.  

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We are a society that does not like waiting. Whether it is in line at the grocery store, at the drive-thru window, or at the security checkpoint at the airport, we just don’t like to wait. We are a microwave society; we want to push a few buttons and in one minute the meal is ready to eat. Even as the sixty seconds ticks off, we are antsy; we stand there tapping our foot as if to be saying to the microwave, “come on, hurry up!”

When we are waiting, it seems like time crawls along at a turtle’s pace. You know this picture; you look at the clock and it reads ten minutes before three in the afternoon and after what seems like hours you look again, only to see that just ten minutes have passed. Every one of us struggles with some level of impatience; it is just in our DNA.

We often have those same “hurry up” demands of God. We ask Him for something, and we often, if not always, want instant results. And we tell Him what we want and when we want it. But God uses two things to grow our faith – pain and waiting. Not only that, God’s timing and ways, they are perfect. He knows what we need and when we need it. We find these words in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its own time.”  Elsewhere in Scripture, we are told, “This God – his way is perfect, the word of the LORD proves true; he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 18:30).

By nature, I am not a good or patient wait-er. But having said that, as I continue in my faith journey, I am learning how to wait well, wait on God. I have seen time and time again the benefits of waiting on God’s timing instead of letting my impulsive nature kick in and do things in “Dave’s timing.”  

The Bible is filled with verses on waiting, and the benefit of waiting. In Psalm 27:14 we read, “Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.” In Micah 7:7 we see, “But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.” God’s faithfulness is good to those who wait on him, “The LORD is good to those who wait for him, the soul who seeks him” (Lamentations 3:25).

King David gives us this, his personal experience of deliverance, “I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the LORD and put their trust in him” (Psalm 40:1-3). Notice David says that his renewed faith and confidence will inspire and encourage others as well.

So today, wait for the Lord. His timing is always perfect, even if from your limited perspective it seems as if He is crawling at a turtle’s pace!

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Have you ever been in a discussion where the other person or people seem to use words foreign to you? They use jargon unique to them. Maybe you have said, “it is all Greek to me.” Accountants talk about accruals, debits, credits, FIFO, p/e ratios, burden rates. All words that make no sense to non-bean counters. That allusion refers to the idea that accountants are often overly dedicated to detail, counting every last item (bean), often missing the bigger picture. Have you ever listened in as lawyers talk to one another? Are they speaking in code? Medical terms, they all seem to have at least five syllables.

My wife used to work as a healthcare social worker. In that job, she regularly sat in psychotropic drug meetings. While I vaguely understood what they discussed in that meeting, my mind conjured up a completely different picture; that of stoned-out-their-mind hippies listening to Jefferson Airplane or Country Joe & The Fish at Woodstock. Even pastors and theologians sometimes use words that are not easily understood by most people – eschatology, justification, exegesis, pneumatology, just to name three. When we first moved to eastern North Carolina, much of their dialect and language was foreign to me. To this day, I think they have more than 26 letters in their alphabet. 

We all have those areas in our lives that, based upon our background, education, experience, we easily understand. Those things are not Greek to us. There are also those things that on our own we simply do not, cannot, understand. Without help, those things are foreign to us, they are “Greek to us.” One of the things we need help in understanding is when reading the Bible. 

To comprehend the Bible, we need divine revelation. I believe that God first reveals himself first through His Son, Jesus, and then also through the words of scripture. And unless someone knows Jesus, they do not have the ability to understand the things of God. Through this revelation, God communicates the mysteries of faith to his people. John 1:14 says this about God the Father revealing himself through Jesus – “And the Word (see John 1:14) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The Bible is also God’s revelation of himself and his purposes. Jesus taught that the Scriptures reveal who He is – “He said to them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’ Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44-45).

First, in order to know God (not know about Him), we must commit our lives to following Jesus. Secondly, since we cannot comprehend Scripture on our own, we need the Spirit of God, who resides within every Jesus-follower, to illuminate our minds. This is how the revelation comes to us. As Jesus was giving his final instructions to the disciples, here is what he told them – “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).

Are you reading the Bible as if it were Greek? Or are you being led by the Spirit as you read, meditate, digest, submit your will, all while gaining divine revelation and being transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus?

So, to help the Bible not be “it’s all Greek to me,” we need to be seeking the help of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, asking Him to open our minds and hearts, revealing to us God’s divine truths and promises through the words we read.

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