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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I am reaching back into the archives today. In this frenzied world in which we live, where stuff comes at us from all angles and at breakneck speed, where what was yesterday no longer is today, where there is just no time to quiet our souls, it seems appropriate to re-post this earlier writing.  

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Do you have too much to do and not enough time or energy to get it all done? Most of us, maybe all of us if we are honest, would answer yes to that question. We work ourselves to the bone, often neglecting proper diet, exercise, rest, and sleep, soon finding ourselves worn out and unproductive. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to have much needed quietness and rest. And even when I am seemingly quiet or at rest, I am not truly quiet or at rest. Does any of that sound familiar to you?

Not only do we need down time to refresh and recharge our body and mind, our soul need rest as well. Our culture regularly tells us, sometimes subliminally and other times in not so subtle ways, that we need to be busy all the time, that idleness is laziness, that idleness is weakness. However, Scripture tells us there is great benefit in times of quietness and rest. In Isaiah 30:15 we read these words – “In quietness and trust is your strength.”

The classic novel Moby Dick written by Herman Melville gives us a wonderful example of the importance of being productive when we need to be productive and being idle when we need to be idle. If you are not familiar with the story, let me quickly summarize the storyline of the book. It revolves around a wandering sailor named Ishmael and his voyage on the whaling ship “Pequod,” commanded by Captain Ahab. On a previous sailing voyage, an elusive and ferocious white whale named Moby Dick destroyed Ahab’s boat and bit off his leg. The story is narrated by Ishmael and tells us of Ahab’s pursuit for vengeance against Moby Dick.

In the chapter titled “The Dart,” the Pequod is in hot pursuit of the whale. This chapter gives us insight into the activity that is taking place on the deck as the captain and his crew rapidly sail out into the raging sea to kill the whale. The entire crew is focused on the task at hand, tensions are high, and by all indications, there is a lot of energy being used, even being wasted.

One member of the crew is charged with killing the whale. That person is the harpooner, and Melville tells us that even when the harpooner is exhausted, he is still expected to “drop and secure his oar, turn around on his center halfway, seize his harpoon from the crotch, and with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it somehow into the whale.” Melville goes on to say this, “No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen in a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are successful.” And finally, Melville gives us his reason for such a low success rate, “If you take the breath out of his (harpooner) body how can you expect to find it there when needed most!”

On most whaleboats, the harpooner is actively helping the other crew members, but on Ahab’s boat, the harpooner is relaxed and quietly waiting. The chapter ends with these words; words that speak loudly to us (or at least to me) in this go-go-go culture – “To ensure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out of toil.”

So, make it a priority to balance the rhythms of work, play, and rest in your life. Doing so is not only wise, but also healthy, and it will help “ensure the greatest efficiency” in carrying out your God-given purpose for being on this earth.

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To me, sailing conjures up an image of peacefulness as the boat smoothly sails through the water. The sun would be shining, the seas calm, albatrosses gracefully soaring overhead, and the winds just enough to blow gently against the sails. In sailing, depending upon the direction of the wind and which direction you want to go, and whether you are sailing upwind (windward) or downwind (leeward), the boat’s sails take on the characteristics of either an airplane wing or a parachute.

In a perfect world, life would also be smooth sailing. But life is not perfect, and it certainly is not smooth sailing. “Out of the blue” sometimes happens, threatening to capsize your boat, messing up your well laid out plans, tossing you and your possessions into the raging seas, and leaving you feeling helpless in the grip of the storm. The origin of out of the blue has evolved over time as a shortened version of an old idiom, a bolt out of the blue, referencing lightning that suddenly appears in the blue sky.  

Not only does the unexpected happen, but life also gets twisted, it gets made crooked. I have a t-shirt that sums up the story of my life, and I suspect it sums up yours as well. It shows two graphs; What I planned and What happened.

Our efforts to try and figure out that twistedness, to straighten things out, to supply what is lacking, often leaves us exhausted and confused. We just do not always have answers. In the book of Ecclesiastes, we find that very thing – “What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted” (1:15).

A few years ago, we experienced one of those out of the blue, life getting twisted up moments. I suffered a stroke. Prior to the stroke, there were no warning signs. Thankfully, my wife got me to the hospital quickly, affording me the ability to receive the clot-busting drug, which breaks up the clot causing the blockage and helps restore blood flow to the brain, lessening damage to the brain.

While life is different these days than it would have been without the stroke, and while I do have a few cognitive and neurological deficits, we do press on, looking for, and continually learning, new ways to thrive with a brain that functions differently than it once did.    

Staying in Ecclesiastes, we are told that some things are just not in our control, and we are to accept both prosperity and adversity, knowing God is sovereign over both, without being able to explain just how it all will be worked out. Here is what we read – “Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him” (7:13-14). Those two verses do not say that God initiated my stroke, but what I do believe they do say is that He can use the out of the blue, the unexpected crookedness, to test my faith and grow my faith.

Do I sometimes have moments of frustration and sadness? Do I sometimes wish things could be different? Yes, I do. But it is because of God’s unwavering faithfulness to me, even as my ever-growing faith sometimes wavers, that I can live out these words – “He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD” (Psalm 112:7). And these – “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

So, today, and every day, amid the out of the blue and crookedness of life, when what is differs from what you planned, will you rejoice, pray, be thankful, trusting that God knows what He is doing (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)? For me, some days that is easier than others, but I am committed to unfailingly trusting God and giving Him thanks, even when it is hard to do so.

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