Two weeks ago today was my sixtieth birthday. There’s always something about
the change of a decade that causes me to become reflective about life. I’ve
experienced it since I turned twenty. Every autumn I spend a few days alone to
think, pray and reflect on where I’ve been and where I imagine I’ll be going in
the days ahead. Although it is summertime, this birthday has brought an
exceptionally pensive spirit with it.
I’m writing this blog simply to share some of the thoughts I’m having at this
mile-marker in my life. Since the time of my initial epiphany of grace in 1990 I
knew and have often said that my life is my ministry. It’s not what I say that
matters most to me. It’s who I am that I believe is the only thing that can
truly have a lasting impact on other people’s lives.
I’ve wanted to see my lifetime count for God’s glory since I was a child. At
sixteen, I used to say to Melanie, “I want to make my mark for God.” Those words
have come to mean something different over the years than they initially did but
the underlying desire is still there. I’ve always recognized that the only
matters in life that truly matter, in the ultimate sense, are eternal matters.
When I was a boy, I wanted to conquer the world for Jesus. I did things like
take the city map where I lived and divide it into segments, with the intention
of seeing to it that every family in each section of the town would hear the
gospel. Sometimes I prayed all night (literally) for God to use my life to reach
people. Some of you who read this remember me as a teen and recall how I
preached on the hood of my car, in parking lots at bowling alleys, theater
parking lots and occasionally even on street corners. I’ve knocked on more doors
than most Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. I walked into bars filled with
hardened looking, tattooed musclemen and hauled my 135 pound, pimple-faced self
over to the bar where I handed them gospel tracts. Nothing could stop me, not
even common sense. At eighteen years old I sought (and by modern charismatic
definition) experienced “the baptism of the Spirit” in a church meeting at
Shorter Avenue Baptist Church. In my church culture, I tried to walk in it “on
the low down” but my zeal was obvious. Whatever I may have lacked in maturity
and discretion I made up for with sincerity and zeal. Today, I think my Father
smiled with pride as He watched his soul-winning, fasting and praying, blood
claiming and in-Jesus’-nameing, zealot tear into the world like a crazed badger
on a wriggling snake. My head may not have been all-grown-up but my heart was as
big as Texas.
I became a senior pastor at nineteen and in my twenties, I read everything I
could get my hands on about spiritual power. Charles Finney, R.A. Torrey, D.L.
Moody, E.M. Bounds . . . I read them all. I didn’t grace walk back then. I ran
in every direction, running some distance on the paths of rabid soul-winning,
separatism, devout Bible study and fiery preaching that followed. I started a
church and with a wonderful group whose memory I love to this day I pounced on
worldliness, sin and degradation with the fury of a holy hurricane. In most
places I served as pastor, the people loved me and I loved them. I smile as I
think of my twenties, and I think my Heavenly Father smiles too, even now about
it.
In my thirties, I was busy rearing children and trying to grow a church. My
passion was studying church growth and seeking to implement the best-proven
plans available to reach our city. One denominational executive told me he had
never seen any pastor of any age with a better library on church growth than
mine. I still had the fever to knock down the gates of hell by the sheer force
of my commitment.
If you have read my first book, Grace Walk, you are familiar with how it all
came to a grand finale at the age of thirty-six. I had prayed for God to “do
whatever you need to do to bring me to the place where my life can count the
most for your glory.” In response to that prayer, he put me in a dying church
where people didn’t like me very much (and they weren’t my favorites of all time
either.) It was at that place that I came to the end of myself as my confidence
eroded while watching attendance continue to dwindle right out from under me,
despite my heroic efforts to make things happen.
I spent the last years of my thirties teaching grace to that group of people.
Some received it and others grew weary of my broken-record message of the
believer’s identity in Christ and what it means to walk in grace.
At the age of forty, I wrote Grace Walk to share the story of my personal
journey. I had no thoughts or plans of it being published but God had other
plans. I resigned my church to enter an itinerate ministry in which I would
travel and share the message of grace in other places. I’ve been doing that ever
since then and still love it.
My forties were a wonderfully decade. In fact, they were the most enjoyable
thus far. I was a grace-commando who ran around the world like a man-on-fire
screeching and preaching grace to anybody who would listen. (Wait, that’s still
me, right?) As I continued to write books, the Lord continued to give favor to
my ministry. Grace Walk was to become a best-seller by industry standards and
doors continued to open. My passion for Christ had matured and become redirected
to the place that I finally was living from a mindset that understood living “in
Him” as opposed to “for Him.” It was a ten-year whirlwind world grace tour.
At the age of fifty, I had great expectations. I called it “my jubilee year”
and proclaimed to my family that the next ten years would be the best ever.
While it’s true that every year in Christ is good, my expectations were not met
at all. I will be vulnerable enough at this point to say that the past decade
was horrific in more ways than I could enumerate. Both my parents died. I lost
every cent (savings, inheritance and retirement) that I had in the world to an
investment that Melanie and I fully trusted would generate the financial
security that would enable us to do ministry with no regard about finances
whatsoever. This was after much prayer, discussion, due diligence and faith that
God was leading us to take this financial step so that He could bless it
financially.
My children had problems. My grandson was born autistic and my granddaughter
developed an autonomic problem that is still very debilitating to her even now.
Melanie was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis and with a spinal condition that
led doctors to speak an unspeakably horrific prognosis over her. I dealt with
the same autonomic condition that assaulted my precious granddaughter and wasn’t
able to travel in ministry for most of a year. Ministry finances and personal
finances became so bleak that I wondered if I’d end up putting in applications
for work in places outside Grace Walk. I felt faithless and depressed much of
the time. I prayed and expressed faith with my words but I could almost hear my
own voice tremble as I did. I told a friend that if my sixties were to be like
my fifties, I wished the Lord would go ahead and take me home. Was my faith
weak? You bet. Did I cling to Him through it all? Desperately.
In 2005, once again I began to sense the Holy Spirit leading me in a
direction that brought me to a deeper and new understanding of our Father’s
loving grace. I estimate the time I prayed and studied over a seven-year period
to be thousands of hours. Many of them were in the middle of the night. It was
scary because the things He was teaching me were truths that I knew some friends
and peers wouldn’t accept. I knew that “my ministry” would be at risk if I began
to speak the things He was teaching me. Once again, I know how the Father must
have smiled about me thinking that there was a “my ministry.” He knows whose
ministry it is and so do I, at times, but at other times I struggled as I tried
to imagine how to move forward and teach grace without setting my own backside
on fire by saying things I knew many wouldn’t like.
If you’ve been keeping up with me over the past years, you know that
integrity won out and I began to speak from the heart the things He put in my
heart. There has been a price. I lost friends, ministry donors, influence with
some and became the target of inflammatory words like “false teacher” and even
“heretic.” But I’ve never had the kind of personality where I can play a game.
My heart has to be in what I’m doing. Otherwise, I’ll go sell time-shares in
Florida where there is some serious money to be made. Thank God, my Grace Walk
team has walked this journey with me. I am so thankful for them and for the
friends who have stood with me, especially those who disagree with me but still
love and accept me.
Now I move into my sixties. How does it look at this point? I know it’s
politically correct in the church world to “speak it” in a way that ignores the
pain we experience but the truth is that it’s a mixed bag for me even now. Most
of the problems I mentioned in the last paragraph still whisper accusations and
paint scary pictures about the future in my mind. To the dismay of those who
think people who have a public platform have it all together I admit, without
hesitation, that I don’t.
I commented to Melanie one night this week that people would be shocked if
they knew the tracks that many in public ministry travel every day. There is the
public persona that people see and there is the private life that we all live.
My friends and family will tell you that I don’t live two lives. I’m the same
person everywhere, all the time. That, however, doesn’t mean that I don’t use
discretion about the things I share.
Some people have spoken to us about the “exotic lifestyle” we live as we
travel the world and appear on TV and speak on the radio and write books and . .
. That’s all real. It’s a gift from God and I love it. I don’t take it or myself
too seriously because I know where I come from and I know it could all go away
in an instant. For whatever reason, God has chosen to take this small town boy
and do some things that surprise me. That’s on Him. All I’ve done is hang on for
the ride. I’ve had a few ask me if pride about these things is a temptation to
me. I snicker inwardly when they ask because if they knew my insecurities they’d
know better. An extroverted personality and the gift of gab doesn’t negate the
reality of doubts about myself that rush in from the darkness to mock and taunt
me at times, but by His grace I deal with those moments and then act in boldness
because that’s what faith does.
There are things we face, at this very moment, that leave me with a dry mouth
and a quivering whimper for grace to rescue me. I don’t share everything because
some things must be private out of respect for other people. And, truthfully, as
I learned when I faced my health challenges a few years ago, sometimes I’m not
in the mood for Job’s comforters to come along with their pious platitudes that
make me want to vomit. So I just talk to Him about these things and then go on
and do what He has put before me to do.
In some ways, I feel more optimistic than I have in years. I’m not a seer but
I have a sense about my book, Beyond an Angry God. It is the magnum opus of my
life in that it says exactly what I would want to say if I was going to die
tomorrow and had only one more time to speak. I believe God is going to use it
to impact people in a big way. I have no delusions that there won’t be those who
hate it and renounce me for writing it but I truly don’t care anymore. I feel as
confident that this is God at work as anything I’ve done in my lifetime. So I’ll
entrust it to Him and to the Teacher who indwells the readers and we’ll see what
happens.
What are the things that are most pressing on my mind as I start this seventh
decade of my life?
1. I CAN’T CONTROL ANYTHING SO I AM LETTING GO OF EVERYTHING
Nothing I’ve tried to control has turned out the way I thought it would. I
mean nothing. Control is an illusion and stress is the result of being sucked
into the imaginary world where we think we can “do this and that will happen.”
It doesn’t work that way. By God’s grace, I have let go. Odd, isn’t it? I’ve
taught for years about yielding everything to Him and yet I’m still learning it
as I go. We have no control over the outcome of anything. The only answer is to
let it all go. Once we’ve given something up, we can no longer lose it because
it is already lost – to Him and, more importantly, in Him. I’ve circled this
block before but once again I affirm that, “I will give You the glory for
everything I like in life and the blame for everything I don’t like. I have no
life. This is your gig so do what you will. I’ll either laugh or cheer as we go
along or I’ll cry and moan, but I’m done with the whole control thing. It’s
tiring trying to be God unless you are, and I’m not.”
2. I AM DONE WITH FEAR.
This is closely related to the control issue. I have stared fear in the face
as I’ve looked at health issues, financial matters, family situations, ministry
potential, personal relationships and a myriad of other things that I have so
wanted to turn out in certain ways. It’s exhausting. At sixty, I’m not just
moving out of the drivers seat. I’m handing over the keys and will ride in the
back seat from now on. Where I go, I will go. From now on, I’m just going along
for the ride and, by God’s grace, I won’t be a back seat driver.
What a shock
it was when He showed me that the opposite of fear isn’t faith. It’s love.
“Perfect love casts out fear,” not perfect faith. So, I plan to just focus on
His love for the rest of my life with the confidence that, as I do, fear with
wither.
3. I’M GOING TO ENJOY THE SIMPLE THINGS OF LIFE MORE.
I plan to waste time more by doing more important things in life; things like
listening to more sixties rock n’ roll and dancing with my wife on the patio and
sipping Cabernet Sauvignon with my non-Baptist friends ☺ and doing fun stuff
with my grandchildren and going to more movies and finding out where Leonard
Cohen is performing and going to hear him and . . . well, you get the idea.
Sorry if I don’t answer your email right away. I’m in an important meeting. I
may even take up that unspeakably evil thing I renounced in fury years ago after
losing my salvation one day while standing by a pond – golf. I am. I’m going to
do it. I’ve never had an interest in sports so, for goodness sake, I must become
some kind of manly man before I die. Golf, yeah. That’s the ticket. Who will
teach me to play? Don’t volunteer if golf is a sport to you. I only want those
who understand it’s a game.
4. I’M GOING TO GET TO KNOW MY ABBA BETTER.
How do I plan to do that? By listening to Him more. He never takes my advice
anyway. I think I’ll spend the rest of life letting Him lead this dance so that
I can stop stepping all over my own feet. I’m going to open my mind and heart to
experience Him in ways and in places that I’ve not encountered Him in the past.
Go head, Papa. Show me. I’m willing. Let’s roll. I’ve put it in writing. Let’s
do this thing.
I’ll stop there, not because a list of four items covers all
that is in my heart but because that last one seems like a good stopping
place.
What will the next decade hold? I don’t know. When I was debilitated I
started to wonder if life was winding down for me. I don’t think that’s the case
but I don’t have any internal surge of enthusiasm to blurt powerful professions
of promise about the future. I did that when I was a young man and it’s good to
do if that’s what you want to do, but I’m content at this point in life to just
live it out one day at a time. I don’t ever plan to retire and at this point
couldn’t if I had wanted to but I am going to resign from some of the things
I’ve left on the “must-do” list and instead live from the “Let’s do” list as I
walk with my Father each day. `
