Chester’s Blog

6/23/2019   New Beginnings

It has been a while since I have written or updated my H2H blog.  A vibrant ministry is one that changes and adapts to changes in the environment and opportunities.  I have listened for God’s nudge or voice to discern where he is leading us.  He has closed a door and has swung open others.

Our relationship with Ashley Academy has changed.  Last summer and fall it became clear that we would no longer offer our support to recruit reading buddies to read to kids at that school.  I did not understand why this change had happened.  After a period of grieving over the loss of a “child” whom I had reared and nurtured for almost 7 years, I moved on to seek God’s guidance.  Our church is still offering a huge and successful backpack program to 125 students at Ashley, and we are still celebrating teachers’ birthdays with card and cake.

At the same time our church was in a transition to call a new pastor.  We began as a church to focus more on reaching our neighbors and going into the community to serve and witness the Gospel.  Recently our Minister of Missional Engagement and I met the staff of Moore Elementary School.  We learned that they have 78% of students living under the poverty level.  The initial meeting and following have been very encouraging and relational.  Moore prides itself of creative learning, art and making everything fun and proficient.  Moore School is excited to partner with Ardmore Baptist in several ways for volunteers and resources.

Today we called our new pastor who will lead us into the next decade to become the church God is calling us to be.  The energy and excitement at Ardmore is high.  We are happy to offer our congregation a new start in building a dynamic relationship with this school, its staff, students and teachers.  Our Missions Leadership Team will guide us along with the hearts of our members who are called to be in relationship with our children and to support our educational system in this city.

3/18/2019   Growing a Bike Ministry

Our bike ministry has partnered with Luly (Hayluri Beckleses), head of the safe kids coalition in W-S. Today I was supposed to attend a bike safety training class at North Hills Elem similar to the one held at Jefferson and other schools recently. The event was postponed.

We actually have a very comprehensive bike safety program with the local school system, the City of Winston-Salem – Dept. of Transportation, the Winston-Salem Police Dept. – Downtown Bike Patrol, Ken’s Bike Shop and our Pediatric Injury Prevention Program/Safe Kids NW Piedmont Coalition. The Safe Routes to School Trailer the City owns is managed by the National Cycling Center. A schedule is created at the beginning of the school year and PE teachers from Forsyth County sign up to receive the trailer for three weeks to conduct bike education as part of the PE curriculum.

8/14/2018:  Last Minute Emotions

I am so full of emotion that I’m afraid when I meet our foster teen tomorrow, I’ll start crying.  That would not be cool.  But I know that I must be myself and trust that whatever I am, in His name and Christ in me, God will move in his own way to love her.  I really didn’t expect being a foster parent would be this overwhelming.  And I haven’t even started.  Take a deep breath and trust God.  Perhaps getting to know her focusing on her needs and appts, getting her into the right classes at school, introducing her to our church and friends, hoping that somebody her age will reach out to her, wanting her to fall in love with being in a family and being wanted, AND at the same time adjusting to being a new granddaddy, trying to adjust to a new schedule of both having a teen and babysitting for Roger, losing the security and serenity of a routine retired life style as well as a tried and true marriage of 50 years – rather than rest in the memories and celebration of all that we have accomplished and all that we enjoy in our ministry communities, where risk is embraced and failure allows us to just walk away and start anew – perhaps the accumulation of all of these changes is a bit much.  None of these can stand against the power and love of God.  What a privilege to be beloved and chosen by God to serve in his army and to be given this responsibility.  I am thrilled to be obedient to his call and to be Abba to this teenager.  You’re right.  I have no guarantee of any result, except to learn to enjoy the ride.

8/13/2018:  Abundance Revisited Again

8/13/2018:  Letters from Nam

I really have suppressed most of my thoughts and feelings from my time in Vietnam.  I spent almost 7 months in Vietnam from Sep 1971 to Feb 1072, and I have locked up that part of my life and thrown away the key.  When I think about that time, I have only vague pictures of being there.  I remember certain incidents and the jobs I did, but I have blocked the day to day reality of being in a war.

For the most part, this is a good thing.  I don’t think that re-experiencing or even remembering Vietnam could have had any positive effect on my civilian life over the past 46 years.  Several years ago I was manipulated to relate a very painful incident, which unlocked this safe place and resulted in a breakdown of uncontrolled emotions.  There apparently are some very dark and scary monsters in my closet.  For the most part most memories have been put far away, until today.

Today I ran across my letters I wrote to Susan from Vietnam.  She was insightful enough to type some of them into a Word document.  Today I was able to go back and read through my own words what I was experiencing and feeling.  The journal seemed unfamiliar to me, but as I read my letters the emotions rushed in.  I was actually surprised that my life in Nam was so distressing.  I was blamed for things I couldn’t control.  People died because of human error for which I was accountable under my command as an Artillery officer.  I faced uncertainty and imminent danger every day.  My letters expressed dire loneliness and isolation.  In short reality was suspended in the face of war.  Bad things happened with no good answer or justification.  The natural tendency was to escape the guilt and senselessness by cutting off one’s ability to feel.  I wrote on Christmas day that 3/4 of the Americans on the support base camp where I was stationed were drunk.  No wonder I divorced myself from these memories.

I was not yet a Christian.  I did not have the advantage of a foundation of faith, but in retrospect I do recognize the presence of Christ sustaining me.  As a Christ follower today, I see the evidence of God even in this darkest time.  I found that God used this time for healing in my counseling with Veterans 35 years post Vietnam.  I sat eye to eye with men and women who experienced trauma in the Middle East, veterans who needed to be touched by the healing hand of God.  So many people walked into my office trying to ignore the terrifying emotions that controlled and tortured them.  I felt that my office was a sanctuary in which veterans came to know God as a renewing healer.  I came to thank God for the painful experiences of Vietnam that he used to touch others.

Having read my letters today, I am more aware of the love I have for Susan, who sustained me with her letters and words, as I tried to give her the courage to wait until I could come home.  We were both young and afraid, both learning to deal with overwhelming circumstances, both doing the only thing we knew how to do – keep writing words of hope and love.  We both experienced this time with great loneliness.  I’m not sure I could have survived Vietnam without Susan.

An excerpt from one of my letters to Susan (Nov 21, 1971):

“I really don’t have anything spectacular to write about today.  I just feel like writing you.  I want to express myself and I constantly feel a need to tell you how much I love you.  I sit and think of all the wonderful times we’ve had, and the bad, and our future together.  The only suffering on my part in this tour has been emotional, and this suffering has taught me a lot about myself and our relationship.  Your wonderful letters help relieve a lot of the agony, as mine do to you also.  Your letters are full of the sweet, warm, passionate person I know.  It’s funny how my life here is dominated by you more than when we were together.  Our love now seems so perfect, yet groping for a way to express it physically.”

08/12/2018:  Reshaping Broken Pottery

I awoke in the middle of the night and realized I wasn’t God.  In was about 2 a.m. in May 1970.  My wife Susan and I were living in Germany at the time in which everybody in the military was slated to go to Vietnam to fight the Viet Cong in an ugly and distant war.  Since I had been in ROTC at Wake Forest University two years earlier, I took advantage of choices the Army had offered me.  I had entered the Army at Fort Sill, OK, as a lieutenant in the artillery.  Susan chose to forego her senior year at Wake to get married and accompany me to Germany. Early on, the Army offered me the opportunity to volunteer with them indefinitely in exchange for a guaranteed choice of my first duty station.  Since Susan was a German major, the decision was a no brainer.

Two very young married people climbed into an airplane in 1969 to start a journey to Germany and beyond.  The war had altered our lives.  As we met and fell in love in college, we were faced with the decision of getting married sooner or waiting until after my obligation to get married much later.  So at the innocent ages of 20 and 22 Susan and I married and headed off to tackle the world.

We were very lucky in many ways.  We had put off my tour to Vietnam for a couple of years.  You see, Susan had “accidentally” chosen to take German as her foreign language as a freshman at Wake Forest 3 years earlier.  When she was faced with choosing a foreign language at registration time, her advisor happened to be a German professor, who suggested to her that she might enjoy his language.  She did, and her life/career was changed forever.  This decision ultimately saved my life.  At least it is an intriguing supposition.  Upon completing the Artillery Officers Training at Fort Sill, OK, in August, 1969, I was reassigned to that duty station to await further orders for Vietnam.  Going to Vietnam at that time as a 2nd Lieutenant was a bad idea.  The life expectancy of an Artillery forward observer in a fire fight was 6 seconds.  Instead I volunteered for an indefinite period of time, extending my military obligation for as long as the Army needed me.  In exchange the Army offered me a guaranteed 18 months at the destination of my choice.  The decision was simple, and we packed our bags for Europe.  Germany was a land of history and enchantment.  We had each other on a meager 2nd LT salary.  We fell in love with Germany.  Susan was learning to speak the language and making friends with some local people.  We took every opportunity to travel around Europe to see castles, eat Jaegerschnitzel and experience the German culture.  Life was a dream.

Underneath the excitement of living in a foreign country was the reality that my family and my support system was not there.  On the one hand, Susan and I enjoyed one another and as newlyweds saw our lives through rose colored lenses.  We lived day to day, eagerly planning our next day trip or being Herr und Frau in our German condo near the Keserne (military offices).  We had little thought about what lay ahead.  I was not particularly religious.  I had grown up in a Presbyterian church, where I do not recall hearing much about salvation, or perhaps I was too preoccupied with being a teenager at that time.  It seems that my family was more interested in social justice and the church’s role in serving the community rather than sharing their faith story with one another.  I married a deeply devout and traditional Baptist woman.  I have no idea why she married a guy who saw church mainly as a social club in which I failed to fit.  I look back at her decision to marry me as an act of God.  Besides her being an intelligent and grounded woman, I fell in love with everything about Susan.  We would act silly together, sing our favorite tunes, share our interests and she laughed at my jokes.  Susan was a Southern lady, gracious and kind, always serving others in humility, slow to anger, thinking of others before herself and making me feel like the luckiest man in the world.  Her family always made me feel special when we visited them.  I saw a side of her family and of Susan that I could not quite put my finger on, but I was very attracted to the optimism, joy, unconditional love and family values that was perhaps not so evident in my family.  The values I grew up with were more along the lines of stimulating discussions around the table, gaining attention through one’s accomplishments, making a difference and vying for control.  I never met anyone like Susan.  She was everything I wanted to be, but I didn’t know how.

When we arrived in Oklahoma, we rented a house right across the street from a small Baptist church.  Susan had always been involved in her church, especially as an active youth.  So she was looking forward to living this close to a church for the summer.  We visited that first Sunday and filled out the card, eagerly waiting a visit from someone to introduce us to all the goings on.  That visit never came.  We didn’t try other churches, so that summer Susan spent, for the first time in her life, without a church family.  In Germany there really was not a church to join.  We were in a small town where few Americans lived.  A Catholic and Protestant itinerant preacher visited once a month if we were lucky.  A handful of people attended each service.  Susan volunteered to play the organ for each service.  She would go down to the small funeral chapel a few blocks away, and with her key unlock the doors to a very cold and dark room that housed a small electric organ.  In the winter she would wear her gloves while she practiced, and sometimes a few meters from the organ lay a body or two ready for burial.  Her playing must have been rather quiet so as not to stir the dead.

Our lives were magical in Germany.  We had very little money, but we managed to live a full life, enjoying each other and the friends we made, traveling around to so many places in the country and in Europe, and playing Army officer and wife.  Our post was rather small and remote, away from the larger American military bases that were well-known to most American soldiers.  I was a lieutenant in S3, Operations and Training for the Headquarters, 557th Artillery Company in Herbornseelbach, Hesse.  My team would visit our field units out in the surrounding area to inspect the warheads that were stored and maintained.   When I was promoted to 1st LT, I became company commander, a position for which I was ill equipped.  Upon my inheriting this command the Colonel took me aside and told me that my first responsibility was to bring the NCO Club back to operational solvency.  The previous manager of this club had embezzled several thousand dollars, so I needed to audit the books and bring this business back to good standing.  The psychology major from Wake Forest did not give me any training in this area, but luckily one of my Sp4’s who worked as a typist in the neighboring Ordinance company was a CPA who had been drafted by the Army.  With his help we succeeded to comply with the Colonel’s orders.

While I went to work every day, Susan stayed at home and tried to be a good Army wife.  We were so poor.  To save money we bought only three sets of Army green uniforms, which had to be washed a starched to meet the dress code.  Susan spend a lot of time soaking them in the bathtub with starch and ironing them to perfection.  Meanwhile we spent most of our money on castle hunting on weekends.  We used an old Esso map that marked all the castles in Germany to plot our excursions.  Our base resembled a little Peyton Place, a soap opera of gossip and social order.  Our commander was a power-hungry, controlling jerk who kept everyone on edge with his antics and faux pas.  I find it rather humorous that the day after he left, and a new commander took over our base, I came home from work that day and told Susan that it was the first day since I had been in Germany that I had not been called a “God damned Lieutenant.”

A couple of months before I received my orders for Vietnam I awoke one night with an intense fear that I could die in the not too distant future.  Time had passed, and my tour in Germany was coming to an end.  I would soon get new orders for my next duty assignment.  I was going to Vietnam.  I guess I had never really thought about death before.  Nobody I knew had passed away.  Death was some distant plot in a play that happened to other actors.  As a 24-y.o. I still thought I would live forever.  But war changed everything.  Vietnam stared me in the face with a new reality, and I was distraught.

I reached over in the bed to put my arms around Susan for comfort.  Her body was a cold and decaying skeleton.  She had no real comfort to give me in the fact that I was mortal and faced death.  As a matter of fact nothing in my world comforted me.  I had built a huge stage around me to protect me and to avoid pain.  Now I was alone in a crumbling world in a strange country and with a cold skeleton.  I desperately called out to God for help.

I had talked with God in my childhood.  I had attended a Presbyterian church as a youth, however I was primarily caught up in social agenda.  I don’t recall having a very strong religious foundation.  God was the Creator and a friend who talked with me as I walked home from school.  Whenever I was lonely I could talk with him, and he was always there, sort of like an imaginary friend.  We would carry on conversations as I dribbled my basketball down the street.  Whenever I sprained my ankle, God would tell me be calm,  my mother would wrap it with an Ace bandage and after a few days I would be okay.  But this was different.  I would not be okay.  I would be dead, and that was final.  God, what are you doing?  How can you let this happen?

I couldn’t deal with the fact that life was so good, that I would grow and learn, that I would love the best way I knew how, and then I would be dead.  What’s the point?  I was obsessed with grief and with the fragile demise of my body and mind.  God was not being fair.  He had made me this highly creative, sensitive, thinking being.  Did I not deserve to live forever?  I was determined to reason this dilemma out.  For weeks I tried to explore every possible solution.  And when my orders finally came, I was nowhere.  The best solution I could come up with was that I should live to the fullest every day.  Perhaps I would have the satisfaction that I did my best.  I spent my entire tour in Vietnam trying to do just that.

Vietnam?  What should I say about a time in my life that was surreal and painful?  I would like to say nothing, and skip over these months to a more memorable and positive time.  But God was in my Vietnam experience, perhaps camouflaged in different clothing, but he was there with me.  I never heard much talk about God or Jesus from anyone. Come to think of it, I spent most of my time alone.  I flew over without knowing anyone on the airplane.  I in-processed alone for a few days.  I got up every afternoon by myself, ate alone and reported to the FDC (Fire Direction Center) for my 12-hour shift, seven days a week.  I boarded a plane at the end of it all and flew home alone.  My memory of the first time I talked with someone about anything personal was when I called home at 11 p.m. from Seattle, standing in an outside phone booth in February of 1972 wearing my military issued khaki short-sleeve shirt.

I don’t remember thinking about God very much while in Vietnam.  Each day passed, and I woke up to start all over again.  I don’t think I allowed myself too much reflection, or else I would have gone crazy.  There was only today and the things I needed to do to get through that day.  I kept a distance from others and from reality.  I found pleasure where I could.  I found this world to be cold and removed. I felt that I was suspended in between life and something else, where no one dared to feel, but everyone found some escape.  It was only in retrospect that I saw that God provided and cared for me.  There were some really bad things that I witnessed while I was there.  These things still haunt me today.  Our world was upside-down, and God didn’t seem to be able to set it right.  How could I reconcile that God was in control of the world in such a place?  The God I thought I knew wouldn’t have been a part of such chaos and evil.   If I reflected on too much of my life at that time, I would get angry.  Nothing prepared me for such an experience, and no one was around to help me through it.

At that time in my life I had no clue that God was a God of redemption in hopeless places.  Pain and loneliness were major factors in my life.  I had only a discharge date to look forward to and the hope of Susan waiting for me when I returned.  When I did return home, I quickly learned that my pain and loneliness was mine to keep hidden under a rug.  To most persons I met Vietnam was a bane, and my service was disparaged.  I felt that I was often seen as the “enemy” for having served in such an unpopular war.  I sometimes felt rage at what I experienced in country, certainly my feelings were confusing.  I couldn’t allow these feelings to surface.  They were too scary and painful.  Nobody understood them nor offered any help to ameliorate them.  I really was alone.

Someone once said that God is in the trenches.  I didn’t find my religion in Vietnam, but God led me through a period of hopelessness and despair perhaps so that I could understand what that feels like to people who don’t know him.  Perhaps without Vietnam I would not have found the depth of love in Jesus Christ.  My search for answers continued for a few years after I returned home.

Oh, I remember how I spent much of my time in Vietnam.  I studied and passed a correspondence course to become a certified travel agent.  Yes, I loved living in Germany so much that I wanted to lead others to have such a good time in their travels.  Susan had returned to Wake Forest to complete her senior year.  After her graduation we moved to Southern Pines, NC, to work at the travel agency in Pinehurst, a place of high brow money and elite expectations.  We had purchased a small house (really cute) and moved in to start our new lives.  Our new puppy Scruffie was rambunctious and eager to tackle life, much like the two of us.  I thought that I was set, while Susan looked for work.  I had a certificate from a correspondence course (American Association of Travel Agents) that taught me how to write an airplane ticket.  The agency needed someone to run the office.  They brought back their manager out of retirement and fired me after two weeks.

I wanted to help people take trips to unknown, foreign lands.  I thought that was what I wanted to do in my career.  What happened next was really cool.  Again I must say that I was still young and foolish.  I had no idea what to do.  We were in a strange town in a new house without jobs.  One day soon after I saw a sign over a downtown door that read, “NC Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services.”  I walked in to inquire.  It must have been after closing, because the manager, Vic Cashwell, was alone in the office sitting behind his desk as I entered.  He must have been overwhelmed with work, because his desk was piled high with stacks of case files over which he could hardly see.  Mr. Cashwell spent a good amount of time telling me about his career.  I saw passion and commitment as he related many stories about the people he served.  I walked out of that agency with a sense of satisfaction that I really liked Mr. Cashwell and what he did.

Susan found work as a desk clerk at the Pinehurst Hotel, while I was hired at the Morrison Training School for juvenile delinquents as a cottage counselor.  I was really a guard for troubled kids.  We had to conduct a group talk session once a week in which we encouraged the kids to share their feelings, therefore we earned the title of counselor.  During the year at this training school I got to know other Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors, who had an office in the school.   I found that I really liked them too.  I would hang out there in their office as much as I could.  I decided that I could do this job, helping people take trips to unknown places to become productive and fulfilled in their careers.  After a year, Susan and I headed off to Chapel Hill to further our education.  She entered a graduate program in German, and I in a Vocational Rehabilitation Counseling master’s degree program.

My program had problems, but the 12 of us in this program got pretty close.  I spent a lot of time with my peers and with Susan’s peers in the German program.   Graduate school for both of us was rather secular.  Chapel Hill offered many distractions.  We had no routine and therefore fell farther away from church life.  Susan and I even shared a house with another couple and a single male student for a while.  We called it a commune, where we shared household duties and expenses.  Susan and I made 6 loaves of bread from scratch every few weeks.  I actually enjoyed this experience in this house, although we were confronted with some major problems.  One night Susan and I were walking back to our house after enjoying an ice cream cone from the parlor a couple of blocks away.  There were several strange men at the door and in our house when we arrived.  They were policemen who conducted a raid for drugs.  They arrested the two guys, and ransacked our room looking for drugs or paraphernalia.  We of course didn’t use drugs.  I think we were very fortunate that we did not go to jail for having drugs in that house.  During our commune experience I witnessed how the depravity and senseless obsession of smoking weed affected these two students.   I thought it was very sad to see two intelligent and capable young men turn over their lives to dependence on marijuana.  Smoking infused all areas of their lives at home and at school.  What a waste!

After graduate school I returned to our house in Southern Pines, after kicking our tenants out, to start my first real job in the DVR office.  Mr. Cashwell offered me a position with a mental health caseload.  Susan stayed in Chapel Hill to finish up her classes for a PhD in German.  We spent a year as weekend partners, alternating between the two homes.  I had finally found a career that had potential to be fulfilling and successful.  I was ready to tackle the world.  One day a new client Pam walked into my office.  We had hardly gotten started when she asked, “Do you know Jesus as your Lord and Savior?”  I thought it was highly unusual that she would ask me such a question.  It was not in any of the materials that I learned in the two years of my Master’s degree program.  But she hit on something.  It had been almost five years since I awoke that night in cold sweat in Germany.  I had exhausted any plausible and scientific answer to my quest for meaning and relevance.  Pam boldly put me on the spot that day. I was so desperate that I had to explore this intrusion further.  I remembered that people at my church where I grew up talked about Jesus, but I didn’t know him.  I had been married in a wonderful church by the pastor of my wife and family, but I didn’t know Jesus.  I had attended church with Susan and sat through several sermons, but Jesus never asked me to follow him.  Jesus was the first love of Susan, who lived out a life full of grace and love in our house, but Jesus was not my Lord and Savior.  Not yet.

Over the next few weeks Pam and I talked a lot about her faith in Jesus.  She shared her story with me.  I even attended her church, an independent Baptist church, that preached hell, fire and brimstone.  This church was different from the ones Susan and I attended.  The people mostly had been drug addicts, alcoholics or were divorced.  They were working people who struggled with day to day survival.  They talked constantly about their salvation, about how Jesus had plucked them out of their abyss.  They talked about transformation of their lives.  The preaching was harsh and confrontational.  Maybe I needed a dose of this hard-nosed preaching to hear God’s words of redemption and promise of a new life.  Maybe my struggle to find answers to life’s questions and complete failure to resolve them led me to this time.  At this very time I was emptied of my own answers.  Life still didn’t make much sense.  Pam would talk with me all the time about how God changed her life.  I listened.

One day I had been making home visits to my clients (We were expected to do this in the 70’s).  I entered a home of a woman whom I found lying on her couch.  She told me that she had taken an overdose of drugs and was waiting to die.  After calling 911, I knelt by the couch and talked to her about God’s love for her and all the reasons she should live.  As I mouthed these words, I realized that those were the very words that I had been listening to Pam tell me over recent weeks.  I also realized that these words were words from my heart that I now owned, words from God to me.  It was at that moment that I realized I finally found the answer.

It didn’t make sense.  People don’t just come back to life after they die.  Jesus had been killed and buried.  It must have been the world’s most elaborate ruse even known, contrived to elevate man into a higher status and to placate the universal fear of death.  I had been over this a hundred times, and it just didn’t make sense.  They must have stolen the body.  That was a lot more logical.

But then Jesus walked into my life, the most radical and insane act of love I had ever known.  He was no longer a logical supposition to my fears and quest.  This Jesus was a man, God made flesh, who personally became incarnate on this day, when I was broken and in despair.   Jesus rose from the dead because he is alive in me.  Jesus sits down beside me and puts his hand on my shoulder.  He knows everything about me, and he still wants to give me abundant life.  Jesus hears my groaning, and he offers me comfort.  I didn’t make this up.  My faith journey, my walk with Jesus, my story is all I need to live a new life.  He is sufficient in everything.

Well, Susan came home one weekend, and I was eager to take her to church.  She had almost completed all her classes in the PhD program, when she attended Pam’s church with me.  The sermon that Sunday was about childlike faith.  We should have the faith of a little child without the burden of education and theology.  As a matter of fact, those who have a lot of education are prone to go to hell.  Needless to say, neither of us attended that church again.  Instead, I was baptized in the church that we attended when Susan was in town.  First Baptist Church in Southern Pines nurtured us and welcomed us over the next 3 years.  We became leaders in a youth group, and I joined the choir.  We attended a couples Sunday School class weekly, and in 1978 I was ordained as a Deacon.

I learned how to do church.  Deep inside however there continued to rage a struggle for Lordship.  On several occasions over the next few years I would awake in the middle of the night in the midst of a mighty struggle, a war for dominance.  On the one side there was an army fighting for God’s truth.  “Believe in me and you will have everlasting life.”  On the other side was a vicious throng of soldiers trying to slaughter God’s army.  Sometimes I think of the battle in the trenches of two football teams, fighting for an inch or two of space.  It was a one-on-one battle with Satan, no holds barred, a fight to the death.  That first battle was intense and lasted for hours.   Finally about 4 a.m. God’s army was victorious.  I had been assured that the Biblical story of God’s love for me in the person of Jesus Christ was real and victorious.  At the end I had the assurance of God’s personal love and salvation. But later on other nights the same battle raged.  Each successive one was shorter, as God interceded and reminded me that he had already won this battle, and I didn’t need to keep fighting it over and over.

Life was good in Southern Pines.  We were connected with our church;  I enjoyed my career; and we made some good friends.  My family grew with the birth of Allison, who was our reason to live.  Susan was teaching German to families in Fort Bragg and doing odd jobs.  In the summer of 1979 she was contacted by the German Department at Wake Forest to teach for a year while a professor was on sabbatical.  We of course decided that we would move back to Winston-Salem, where I grew up.  We began to plan our move and look for house.  I was being very academic and forward thinking about the whole thing.  One night I had a dream that I was sitting on a crowded bleacher in a vast open field in which we could see all around for many miles.  We were spectators to some event set for us to witness.  Off in the distance we watched as the world was on fire.  The cities burned before us in consuming flames.  The fires slowly moved toward us, as we were unable to do anything nor get off the bleachers.  The next morning I figured I was not as okay about my moving as I thought I was.

I had been afraid of having children, to Susan’s chagrin.  She wanted lots of children to love and nurture, but I was not willing.  I had a deep cavity in my life that shut out being a father.  Until Christ loved me and set me free, I had been too selfish and second-rate to want children.  Perhaps I grew up in a form of dysfunctional family, and I didn’t want a child to experience what I had experienced.  That sounds really sad.  I don’t see my natural family nearly as negatively today as I must have felt back then.  I learned one day in a codependency workshop about the “looking good” family dysfunction.  I know now that my mother’s love for me was real, even though she expressed her love through her controlling and narcissistic personality.  So I always felt that her love was conditional on pleasing her.  I spent a life time working on separating from my mother and being able to love unconditionally.  Jesus was the reason I could do this to any degree.  And Allison taught me a kind of love that only a child can show.  My biggest regret is that I did not give Susan more children.  She is so loving and natural with children.  She loves being a mother.

I really did not have a clue how to act around Allison.  All I knew was what not to do.  Part of my falling in love with Susan was her traditional and loving family.  I saw a family that was Godly and close.  I watched, for the most part, Susan love on Allison, and I learned.  At first I felt unimportant.  When Allison cried, she needed her mother, and Susan needed her.  Allison was breast-fed for almost two years, so I was not able to comfort her.  I had decided that Susan would take the lead in parenting decisions.  We were always consistent in our rules and discipline.  Well, almost always.  Today, I often look at Allison and think that we did some things right.  She is the apple of my eye.

Years later, when Allison was about 6, she called out to her mother to come fix her bath water.  I was of course in the house, and I couldn’t believe Susan was still fixing Allison’s bath.  How will she ever learn to do it herself, I asked.  I thought Allison was perfectly capable of fixing her own bath water.  Susan’s reply caught my attention and made a lot of sense, “I will fix her water as long as she wants me to.  One day, she will stop asking.”  I got the message.  Being a family and doing things for one another is more important than accomplishing some minor task.  In my family I learned that in order to be loved one had to achieve, so learning to fix the correct temperature balance was a skill that was necessary to do this task well.  To Susan fixing Allison’s water was an act of love in and of itself.  Susan cherished the act of helping Allison in the present.  You might have guessed that I still have much difficulty placing the right value of being present with a loved one over tasks and accomplishments.  I often ask for forgiveness.

I don’t think Susan will ever forgive me for watching music videos with Allison when she was about 10 or 11-y.o.  We didn’t have cable TV, just a roof antenna.  We could get about eleven channels on our lone TV.  One of the stations was a Gospel station until 11 p.m., when it turned to music video programming.  Not all music videos were evil, just most of them.  I figured that Allison would be watching them at some point anyway, so we enjoyed viewing videos together.  I of course taped them to view at a reasonable hour of the day.  These videos and Comic Strip Live gave us a real bond for many years.  There were some very good videos, but unfortunately we really had to get through about ten bad ones to see the good one.  We did have a fast forward button to speed up this process.  Susan still blames anything that Allison goes astray to my exposing her to music videos at too early an age.  It probably was too soon.  Standup comedy was similar in that many comedians were either very bad or very vulgar.  But we loved the good ones.  Still today Allison and I share stories and jokes that we listened to 25 years ago on Comic Strip Live.

I have been blessed to have started a small men’s group about 25 years ago that still meets today.  We call ourselves a PromiseKeepers group consisting of about six men.  Some of the guys have been coming to our meetings for over 15 years.  The group used to meet at church for lunch, but when I started working at the Federal Building in 2003, we had to move the time to 6 a.m. at the K&W Cafeteria.  I was always amazed that these men showed up at 6 a.m., way too early for anybody to have a meeting.  We did a lot of talking while we ate breakfast, and we would discuss our current book to give us some structure.  I think that we all thought it was special to decide to come that early.  It gave us a sense of uniqueness and privilege.  Certainly the fellowship and sharing with my brothers make this time a special part of our lives.  Many years ago two men showed up at our meeting for the first time.  Each of these men was looking for some validation and support, since each had recently had major medical problem that led to their confronting possible death.  That day they each told their stories to the group.  I was moved by how God had carried them through their crisis, and how they felt closer to God than they had ever felt.  I prayed that day that I could have that kind of relationship with God, but without the crises that normally accompanies such spiritual growth.  It is at the point of dying, when one is on his death bed, all irrelevant and trivial matters are stripped away.  One looks solely to God and relationships with others as the only things that matter.  It is at that time that we are most filled with grace and love.  I want that love and grace now.  Wouldn’t it be incredible to live our lives with that kind of focus on Jesus?  It appears plausible to me that if we can picture ourselves in the kind of relationship with Christ that we will have at the time we take our last breath, if we can transform our minds and hearts to that moment, with God’s help, we can know that fullness and abundance of life and the radical love that God bestows on each one of his children.  It is a love and power that God freely gives us when we are fully laser-focused on him.

In 1998 I had an opportunity to go to Prague to work on the new Baptist Seminary that had moved from Ruschlikon, Switzerland.  A few of us from church were excited to spend two weeks in Prague.  Our task was to pave and smooth the parking areas around the seminary.  I found Prague to be an exciting city of music, history and art.  We worked every day as laborers, but walked into the city afterwards to enjoy the culture and the arts.  It seemed that this trip was more like a vacation than a mission trip.  The local people whom we met were not that open, much like the Eastern bloc of countries who had been conquered and occupied for so long.  I left Prague with an appreciation of a wonderful city to visit, but not a satisfying mission trip.  I wanted to interact with the people and even share Christ with them if possible.

The next year Dr. Robert Kelly asked me to join them on their medical team to Bolivia.  They were going to La Paz and work in El Alto on the Altiplano.  El Alto was an exploding city on the massive flat plain at 13,000′ altitude to which thousands of Aymara Indians moved each year from the Andes Mountains.  The 22,000′ peaks of the Andes surrounded this plain as well as La Paz, which was spread out in a valley below El Alto.  My first memories of that trip were of the flight into the airport in which we cleared the peaks and dove toward the runway at a fast speed.  We had to travel at a faster speed due to the 50% reduction in oxygen at that altitude.  At the airport we were surrounded by little people dressed in strange clothing indigenous to that area.  As we checked through customs, I grabbed my suitcases and walked about 50′ before falling over from dizziness.  At the hotel in La Paz that night I opened up my toothpaste to brush my teeth, and the toothpaste squirted out all over the sink.  Everyone in our team was sick from the high altitude.  I believe they gave us some drink with cocaine to counteract the altitude sickness.  (Oops, I just Googled it, and it was really cocoa tea, not cocaine.  Too bad.)

I spent five days packing pills in the pharmacy.  We treated almost everybody for worms and bacterial infection.  It was the first time I met a real live missionary, Linda from Texas.  Linda had been called to the mission field and was fairly new to Bolivia.  She lived in a rough place and had to give up most comforts that we normally think we need.  Other than Linda there was an older couple in a 2-year missionary term, but Linda headed up the programs and efforts for the entire region.  I enjoyed getting to know her.  Hardships to me were God’s plan to Linda.  Sacrifices were out-weighed by obedience and joys of serving.  I had never before met anyone that dedicated and focused her life on spreading the Gospel and loving a people group.  In the two yearly trips that followed, I looked forward to spending more time with Linda, who learned quickly how to take care of herself in an increasingly dangerous land.  There were groups of people in that country who hated Americans, so we were always on the lookout for danger.  On the second and third trip to Bolivia, Dr. Kelly asked me o lead an evangelism team.  I had never seen one, but I agreed to put one together.

The idea was to engage the Aymara people while they were waiting in lines to be seen in one of the clinics.  On any given day hundreds on Indians walked from distant places to get medical help.  I was able to talk with an Hispanic pastor of a local church who introduced me to Carla, who had learned a plethora of evangelistic dramas in El Salvador and led youth to present these dramas in some of the Hispanic apartment complexes in the community.  These dramas seemed like a perfect way to communicate the message of Christ without being able to speak the language.  Our team practiced with her, accompanied the youth a few times to these neighborhoods and were ready to witness to the people of El Alto.  I was proud of our team who showed the love of Christ and courage to take so many risks.  We depended on an Hispanic pastor from our city who presented these dramas to the people and interpreted their application after each one.  We also went into the crowds to give our testimonies that were translated into Spanish and then Aymaran.  Many people gave their lives to Jesus.  I sat on the airplane on the way home from our last trip telling God that I did not ever want this mountaintop experience to end.  I did not want to go back to a life of compliancy and routine.  Being on mission for God gave me an energy and purpose that felt so alive.  In El Alto we were in a community of like-minded believers whose time and focus throughout each day was to preach the Gospel.  We knew that medicines would wear off, treatment would likely be only temporary, but the word of God was life-changing and eternal.  The entire team was of one spirit.  Why couldn’t we carry this spirit into our routine lives at home?  Why couldn’t we be on mission in Winston-Salem?  As we went out into the town to witness and to tell our stories, people wanted to know why we came so far to help them.  I said that we came to Bolivia from America because God had sent us.  God was the author of our traveling over 3700 miles to show his love for them.  The word spread around the village that God had sent us to them.  I believe they felt special that day to know that God loved them so much that he sent a bunch of doctors and nurses from so far away to treat their ailments and ease their burdens.

I shared stories of how God had provided for me in a personal way when I had lost hope.  I told them how God had molded me from clay into a vessel of his choosing.  Our stories connected with their hearts across cultural differences.  Sometimes I felt that Jesus was talking through us telling one of his parables.  In 2001 a group of youth from a local church in a nearby town had joined us.  They were eager to learn these dramas in order to carry their ministry and witness into their home towns.  This was as it should be, to pass on what God had given us to teach others to continue this ministry.

In 1989 we planned a family trip to Europe.  Susan had already returned to Germany in 1977, but this time we all planned to have a major vacation.  It was quite unusual to be able to take off from work more than a week or two.  I was lucky that my boss at the DVR office approved my taking 3 1/2 weeks, as long as I had my work caught up.  One of the managers actually covered my caseload for me while I was away.  Allison was at a good age to appreciate the sights and conditions we would encounter.  It was a dream trip:  Vienna, boat trip down the Danube to Budapest, visit family there, take train to Salzburg, rent a car and drive through the Black Forest, meet our German friends on a cruise down the Rhine River, visit a family in Braunschweig and fly home from Hamburg.  We left soon after school was out.  To me there is no greater pleasure than traveling with my family, building memories together.  We all were very excited.

The day of our trip Allison called her mom into the bathroom to show her a spot of blood in her stool.  We decided that it was not a big problem, since there are many reasons for this anomaly.  Everything was arranged to leave, so my parents picked us up and carried us to the airport.  This trip was pivotal in my view of how I would want to spend my time and money.  Susan and I were both State employees, so we saved up for this trip, and we wanted it to be perfect.  And it was perfect, except for one huge problem.  The spot of blood in Allison’s stool later turned into a bit of stool in her blood.  Her condition had rapidly worsened throughout the trip, so by the time we got to Braunschweig, Susan finally informed me what was going on.  By then, we would have been home in a few days, and we hung on with great anxiety.

After checking for the typical parasites and infections, our doctor referred us to a Gastroenterology specialist.  Dr. Weeks performed a colonoscopy without general anesthesia while we watched.  In his office he informed us that Allison had a chronic condition called Ulcerative Colitis, a condition primarily of white, Eastern European women with Jewish ancestry.  He assured us that people do not die of this condition.  He handed us a brochure and sent us on our way.  Over the next month Allison’s red blood count dropped drastically as she became weaker and sicker.  We didn’t know what to do or what to look out for.  I brought Allison back for an appointment, at which time he stated that she should continue her medicines and return in a month.  I suggested that he check her blood work, since she seemed to be quite anemic.  A few days later Allison started her first day of the 6th grade at Wiley Middle School.  We got a call to pick her up from school due to her inability to physically make it.  We took her straight to the Emergency Room at Baptist Hospital.  There was a doctor at Baptist Hospital who had a reputation of being one of the best in the country with Pediatric Gastroenterology issues, however her schedule had been full and she was not accepting new patients.  Perhaps if Allison were admitted, this doctor would see her.

These were scary times for us.  Allison’s Hemoglobin was so low that she needed several blood transfusions.  Her room was right across from the nurse’s station, only reserved for the very sick children.  We did see Dr. Nanjundiah, a doctor from India who had practiced in Texas.  She was quite assertive and controlling, but she touted that she was one of the best in the country and had never lost a patient.  We placed our trust in her and in the statement that Dr. Weeks made a month earlier that Allison would not die from this illness.  We had a steady stream of visitors from our family to members of our church.  People flooded us with cards and stuffed animals.  Our church prayed for us during the next three months.  I was always a believer that God answers every prayer, so I wanted to make sure that God would not have a choice about healing Allison with hundreds of prayers spoken to him.  Despite the best doctor in the country, a great support system and thousands of prayers, our journey was rough and exhausting.  We learned that everything that could go wrong did.  If a doctor announced that there was a 95% chance of success with a new medication or procedure, Allison was always in the 5%.

Nothing seemed to control the condition.  Allison was on huge doses of Prednisone, her face puffed out, her body emaciated and her skin pale.  She could not stay out of the hospital for very long.  Brenner’s Children’s Hospital became our home and safe haven.  Allison and we met several roommates and all the nurses.  Susan and I tried to maintain a work schedule.  My focus was certainly not at work.  Everything in the hospital and connected to Allison’s health became the only reality we knew.  We lived the treatment and became knowledgeable about all things medical.  Susan and I dealt with this crisis differently.  I kept my emotions in check for fear of losing control.  I dealt with crises through logic.  I obsessed about best practices and outcomes until the answers were evident.  Susan, on the other hand, was distraught with guilt, which she eventually worked through.  She would need to express her fears to me, but I did not want to let these emotions in, so I would offer solutions and options.  I think this was one of the hardest things for us to learn to support each other.  Certainly we needed each other more than ever, but we were unable to help each other fully.  Over the years we have learned to come to the middle and work through crises together. As parents in a children’s hospital, we became knowledgeable of this chronic illness and we participated in the decision making.  For the most part the doctors always kept us in the loop and suggested the next course of treatment, as if we needed to give them the final permission to go ahead.  Ultimately we had to put our trust in them. Because of the proximity of the hospital to our church, the number of visitors and many hospital staff whom we knew, we felt that we received the best care possible.

Dr. Nanjundiah was not happy.  Despite consulting with doctors around the globe, Allison’s colon had become too diseased and had to be removed.  After more than four months of fending off the worst case outcome, after doing everything possible to put this disease in remission or to hold it in check, surgery stared us in the face.  The word “surgery” had hardly been spoken up to this point.  The unthinkable had become the reality.  When I was a child, I used to be afraid of things I could not see during the night. Much like many young girls and boys, I was afraid of dark closets in my bedroom.  I would lie awake at night waiting for the monster to come out and get me.  It didn’t matter that my mom assured me that there were no monsters in the closet.  She was right during the day, but I knew that monsters came out only at night.  Losing Allison’s large intestines by surgery was like the monster for us as well as for the staff.  Everything up to this time was said and done to avoid surgery at all cost.  It was time to face the monster.  Allison had suffered greatly, and her options were quickly narrowing.  It became a new reality that Allison would not get well without surgery.  We were aware that God sometimes brings us through crises one step at a time.  He knew that we were not ready to face surgery early on, but we were ready for Allison to not suffer.  This worst-case scenario became the only way out.

In the wilderness the Israelites had been wandering for a long time without much food to eat.  They were growing weak and hungry.  They began to fear God’s promises to them.  They probably feared that they would all die out in the desert without proper food and water.  Their supplies had run out, and they looked to Moses for answers.  They wanted assurance that they could store up enough food for their long-term sustenance.  God rained manna on them each morning in the form of a small round substance that came with the dew and melted away with the sun.  The people could not save the manna for the next day.  They had to wait for morning and trust that God would again keep his promise.  We go through many crises in which there are no good answers and certainly in which we have no control.  This story of God’s provision of manna kept coming back to me, as we struggled for answers.  This unquestioning trust sustained us, and each day I asked God mainly for his sustaining power and nourishment to make it that day.

Allison had not been able to eat any food for several weeks.  She had been NPO (nothing by mouth) for quite some time.  So the thought of her finally being able to eat like a normal pre-teen was awesome.  The thought of eating pizza again carried Allison through this scary time.  She would endure IV poles, central lines, Prednisone bloating, and 24 hours a day of medical attention only to eat pizza.  On the other hand, we entered the pediatric surgical waiting room armed with tons of books, crossword puzzles, scheduled friends to support, multiple tasks to accomplish in order to get through the 10-hour surgery.  We arrived home two days before Christmas, almost two weeks after Allison’s 12th birthday.  The normal routines and rituals were not important on that Christmas.  All the getting ready for Christmas had not occurred.  On Christmas day we had only our family and the gift of Allison being home.  Allison’s stocking hung from the mantle stuffed full of pizza coupons.  Christmas 1989 was the best Christmas ever.

During the next several years Allison struggled with her chronic illness, which put her into the hospital at least once a year and often multiple times.  We were so connected with Allison as our only child.  I’m not sure it was all that healthy to be that close, but who could have told us to be otherwise?  The interdependency grew with the frequency and uncertainty of her condition.  We tried very hard to allow Allison to grow up and to back away.  However all decisions and life-styles had dire consequences.  We often consulted a family therapist to provide support and help us work through normal parent-child issues as well as exacerbated drama related to personal space and control.  I can imagine how difficult and confusing it must have been for Allison to establish any autonomy from us.  Just when she was making progress and asserting herself, Crohn’s would bring her right back to her being a victim or patient.  These were difficult years for all of us.  I recall one time when we were all in a session with our family counselor.  Honest disclosure was the goal, and Allison had just got through telling her mom that there was nothing she wanted to hear from mom.  Allison did not want any help from the one person who wanted to help the most.  When asked to tell us what she was feeling, Susan described the situation very much like Allison was again a little child, who was playing in the street, while Susan saw a truck barreling down the street straight towards Allison.  What does a mother do when her daughter is about to get hit by a truck?  Of course she wanted to run out and grab her to pull her out of the path.  I remember this moment because described her pain so clearly, and Allison described her desperate attempt to break away from this dependent hold.

Our lives seemed to find some kind of normal from time to time, always redefining the meaning of normal and searching for consistency.  I searched for some reconciliation and healing from God.  There were times that I questioned his Sovereignty, especially at times when I was most frightened and had lost hope.  Allison tried every medicine created and approved to control Crohn’s, and she still suffered with active and debilitating Crohn’s.  I recall one day I had broken under the despair of recent news.  I was alone in my car, and I pulled over into a parking space and yelled at the top of my lungs, “God, if you can’t do any better than this, you’re not such a great God!  I don’t want anything to do with you.”  I was serious.  My view of God was one of a healer, a God who loves us so much that he answers prayers and makes everything OK.  This much pain and suffering was not what I had signed up for.   I tried to reject God every way I knew how for about two days, but God listened and understood my anger, and he wrapped his arms around me.

The local medical team had done everything they knew to do.  Allison’s condition continued to disrupt her life and result in more suffering.  She had tried all the medication available, and she had rejected some, and the others seemed not to work in her case.  After more extensive testing her doctor sent her to NCMH in Chapel Hill for treatment from a renown Gastroenterology team that was nationally (and internationally) famous.  At least that is what I thought I heard them say.  Finally in October 1998 another major surgery was scheduled which was to fix things for Allison.  There were new techniques since her original surgery in 1989.   The 4-hour surgery was cut short, when after just an hour her surgeon entered the waiting room to tell us that when he opened her up, he saw extensive Crohn’s.  He was unable to perform the planned surgery and closed her up.  We left the hospital that night, and I walked around in a daze, rather numb to any feeling, not even knowing what to say to God or anyone else.  Susan and I had conditioned ourselves to function fairly well in hospital routines.  The surgery was on a Thursday morning, and by Saturday we were exhausted.  We drove the two hours for home to gather ourselves and rest and to return to the hospital on Sunday to take Allison home.

I closed my eyes to sleep that night, but I was haunted by some disturbing images.  All I could see was Allison lying in a hospital bed being fed by a feeding tube.  It was clear to me that Allison had active Crohn’s that no known medication could control.  Yes, they could take out some more of her small intestines, and she would recover and do okay for a while,  But without an effective medicine the Crohn’s would attack her bowels, and we would start the process all over again.  Each time Allison would lose another section of her intestines until eventually she would not be able to absorb enough nutrients to sustain her.   Fifteen years?  Twenty years?  How long would it be until she would be dependent upon an IV feeding system to sustain her life?  I screamed out to God in excruciating terror.  These images pierced my heavy heart like a sword.  I gasped for breath through my panic and tears.  “God, I can’t take it.  I don’t know what to do.  Help me.  I don’t even know what to pray for anymore.  I have prayed and prayed, but I have not heard your answers.  Where are you?”  I listened and hoped for an answer.  “God, all I know is that you promised that your know our hearts, and that your spirit will pray for me and utter the words that I can’t find. You know the depth of my suffering.  God, I trust that you will answer this prayer somehow.  Just let me sleep now.”  I fell to sleep.

We did drive back and brought Allison home Sunday afternoon.  She would heal from her surgery, and in a few months they would try a new drug, just approved by the FDA in the fall.  Although it was good news that a new drug was becoming available, we were not too encouraged that this drug would be the answer.  We sat out on the back porch just feeling good about being home.  The door bell rang.  I answered the door, and a woman stood in front of me, “Hello, my name is Deborah, and I just moved in a couple of doors down from your house on Friday.  I hear Allison has Crohn’s.”  What? I thought how could she know this already? “I have Crohn’s Disease too.  May I come in?”  I took her to the back porch, and we all talked about her experiences for the next hour.  Deborah grew up in Australia, where she had severe Crohn’s.  As a teenager she had to be fed by a feeding tube until she gained enough strength to be flown to England for corrective surgery.  Deborah was a 50+ year-old woman, who had a similar situation as a teen, and who was now living, working and having a somewhat normal life.  Wow!  God knew exactly what I needed.  I had no idea what to ask him for, but he knew me and answered my prayer.  What kind of God gets that personal and cares that much for me that he would knock and walk right into home in the form of Deborah to say, “I heard you and I am here to comfort you.”  What kind of God does that?  This day, this act of love, was a turning point and bench mark in my faith journey.  I have never again questioned God’s provision.  I have come to praise him as I wait for his hand to provide in times of trouble.

The new medicine did work.  Allison’s illness was controlled enough for her to re-enter a bachelor’s degree program at Queens University in Charlotte in Music Therapy.  Allison had made some good decisions along the way.  Although her illness was partially in remission, she still had enough days that she could pursue a tough music degree.  However for the most part she had decided that Crohn’s would not define her life.  God had blessed her and shown her that she could use her talents and her gifts to make a difference in this world.  Her passion towards touching others with music drove her years at Queens.  Each year she continued to deal with medical problems, and each year Allison resolved to conquer it.  Her senior year, despite her inability to eat any solid food from January through May, she completed her class work and graduated.  The day after graduation she entered the hospital for another surgery.  The next step was to complete an internship.  She chose to intern in a high school in Alexandria, Va, near her grandfather’s home, to work with at-risk youth.  Prior to her completing this internship, she rejected the medication and ended up in a Virginia hospital for three weeks.  She decided to have more surgery to reverse her internal pouch permanently.  This major operation took place back in Charlotte.

Do you remember the 2% rule?  If there is a 2% chance of something going wrong, Allison would certainly do things the hard way.  We were trying to be supportive and present while she was in Charlotte and we were in Winston-Salem.  Susan and I traded days after surgery to allow me to go back to work.  One day while I was at work, I received a call from Susan.  Allison had developed an infection, and despite a regimen of antibiotics, her infection was getting worse.  She had moved to ICU.  My bags were already packed.  I jumped into my car and headed to Charlotte about 1 1/2 hours away.  I was again scared.  What would I find when I got there?  Why didn’t the antibiotics make her better?  It was evident that at this point I was dealing with all the scenarios, the gamut of possible outcomes.  I was thinking that Allison could die, if the infection was not knocked out.  As I drove to Charlotte, God and I had a conversation.  I don’t think I was even cognizant of driving on the Interstate.  “God, here we are again.  I’m scared.  Please don’t let Allison die.”  The next few minutes, perhaps 15 or 20, were amazing, as I drove on automatic, God laid out before me his goodness, his answer throughout this journey.  He said, “Chester, I know we have been here before, and each time, I want you to look at how I have shown my love to you and Allison.  I love Allison even more than you do.  She is my precious child.”  He showed me each point of crisis we had experienced, and how I had called out to God with my fears.  For 15 years God provided a new medicine or unblocked an obstruction at the last minute, or he gave us enough strength and courage to get through the day.  “Chester, you can rest your fears in my hands.  I love you.”

I made it to the ICU in record time, and I rushed into the room anxious to see what was going on.  Our good friends from Charlotte were sitting by Allison’s bed with Susan.  As I walked in, they were laughing and joking.  I looked at Allison, who seemed happy.  I immediately eased my fears and enjoyed the time with my family and friends.  There were a lot of difficult times coming up, but at that moment I knew God had answered my prayer and was in control once again.  After a terrible time with a staph infection, Allison was sent home with an open incision which we had to care for until she healed from the inside.  When she was strong enough, she returned to Alexandria to complete her internship.  She was even more empowered and passionate about her career as a music therapist, but she was very uncertain whether she would ever be healthy enough to maintain a career.  Allison had not pursued job applications very hard.  Susan had read in the newspaper about a teaching position as a music teacher at an arts-based elementary school in town.  When she came back to Winston-Salem, she scheduled a job interview.

Meanwhile I had decided to be ready to support Allison for the rest of my life.  I admit that I had talked with several people about Social Security Disability Income and other options for which Allison could be eligible.  She had not earned a lot of money in recent years, so there weren’t any good options.  I had been worried about how Allison would live out her life and manage financially.  In the summer of 2002 my worries hit a tipping point.  I was making a state employee’s salary, and Susan of course was a high school German teacher.   For years her job security had been a struggle.  Keeping a viable German program alive in this county turned out to be an ongoing challenge.  She was traveling between two schools and was set to teach German and other things.  Both schools presented major obstacles, and Susan’s position was once again in limbo.  The previous year Susan had been given other classes to teach to make up a full load.  She had German I & II, Latin I & II, Journalism and Remedial Reading for boys who had failed the competency exam.  The last two classes were thrown in at the last minute.  During that fall Susan worked her tail off.  At some point I counted up the actual hours (96) that she worked per week including the class time and preparations.  I was distraught to watch her killing herself by this amount of abuse by the school system.  Throughout the school year she probably worked at least 70+ hours.

In August of 2002 Susan was waiting on a number of things to happen to know whether she had a position that fall.  These things weighed heavily on me.  One night I couldn’t sleep, and I took my concerns to God.  “God, I’m really worried.”  “I’m here Chester.  Tell me what is worrying you.  “I answered and started a list of things on my mind.  “No, no, Chester,” God interrupted, “I don’t want to hear your laundry list.  What are you really worried about?  Give me what is in your heart.”  I paused a second, “I’m worried about Susan’s job, God.  You gave her the gift of teaching, and she continues to struggle with her position.” I sort of was reminding God that it was he who empowered Susan’s teaching, and it was a shame that he hadn’t worked everything out.  “I am worried about her career and all these obstacles that she is facing.”  God quickly assured me, “I have worked this out already.  Anything else?”  I was surprised at this simple answer that God gave me.  It’s done. No need to worry.  what’s next?  “Well, God, you know I’m worried about Allison.  I don’t know how I’m going to support her in the future.  I don’t think I can do that on our salaries.  What can I do, Lord?”  Another solid assurance, “I have taken care of that for you.  Do you have anything further?”  I replied, “No, God.  That is basically the core of my angst.  Everything else relates to those two big issues.”  I didn’t understand what God meant, although I heard his answers loud and clear.  All I know is that I took my burdens to him, and somehow he would give me rest.  Little did I know the half of it.

The very next morning Susan and I awoke, and while I was getting ready for work, Susan took our dog for a short walk up the street.  When she returned fifteen minutes later, she announced, “You’ll never guess who I just talked to.”  Susan had run into a neighbor who had just become principal of a middle school that fed students to one of Susan’s schools.  They talked about the small German program and the difficulties in maintaining a large enough program to allow her to teach only German.  The neighbor assured Susan that she would promote German to encourage her students to take German once they entered her school.  I thought that this was a nice chance meeting, or perhaps it was God’s intervention.  When I arrived at work, I had two emails forwarded to me by the principals of each of the high schools stating that they had worked out the problems and removed the obstacles to Susan’s position.  They were happy to welcome her to teach German and to build the program as she was able.  If that wasn’t enough, I also received a call about 30 minutes later from a friend with whom I worked at Goodwill Industries.  Jan and I had quite a history together.  It was the type of relationship that every time we saw each other, God was up to something big.  We both had a sense of God’s hand working in our lives.  I had the privilege some years before of leading Jan to accept Jesus into her life.  So when she called that morning, my antenna went up.  Jan had started a new job about a year before with Veterans Affairs, and she called about one of her clients.  Parenthetically, she asked, “Have you ever thought about working for VA?”  “No, why should I do that?” I retorted.  “Money,” she replied.  “I not interested in changing my career for money.” I was at the top of my profession with the state as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor, very much in control and very happy.  I continued, “I would consider it only if God were in it.  Are you God?” I quipped.

I hung up the phone and reflected on our conversation.  “God, are you serious?” I wondered.  Look at what just happened in the first couple of hours of the morning after God assured me that he had taken care of my concerns.  My worry about Susan’s position and her future seemed to have been resolved.  God certainly had kept that promise in a heartbeat.  Was Jan’s call also part of his plan?  I laughed at the thought that Jan was indeed God’s voice.  I thought that there was only one way to find out.  I needed to walk through that door.  I contacted Jan and set up a meeting to talk with her and a couple of her coworkers in the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment office of the Federal Building.  It became apparent that God was indeed opening this door for me.  During my interview with the director, he indicated that he needed me to come to work for him, since I had more real rehabilitation experience than anyone else on his team.  He said he wanted me to set the example for the rest of the staff to learn how to do rehabilitation.  I was very honored to be held in high esteem.  After a freeze in hiring that delayed the process for several months, I started to work with the Federal government.  I retired from the state on a Friday and started on Monday with VR&E.  God had been faithful in his promise more than I ever imagined.  He had carried through many delays and bureaucratic roadblocks to make it possible to work with DVA.  I not only received a full retirement benefit from the state, I was now earning almost twice as much salary with the Federal government.  I never lost sight of who put me there and what my role would be.  God affirmed his plan for me on the first day of work.  After a full day of orientation in Human Resources I walked into the VR&E office about 4 p.m.   Three administrative assistants greeted me, and we talked for about ten minutes.  Then all three of them made an eye-opening statement, “God sent you here, didn’t he?”  I knew I was in the right place.

Who would have thought that events would bring us around to this?  Our pastor, Don Gordon, said he always prays that his sermon would be the right words for someone listening.  Allison has been listening to God in teachable moments for the past few months.  For the most part she is very aware that God has a master plan for her life, and she is a willing pawn.  In retrospect we have always seen his hand, and now we have a trust, because of this history, that God will always work things out for good for those who love him and have been called for his purposes.  Allison has taken that to mean that God has orchestrated and ordained her career as a nurse, and he will continue to bless her by showing her the right path.  We humans want to understand that contract with God to mean some kind of prosperity, but we who have lived long enough and are wise know differently.

Allison is a compassionate nurse.  She is driven by her passion, her sensitivity to people and families in crises and by an unmovable desire to overcome obstacles.  She recently alluded to this gritty character trait in a conversation with me about Jan.  Jan was a coworker with whom Allison talked a few years ago, when Allison was trying to decide on a career path.  Allison had just resigned from her teaching position to follow her dreams.  She had felt a nudge to go into nursing, but Jan, who knew Allison’s history of chronic illness, advised her not to pursue nursing due to the physical demands of this profession.  Allison was emboldened by Jan’s statement to prove her and the rest of the world wrong.  I believe Allison all along was well aware of the fragile health that she has enjoyed, knowing that Crohn’s would eventually return to cause major problems.  Often she almost defied her condition, testing the limits of her remission.  This period of remission has settled in, and Allison has rightly moved on with her life despite periodic health glitches.  After all, God had already worked out his plan for her, so medical crises were no obstacles.

We are currently in such a crisis.  Nursing in the hospital scene has been wonderful and difficult at the same time, providing opportunities to minister to patients in critical care and demanding long hours without breaks.  It takes 100+% effort to successfully manage several acutely ill patients for a 12-hour shift.  For Allison it has been critical to manage her own health as well.  She would often start her shift at 6:45 a.m. and not have an opportunity to eat anything for several hours.  Also due to her chronic condition she needed to remain well hydrated during the day.  A week ago she ended up in the Emergency Room during her shift.  She has not been able to work while she is going through this process.  At this time we do not have any idea of a diagnosis and prognosis.  There were some scary symptoms that resulted in her inability to continue her shift.  So we are in that hard time of waiting.  She was released from the ER late on a Saturday night.

For reasons unknown to me other than God’s providence, both Allison and Kevin showed up at church the next morning.  I could see them from the choir loft sitting with Susan in the back of the sanctuary.   I prayed that something special would happen, that somehow the message or the music would be right for them.  We were all amazed when Dr. Gordon’s sermon was exactly God’s message to all of us.  The message dealt with the situation surrounding Joseph, the adored son of Jacob and hated by his brothers.  Joseph did some very teenagery, stupid actions and ended up abandoned in a pit and then sold to a traveling caravan headed to Egypt.  Joseph’s dreams were dashed and his ties were cut from his family.  He must have felt abandoned and scared.  His brothers must have dealt with their guilt.  Their father, having thought that Joseph was dead, must have been in terrible grief for loss of his favorite son.  And that’s where the sermon ended, in despair and pain, in a chain of events that seemed hopeless.  Dr. Gordon warned that he would not rescue us or justify these events, not on this day.  We were to feel the pain and despair fully, as we were in the middle of this story.  We probably already knew how this story ended, but he left us to be in the moment.  We are often left to wait for God.  Every Christian goes through times when he is scared and feels abandoned.

Look at the disciples and Mary after the crucifixion.  Their hopes for a Messiah were dashed, and they felt totally abandoned and shammed.  What that Saturday must have been like, waiting alone for God knows what.  As Christians we know the rest of the story, but it is still so hard to wait.  As Christians we can wait on Saturday because we know Sunday will come.  Saturday may be a long day, but we must cling to the hope and promise of the resurrection.  Letting go of my own agenda and fully trusting God, no matter what, is what Saturday is about.  It is more than a hope that things will work out.  We have the promise from God sealed by our adoption through salvation.  It is not hope alone that sustains us, for we already have victory in Jesus Christ.  We wait for what we do not have; we wait for it patiently (Romans 8: 24-5).  We are not left alone in our weakness and waiting, for the Spirit intervenes for us and binds us to Christ (Rom 8:26-7).  I think 30 years ago, when I was a young and immature Christian, I would have never understood this.  It is hard to put into words what has changed.  I certainly have not done anything myself to seek this kind of trust or decide to have this kind of faith.  God has been the composer and sustainer of my faith.  What would my faith be if God had not willingly and lavishly poured out his love on me in times of uncertainty and fear?  Faith would be nothing more than hope, a hope that the scriptures were real stories of God’s revelation to real men and women,  a hope that Jesus really was crucified in a horrible death and God raised him to live again, that Thomas really did touch his wounds and believed him to be Lord and Savior, and that all of this is proof that I too am saved and am an heir to his Kingdom for eternity.  Before Jesus entered my life at age 30, none of this made sense.  However, I can stand here today, 40 years later, with an assurance of authentic love and personal intervention that God has brought me through darkness into his light.

Early on in my journey I would rage epic battles.  I would lie awake during the night witnessing a war between two forces vying for control of my heart.  God’s promises were pitted against my human doubts.  The battles were fierce and bloody, and they would go on for hours.  After some time God defeated the negative forces and would emerge victorious.  I would have assurance for a while that Christianity was real and personal.  I was able to rest and know that I was saved until the next battle.  The war would start all over again, but each time I learned to call out to God, who assured me that he had already won this battle and that I didn’t need to fight it over again.  During each battle God intervened earlier to remind me of his ultimate victory and that he was still supreme.  I wondered whether others went through this same war, but looking back at this, I guess God really wanted me to be in his army.  In many ways this experience affirmed my faith and created a rock on which I could always stand.  Whenever I go through doubts during trying times, God still calls out to me to say, “Chester, I’ve already won this battle.  You don’t need to work so hard.  Come to me, and I will give you rest.”

Is it still hard to believe and embrace the reality that God has chosen each of us as his beloved child?  Even after a plethora of examples that I just cited, I find it hard to live like a beloved child of God.  A few weeks ago we were visiting with Susan’s brother, and his daughter and her two children joined us to eat dinner at a local restaurant.  I have rarely seen Rachel and did not know her 4-y.o. daughter, Clementine.  Clementine first saw me as she got out of her car.  As she walked by she looked me in the eye and made a cat hissing noise.  This cat behavior caught my attention, and after a minute she did it again.  We sat together at dinner and connected in a special way.  Susan turned to me and whispered, “Clementine has chosen you.”  Susan reminded me that she had chosen an uncle in a similar way when she was four years old.  This encounter makes me think about the fact that God has chosen us to be special for some reason that we don’t understand. We are God’s chosen ones, and we have been seen by God from all eternity as unique, special, precious beings. How do I act as the chosen one?

With Clementine I didn’t want to disappoint her.  After a few moments I concluded that she just wanted to be loved back and paid attention to.  She put no demands on my behavior other than my presence.  There were several times that we caught each other’s eye and smiled.  A couple of times I hissed back at her.  I came away with a great memory of being chosen by a 4-y.o. child.  Somehow I feel that there is something very innocent and pure in me that has been seen and loved.  Being chosen by Clementine surprisingly touched me.  How much more would it mean realizing that God has chosen me?

I want to revisit a story I wrote in 2010 about God’s abundance. I thought about that story and God’s lesson to me today as I was talking with someone to share my passion for reaching children at Ashley School. Once again I felt overwhelmed by the needs and lack of resources as I try to serve the Title 1 school and the neighborhood. On the one hand it is sad and frustrating to witness the dysfunctions of the neighborhood and the families, to make sense of this strange culture and to bring some kind of change through this ministry

However, as I follow God’s lead and look for doors that he has opened, I am amazed with what God continues to do. God continues to put people in my path. As I encounter each person, and it becomes clear to me that God is in charge of our actions, I kneel down in awesome thanksgiving of His abundance. I don’t have many answers. I cannot tell you how all of this will turn out. But I am comforted by the assurance that God is with us, and he reveals his guidance and provision just enough to keep me excited and on mission.

Back in 2010 I was worried about making the best decisions to care for my mother, whose life had become difficult and disjointed. I had gotten yet another emergency call from the Assisted Living home to come to discuss the fate of my mother’s ability to stay there. Instead of rushing off to the home, I stopped by the cherry tree in my front yard to pick cherries and to pray. As I stood on the step ladder and reached out my hand, all the cherries in the tree were ripe and bunched, ready for easy picking. I marveled at the abundance of ripe cherries that fell into my open hands.

Then I heard God’s voice, “Chester, who grew these cherries?”
“What?” I asked. “What do you mean, God?”
“How did all these cherries get here?” God repeated. “Did you have anything to do with producing these cherries?”
“Uh…well, God, I planted the tree years ago, and I have been watering and feeding it ever since.”
Then God added, “Chester, none of these cherries would be here today if I had not given them to you. You cannot make cherries, despite all your efforts. I am God, and I am blessing you, if you just trust me. Just reach out your hand. I will fill them up, because I love you.”

My ministry is just like the cherry tree. I will continue to water and fertilize, and every once in a while I may stop and prune a stray branch. God still encourages me to stretch out my hand in order to fill it up….abundantly. I love being a caretaker/gardener.  Praise God for his goodness and provision. He is calling whom he needs to work in his garden.

Waiting on God to reveal answers to my questions is not my favorite thing to do.  But sometimes the answers are complex and relevant to where I am in my life.  Some time ago I had a strange vision.  I didn’t quite know why or how I had this vision, but I did know that it was authentic.  I didn’t even believe in visions at the time, so afterwards I had to decide whether I was crazy or was God showing me something that he wanted me to know.  If that were the case, then this vision would take on significant spiritual significance.  Seventeen years later I am still thinking about that night and what God was really telling me.

Chester

11/21/2016:  A Prayer at the Door

I found myself at the door of a child’s hospital room, looking on at this young boy, whose body lay restlessly in a coma.  We cling always to hope for recovery, but the reality at the moment seemed quite uncertain.   In a flash my thoughts overwhelmed me for this boy, the pain and fear that his parents must feel, thoughts of his friends as they innocently played in the street and my own journey how God carried us through hard times such as these.   I gazed at this boy, and I wondered what he was thinking as he lay in his bed.  I wondered whether he knew Jesus, and I wondered what God was doing at that moment in his life and in the lives of his family.

I paused to turn to God in prayer.  I asked for God’s presence, but God was already there.  I asked for healing, but God already was working to heal beyond all my imagination.  I prayed that God would envelope this child and family with his love, but God is love, so that’s what he does anyway.   My desire is for healing, but God is going to do what he’s going to do.  I begged God for healing anyway, reminding him of his power and love for this young boy.

After all, how many times has God embraced me in my darkness?  How many times has he touched my family with his healing hand?  I remember well the panic and helplessness I felt with a child in crisis.  I prayed and prayed until I had no more words.  I asked everybody I knew to pray, and still the healing did not come.  I learned to pray for manna, to get through this day, this moment.  I prayed for strength and nourishment each day, the food that only lasts for a little while until you need more.

What do I pray for, as I stand at the door of this boy’s room?  Is it enough that my soul is broken and calls out to God?  When I don’t have any words that are sufficient, will the Spirit intercede?  Perhaps my silence is sufficient.  Perhaps my prayer is as much for me as it is about God’s intercession.  My prayer recognizes my helplessness and God’s Sovereignty.  My prayer calls forth the God who has loved and interceded for me countless times in my life, even before I ever called on him.  My prayer is a testament and covenant that we place this child in his hands and trust him no matter how it turns out.

Beyond this one prayer for this boy, my prayer is that we can live our lives in fullness of this revelation that God has already gone before us and provided all that we need.  We are Easter people who are able to celebrate the salvation and purpose that God himself has already bestowed.   I stand at this door with hope and thanksgiving.

Amen.

Chester

04/29/2018  Feature in Winston-Salem Monthly Magazine

Chester David:  Community activist, Hunger 2 Health founder

05/14/2018:  A Curriculum for Christlikeness

I wrote a paper about 15 years ago, as my PromiseKeepers men’s group read and discussed Dallas Willard’s book, The Divine Conspiracy. Chapter Nine, “A Curriculum for Christlikeness,” begged further contemplation and prayer reflecting on the fundamental question, “What would it take for me to really decide to become a serious follower or disciple of Jesus?” The following is a dissertation on this chapter and begins to postulate how we as Christ followers might stop making promises with good intentions and begin to live our lives in relation with God’s fullness and promise for us.

A Curriculum for Christlikeness
(A commentary on Chapter Nine)
by Chester David

In Chapter 9 of his book, The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard presents a clear explanation for how a Jesus follower chooses to become a disciple. He says that Christians in many churches today may have come to a place in their lives where a mediocre relationship with Christ and/or a semi or pseudo-fulfilled life has become the norm. My writing this summary has helped me to answer a question that I have been asking for more than two years, a question that has been tugging at my heart: What would it take for me to really decide to become a serious follower or disciple of Jesus? What is the thinking process that leads someone to give up his old skin and to follow Jesus at any cost? I continue to see in myself an acceptance of a life that at times is incomplete and unfulfilled in relation with God’s fullness and promise for me.
I also see our church failing to sell to its members the notion that we can and should expect a life far greater than we ever imagined through the power of Christ in whom we fully place our faith and trust. In light of our discussions to seek God’s guidance in becoming a missional church, I find Chapter Nine of this book to be absolutely relevant and enlightening. This paper is both a summary of Chapter Nine of Dallas Willard’s book as well as my thoughts related to my own spiritual development.
“So those who hear me and do what I say are like those intelligent people who build their homes on solid rock, where rain and floods and winds cannot shake them.” (Matt. 7:24-25) We all hear God’s words. We all have learned the stories and the facts of who Jesus is. We all believe He is our Savior and Lord. Our problem is not a matter of knowledge or more information. It seems to be a matter of will.
Dallas Willard writes that we are living in a time when consumer Christianity has become the accepted norm. A consumer Christian, according to the author’s definition, is one who accepts the idea of grace for forgiveness of his sins, but does not give his life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom. Christian consumerism infects us all. We are assaulted daily with lines such as “You can have it all” or “Do what feels natural.” Sometimes I wonder whether I really want to lose control of my life to a demanding king. I recently met a man through PromiseKeepers who is “on fire” with what Jesus is doing in his daily life. He exhibited an “in-your-face” type of ministry as he related his story of God giving him many opportunities to witness to people in his work and in the marketplace. I tell you the truth, I felt both a little turned off and guilty as I listened to him. It made me very uncomfortable that this man had stepped over the line. I struggled with the dichotomy of wanting to run the other way from him on the one hand, yet wanting to be like him as well. Following Jesus is a radical change that often feels uncomfortable.
I might have accepted such zealous evangelism if I were on the mission field in Bolivia for instance, but not in my own neighborhood. I could even rationalize that God needs people like that, as long as it is not me. I wonder why there seems to be a line for me separating acceptable actions while on a mission trip and behaviors in a life filled with a mission under God’s direction. While in Bolivia and focused on God’s work, I felt vital and increased in a God-directed life with a mission. God evidently used me to do his work, and He magnified my efforts. Each mission experience has been filled with abundance. Each time I came home with the fear that life would too soon return to normal. I did not want to come down off the mountain.
Willard clearly connects this abundance of life in Christ with obedience. If we are to live a life of abundance at Ardmore, then we must obey what Jesus is telling us. There is no other way. We can not recreate or redefine this relationship to fit our consumer lifestyle. He says that our churches today seem to skirt around the reality of obedience. There seems to be a “disconnect” between the two concepts.
The author earlier describes the idea of “bar code” Christianity, a concept that may prevail in our churches today. Bar coding maintains the concept that somehow our professions of faith in Jesus places a mark on us. When we die, we pass through a scanner, and God separates us from the unlabeled. Don’t we think that way a little? Being saved does not depend on our being “good” Christians. It depends on our profession of faith. The pay off for having faith and being scanned comes at death and thereafter. This gospel then becomes a gospel of “sin management.” Bar code Christians miss out on the abundance of life offered to us in the kingdom during our lifetimes. This abundance is given as a gift to those who enter into a love relationship with Jesus.
What must happen to energize and convict us to give up our comfortable life in order to seek and embrace obedience? How can we get people to believe the things they have already heard? The author suggests a way to bridge the gap between hearing the Word and doing. It is critical that we connect the reality of our spoken faith with day to day life decisions and actions. We must become partners with God in working in this world. He talks about reigning with Jesus. We are not only working together as one, but indeed we act as if our life and actions are His. We live with the assurance of victory, joy and eternity.

The Two Primary Objectives of the Course of Training

In order to clearly focus on becoming Christlike, the disciple must take on two primary objectives. The curriculum is one that teaches us to plant our “life on the rock,” the life that both hears and does.

1) We must bring the disciple to the point where he dearly loves and constantly delights in the Father made flesh in the person of Jesus. He must realize that there is no limit to the goodness of God’s plan and intention for us and no limit to the power that God has to carry out this plan.

2) We must change our routine and habitual responses against the kingdom of God in order to fully and dynamically relate to God’s love for us.

Enthralling the Mind with God

This section is one of the most important of the book! If we are to meet the first objective, how can we help people love Jesus to a point of “enthrallitude?” It would be wonderful if church members were filled with so much excitement about following Jesus that every conversation bubbled over with Jesus’ daily working in their lives. I hear that kind of excitement about yesterday’s big play or a sale on a clothing item. Many casual conversations eventually revolve around our children, who are the center of our lives. Describing your new son’s first encounter with the neighbor’s puppy is what I mean by being in love. Making daily sacrifices to give every advantage to your children, to spend time with them, and to become the best parent you can be is what is meant by enthrallitude.
I often wonder how one gets to the point of desire to become a committed and heart-changed disciple? Does this desire to be Christlike and to follow him evolve from an overwhelming recognition of His love for us, or do we adhere to a discipline of obedience that leads to a love relationship with Jesus? Which comes first, the love for Jesus or the obedience?
Thomas Aquinas remarks that “love follows knowledge.” We are able to love Christ partly because we have a vision of who He is and what He is doing in our lives. Staying in love calls us to remember the One who has showered us with His goodness. How quickly we tend to forget what God did for us yesterday, or ten minutes ago! We get caught up in our own solutions and in the immediate influences of our lives, and we often need to remember how God had handled a similar situation in the past or how he unexpectedly revealed himself when we were down.
Willard teaches that what we think about influences who we become. Our minds offer us the greatest freedom to go where we wish to go, even when our bodies are trapped in an illness or imprisoned. “The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to dwell on in thought.” Thus part of God’s call to us has always been to think on him.
He offers three areas of thought that would allow God to enter our lives in such a way that we fall in love with Him. These Willard calls “areas of necessary intellectual clarity.” These are ways in which God comes before the mind, where we can lose ourselves in love of him. These are also ways in which we can present God to others.
1. The Almighty God is the Maker of Heaven and Earth. Most uncertainties in the minds of disciples are the result of unclarities or failures to understand His nature. These inhibit our confidence and love in a God who is constantly at work in the disciples of Jesus and in us. The point is that in the training that brings apprentices of Jesus to live on the rock of hearing and doing, God must be made present to their minds in such a way that they can see his magnificent beauty and their love can be strongly drawn to him. Interestingly, the author makes the point that some liberal churches erect an idol called “Love.” They are in love with the idea of falling in love. In contrast theology on the right, he says, “tends to be satisfied with right doctrines and traditions without ever moving on to a consuming admiration of, delight in, and devotion to the God of the universe.”
The icon of “scientific knowledge” has eroded our thinking in today’s world. There is a negative prejudice in modern thought against supporting the idea of “God” with any factual knowledge or discovery. Over two centuries of “advanced thinking” have been devoted to ruling God out of consideration as the creator and sovereign Lord of our universe.
It is imperative that we believe that God is God of the universe and therefore has absolute control over every molecule and atom, down to the pesky gnat flying around your face or the blade used to execute dissident rebels in Mid-Eastern countries.
2. God is God of Jesus and His People. From the beginning of Biblical revelation, people are blessed by God personally and engaged by God in a face-to-face relationship renewed by periodic visits. (Gen 1:27-31) Even when we turn our backs on God and put ourselves on the cosmic thrown, He continues to be faithful and to make every possible provision for our salvation. We must constantly hold in our minds this new covenant which is poured out for each of us personally.
The character of God lies in the personhood of Jesus. “Haven’t you yet understood who I am, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) The key, then, to loving God is to see Jesus and to hold him before the mind with as much fullness and clarity as possible. We do that by making the Gospels a permanent presence/possession of our soul. The disciple must have indelibly imprinted upon his soul the reality of this person who walked among us and suffered a cruel death to enable each of us to have life in God. This reality must be absolutely and unmistakably personal. The love of Jesus for us and the magnificence of his person bring us to adore Jesus. “Once you come to know the love of Jesus Christ,
nothing else in the world will seem as beautiful or desirable.”
3. God’s Hand Is Seen Through the Events of the Disciple’s Life. We must come to a realization that our very own existence is not only made possible by God but that our lives are an extension of as well as a result of Gods’ plan within His framework of unqualified goodness. We come to an assurance that in our heart of hearts our lives must be a good thing. The result of this type of thinking is that we should have no doubt that the path appointed for us is good, and that nothing irredeemable has happened or can ever happen to us on our way to our destiny in God’s full world. “It is confidence in the invariably overriding intention of God for our good, with respect to all the evil and suffering that may befall us on life’s journey, that secures us in peace and joy.”
In each aspect of a disciple’s training the object is to enable the disciple
to be thankful for who he is and what he has. This contentment is rooted in the eternal life with God who heals and allows us to stop demanding satisfaction. The only thing that matters is that you belong to God. You have been chosen. This is the message of the kingdom. “I can do all things in him who gives me strength.” (Phil 4:13) In light of this gratitude, we return to receive and even welcome our life as it actually has been and is.

Developing Kingdom Habits

“Put into practice what you learned and received and saw in me, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Phil 4:9) Paul did not tell the church in Colossus how to do this. This statement was not perceived as a vague or general platitude. It was an instruction that everybody understood, a pervasive core practice. After all, Jesus modeled this behavior. Walking in the kingdom is never a matter of “how to.” It is a process of walking with a person.
In reading Dallas Willard’s insights I think he might say it is a matter of living with one’s focus so harmoniously in Jesus and with the reality of God’s purpose that one takes on the mind of Christ. Our thinking made righteous in our obedience to Jesus leads to right actions. Our obedience is somehow rewarded by God in his desire to give us an abundance of life. As a result of this new life, increased by the blessings of God’s power, we desire to know and follow him more fully. Everything we do, because we partner with Jesus to do His work, becomes eternal and significant. Even our solitude and our silence become a part of the incredible journey.

Practical Steps

To spell out any list of steps or prescriptive behavior for achieving a kingdom heart seems ludicrous in light of Jesus’ teachings. Our human nature of course wants to plug into a formula for success. Our temptation is to take the list of fruits of the Spirit and memorize them, so that we can check them off one at a time. We often end up pursuing the fruit instead of pursuing the man. Following Jesus is not about following a set of rules. Discipleship is not about learning to behave in a prescript manner. If we took Jesus’ teachings literally and legalistically, we would cut off a body part every time it caused us to sin, thereby limping and dragging ourselves into heaven on mere bloody stumps with no arms, eyes, etc. You get the picture.
Achieving goodness is a result of the work of Christ in transforming one’s heart from the inside out. A transformed heart does not follow rules but acts out of vision and passion. We cannot conquer sin, but the temptation to sin can be removed when we see the world as God’s mission field and see our place in God’s plan. Likewise, our role individually and collectively in reaching a standard of what God wants us to be must be written in our transformed hearts. As we seek to define practical steps to becoming a mission-minded church, may we seek to understand the God that Jesus followed. In our serving Jesus as his “slaves,” we are also serving with him on a basis of “shared cooperation in which his aims are our aims and our understanding and harmony with his kingdom are essential to what He does with and through us.”
Willard offers five dimensions of our eternal life in the kingdom that are arranged more or less in a progression. It might be interesting and beneficial to think about where we are in these stages and what specific activities are often associated with these stages.
1. Confidence in and reliance upon Jesus as the Savior. It is a reality of inclusiveness, but only inclusive of those who believe and have this confidence. Some issues include acceptance of people who are different and who share a love for Christ, urgency in the message of salvation, excluding liberal thought that is not Biblical, recognition of pain, emptiness and sin when we are lost, accepting the reality of the Evil One, and making the Easter story a year-round consciousness. Activities include testimonies, celebration and worship, witnessing to the lost, praying for the lost, talking about Jesus, prioritizing our life activities, Bible study, and training to prepare members to both give their testimonies and confront false beliefs.
2. Desire to be His apprentice in living in the kingdom of God. Faith in Jesus is more than an acceptance that He will save us from Hell. It is a decision to set oneself apart from worldly things and to live within his word and practice his teachings. Some issues include courage to be different in doing the right thing, discernment of sin, busy schedules, loving others while not accepting their sin, and conviction that nothing is more important in one’s life than to follow Jesus. Activities may include Bible study, discipleship training, praying for ourselves, mission and outreach groups, and sharing Jesus with others.
3. The abundance of life that comes with living in the word leads to obedience. Our personal experiences in Christ bring us to love Jesus and the Father with our whole being. So we love to obey him. Doing is born out of love, not law. God promises that if this is the case, He will disclose Himself to the disciple. Everything in our lives becomes a learning opportunity to know God. Some issues include giving up things that distract from one’s spiritual growth, being judgmental about everything one does and sees, tolerance, dealing with rejection from others, increased problems and activity from Satan, trusting God to provide in new and strange situations, and trusting that the results are eternal. Activities include tithing, thanksgiving and expectation before the miracle, outpouring of missions into the community, increased baptisms, oneness in spirit and vision, and spending more time outside the church walls.
4. A life of discipline and obedience leads to an inner transformation of the heart and soul. Love is genuine to our deepest core. The fruits of the spirit are brought about in us as we emulate Jesus and work in his name. Issues may include time management for individuals and church staff, space concerns, Ardmore community as a mission field, increased lay leadership, and finding a way to support people’s calling and strengths. Activities include rampant growth in missions activities, smaller Sunday School classes, discovering our gifts, disciple making, sharing our successes with the congregation, and focus on prayer groups.
5. Power to work the works of the kingdom. “Those who rely on me shall do the works that I do, and even greater ones.” (John 14:12) It is not that we can do such great works, but that anything we do in Jesus’ name is made great beyond our human ability. God needs the church to do His work in the world. Great power is promised to us. Issues include power, letting God, acting only with the proper focus, a mindset for growth, burden for the lost, and a community of genuine love. Activities include church planting, ordination of our members into the ministry, utilizing our space for groups and/or other congregations, silence and reflection, and revising/upgrading our vision.

Our connection to our community and our world has not always been like it is today. The way we do church and the ways in which we live our lives are dynamic and relational. We are called to grasp a true sense of our history to understand what we need to do today. Sometimes we think that just because we do things one way that we have always done it the same way. I’m too old to fall in that trap. “The only way forward for the people of Jesus today is to reclaim for today the time-tested practices by which disciples through the ages have learned to ‘hear and do,’ to build their life upon the rock.” Change does not require great numbers of consenting people. It requires one transformed heart.

Oh God, may we see you clearly and love you dearly. Give us the wisdom and courage to stand and follow you into a new life in your kingdom. Amen

4/4/2018: The Garden

He said it.  Jesus said that the sower will throw seeds on the ground and some will grow and some will not.  I am a gardener in my heart.  I love to spend time in the dirt.  One of my qualifications to this claim is that I love getting dirty, even at the expense of my image.  I often come into the house with soil on my shoes only to get chastised by my wife for trampling on our carpet and leaving bits of dirt all over the house.  I must say that I do not have a pair of jeans that are presentable to wear in public.  They all have stains on the knees.  I’ll even go out in my shirt and tie after work to check on my yard, and without a thought I will begin pulling up weeds and wild onions.  My family knows where to find me when I’m late for dinner.  I sometimes do not fulfill my assigned task of filling up the water glasses.  I stay in trouble.  If you don’t love gardening, you wouldn’t understand.

I’ve had a garden for as long as I can remember.  Over 30 years ago we planted a good-sized plot in the country.  We shared this garden with some friends.  We would often go by after work to check the progress of the tomatoes and green peppers.  I’d come home and report that there were 24 tomatoes and 37 peppers coming along.  I never thought it was strange to count these new creations, but everybody else thought I was odd.  After all, why wouldn’t one count the number of tomatoes that one has worked and nurtured from seeds?   Over the years I have been distracted from spending time in my garden.  I guess life takes a toll.  We grow older, have responsibilities, have aches and pains, all to say that I don’t work the ground like I used to.  I don’t love the produce any less, but my back doesn’t allow me to spend hours in the soil.  Even if I were able to devote my life to working my garden, I could never remove all the weeds.  I know; I’ve tried.  Ground is like that.  It is its nature to sprout whatever is left untouched.

Does it really matter?  Some years I’ll plant my tomatoes, snow peas, peppers and beans, and I’ll have a bumper crop.  Some years aren’t so very good.  I have a list of things to blame it on.  Over the past several years I have continued to put seeds in the ground and left it to chance whether they produce.  Sometimes I even called it God’s Will.  After all, Jesus said that not all seeds will grow anyway.  I guess this scenario depicts our lives as well.  I often expect the seeds to produce lots of tomatoes without working the soil.  Yes, I’m talking about sin.  I can’t stop sinning any more than I can remove all the weeds from my garden.  As with my garden, I don’t have control over the outcomes, but I still love getting dirty.

What have I learned from this?  God is the gardener of course.  I am the seed.  When I pull up a weed or plant, I’ve noticed how short a time it takes to wilt and die.  When I am unable to work my garden at all, it doesn’t take long for the weeds to choke out all the plants.  Any effort that I put into it out of love pays dividends.  I don’t have to remove all the weeds to enjoy a good crop.  Somehow nature takes care of the growing despite my best efforts.  The end result is a mixture of my effort, God’s grace and our mutual love for seeing a healthy, ripe tomato.

I heard a sermon on Sunday about forgiveness that triggered something deep within me.  I guess one thing that has happened is that I no longer feel guilty for all the weeds.  I have grown up with a lot of issues and unhealthy messages.  These issues have choked my relationship with God.  But God has made it clear that these images of myself are not his images of me.  He has destroyed them and thus has set me free of guilt.  In a vision one evening a few years ago I pictured a joker, an insidious, slimy blob and a beast. All three creatures had threatened to overwhelm me, but when I just mentioned the name of God, each time his light permeated and filled me, and these images disappeared.  The next morning during communion when I took the bread, all of these creatures reappeared and then drowned in a lake of fire.

Forgiveness of my sins has become very personal.  The love of God through the passion and death of Jesus has transformed something in my heart.  I wondered why God put these visions in my head.  These creatures helplessly struggling in a fiery lake had no chance in light of my simple act of taking bread.   This total defeat of Satan trumpets the truth that God’s redemption of my soul is both complete and dynamic.  In his light God has already destroyed my raging ego, my uncontrolled anger and my need for control.  These sins were represented by each image in my vision.  They are all gone in his eyes.

So in this Easter season I have a sense of humility and thanksgiving.  When I’m singing an anthem in the choir or just out in my garden pulling a few weeds, I will do it to his glory.  I love getting dirty.  I suspect God loves it too.

03/12/2018:  Being Fully Human

I’m enjoying reading on a very snowy day. I’ve ended up with about 5-6 books that I’ve started, so I need more reading days like today. I have to thank Chuck Spong for giving our Love Out Loud team the book, “Soulful Spirituality, Becoming Fully Alive and Deeply Human,” by Dr. David Benner. We often think about our spiritual journey as a quest to be a better Christian. Benner writes that instead of becoming less human to take on prescripted behaviors that sometimes move us away from becoming whole, God calls us to be fully human. Being fully human should necessitate experiencing the radical amazement that life should evoke. Benner is convinced that becoming fully human – becoming the unique and whole human being that I am intended by God to be – is right at the center of the Christian spiritual journey. Now that’s just Chapter 1. Good stuff by this professor at Richmont Graduate University.

02/15/2018:  A missed Miracle

GRIN Ministry. Posting positive acts around us. Where do we see God at work in our crazy world?

Miracle of Baby Roger:

Do we know a miracle when we see one? I guess that if we’re not expecting one, we’ll miss it. I think they are around us everyday, but we sometimes look away or right through and don’t ever see it. That almost happened to me yesterday.

01/30/2018:  Being Chosen

While visiting my wife’s two brothers and their families this past weekend, we met my niece and her children for dinner one evening. I had not really gotten to know Jack and Clementine previously, perhaps only a couple of years ago when they were not old enough to remember. I was happy that my niece Rachel was able to join us, but I hadn’t really thought much about the kids.
The car pulled up in the driveway, and the three of them got out and walked towards us. There were the usual greetings and hugs galore. And then I noticed little 4-y.o. Clementine looking at me and hissing like a cat. I wasn’t sure what that was about, but a few moments later she did it again. Her mom announced that Clementine often makes cat noises. As the others were chatting in the parking lot, Clementine grabbed my hand and asked me to follow her. I was perplexed, but when a 4-y.o. takes you by the hand, you go with the flow.
Later as we entered the restaurant, Clementine ordered me to sit next to her. I was looking forward to talking with one of the adults, but Clementine demanded that she wanted to sit in between her mom and me. We sat together at dinner and connected in a special way. It was a dinner to remember, Clementine and her great uncle. My wife Susan reminded me that she had chosen an uncle in a similar way when she was four years old.
I was a bit uncomfortable at first that Clementine had chosen me. I didn’t understand why, and I wasn’t sure how to act. All I knew that I was special for whatever reasons an innocent child expresses a special kind of love and attention. This encounter makes me think about the fact that God has chosen us to be special for some reason that we don’t understand. We are God’s chosen ones, and we have been seen by God from all eternity as unique, special, precious beings. How do I act as the chosen one?
With Clementine I didn’t want to disappoint her. After a few moments I concluded that she just wanted to be loved back and paid attention to. She put no demands on my behavior other than my presence. There were several times that we caught each other’s eye and smiled. A couple of times I hissed back at her. I came away with a great memory of being chosen by a 4-y.o. child. Somehow I feel that there is something very innocent and pure in me that has been seen and loved.

01/23/2018:  Expecting God

GRIN Ministry. Posting positive acts around us. Where do we see God at work in our crazy world?

You know our family has been going through a very sad and difficult time with losing a niece and sister-in-law within 3 weeks. We continue to support and pray for Susan’s brother and his 2 daughters. They are trying to make sense of their lives. We had planned some time ago a trip to visit one of his daughters this weekend, and what a divinely serendipitous time to visit. Today I received a text from a good friend and coworker in Love Out Loud that she is lifting us up in prayer. Why didn’t I expect this word today? I know God is at work through acts of love like this. It reminds me how we can make a difference with people around us with a heart-felt word. It reminds me that God loves each of us, and he sends his followers to care for and touch one another.

10/7/2017:  Experiencing Grace

Many of our “words” that we use today have lost their power and original meaning.  Words have infiltrated our vocabulary and become overused to the point that they mean something much different from their etiology.  Take the word “awesome.”   Yes, I hear this word used to describe everything and even as a response to a story in conversation.   Having heard “awesome” so frequently I find myself using it, when I don’t really mean awesome.   Webster’s dictionary offers the meaning, “inspiring awe, admiration or fear, extraordinary.”   Is that what we really mean when we say, “Awesome!”?   Probably not.  We usually mean a dumbed down version of awesome to mean “cool.”   Other words that are overused and have lost their meaning are amazing, absolutely and interesting.  We can make a list a mile long.

There seems to be two recent phenomena or cultural developments that have accelerated the demise of the power of our language:  social media and sound bite compromise.  With the number of available platforms, communication has become more impersonal and relative.  In the post-modern world all ideas and values become equal, so that what we read, by default if not scrutinized, is fact.  It becomes very difficult to discriminate and filter the plethora of words and ideas bombarding us each day.  We have also become accustomed to quick access to knowledge and solutions.  We have become satisfied with positions that are easy and partial.  Our thirst for depth is sometimes overwhelmed by our constant barrage of information.  After all, we would have to slow down to absorb deeper contemplation and to seek a harmony with the world.

So it is with our understanding of God.  I am guilty of settling.  I find myself preferring to read books about understanding the Christian walk to reading God’s Word in the Bible.  Yet, every time I pick up the Bible I am awed by the power of Scripture.  God himself desires to speak to us in Scripture.  He speaks to us through many media, nevertheless I wonder how much I am missing by not engaging in serious and consistent Bible study.   Recently I have thought a lot about Grace.  What’s so amazing about Grace?  Can I really grasp the radical concept and power of what God has freely given us?  I’m not so sure that I can.  If I am really honest, I must confess that somewhere in my inner thoughts and deep in my soul, I have felt that I deserve Grace.  I have balanced the good and sin in my life, and I am convinced that the good outweighs evil by far.  However, the more I fall in love with the real Jesus, not the one I have made up in my head, the more I get out of my head knowledge and dwell in the depths of my heart, I am convicted of the incredible and undeserved love from God that I embrace.

What narratives impede our sanctification and full understanding of God’s Grace?  There are concepts of Grace that have molded my current thinking that need to be replaced by a Jesus narrative.  By that I mean I want to know and fall in love with the God that Jesus knows, not the God that I made up to further serve my ego.  I want to be transformed by a God who is so loving and so abundant that He breathes into me a life that glorifies Him.  This can only happen when we die to ourselves ad allow God to replace our ways with his ways.  This can only happen when we are able to trust God completely, a trust that is rooted in a life time of His provision and the outpouring of a personal, unconditional love that passes all understanding.  This Jesus narrative allows me to face all things with the confidence and power of God’s incarnation and victory.

The God whom Jesus knows is Abba, daddy.  In a cluttered room I want to climb up into my daddy’s lap and rest there, knowing that I am safe and loved, sometimes without a word spoken, but snuggled up so close to him that I feel his heartbeat.  As a small boy I saw God as the Creator, the Overseer, the Judge.  How can such a God beckon me to sit so close on his lap? As a man, I am a small child yearning for the love that God bestows.  Perhaps God knows me better than I know myself.  Perhaps he doesn’t even care about all my sins and earthly desires as long as I keep crawling back up on his lap.    When I am there, I am whole.  Nothing else matters.  The room is full of bustle, but I am in my daddy’s lap.

Grace is a word, a word with many connotations.  Grace is a concept, plagiarized by overuse and often misunderstood by my shallowness.   When I think of Grace in the Bible, I always come back to God’s provision in the wilderness.  The Jews were wandering, hungry, disobedient and self-absorbed.  They didn’t deserve God’s radical gift of manna, yet God provided fresh manna daily to bring them through.  When we spat on Jesus and crucified him, we didn’t get what we deserved.  Instead we got the greatest story ever told.  What kind of God raises Jesus from the dead and gives us a way to everlasting life despite our depravity?  As I reflect on my own journey, I see God’s Grace time and time again.  I recall one such time when I had lost almost all hope that my daughter would ever be well due to a chronic illness.  I shook my fist at and rejected God, telling him point blank that I had no use for a God who couldn’t do any better than that.  I had nowhere else to turn.  Inexplicably I felt God’s arms wrapped closely around me like never before.  He said to me, “I hear your anguish.  I love Allison even more than you do.  Trust me.   Come dwell in my house.”  God reached out and beckoned me once again to sit in his lap.  Jesus knew his Father loved him this much.  That’s where I want to be.  Now that is really something awesome.

Chester

9/14/2017:    Abundance

I’m reading a book with my PromiseKeepers men, The Good and Beautiful God, by James Bryan Smith.  In chapter 4 on generosity the author writes that the process of spiritual formation in Christ is replacing our destructive images and patterns with new images and ideas that filled the mind of Jesus himself.  God is generous because he lives in a condition of abundance.  His provisions can never be exhausted.  And God is moved with compassion because he sees our need.  Conversely, we live from a condition of scarcity.  We never got enough love from our parents, or enough toys on our birthday or enough confirmation from our friends.  We learn that we must protect what we have.

7/28/2017:  Living Water

Most of you probably know the story of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar in Gen 16. I have been thinking about the importance of our journey and the opportunity we have to be a stream in the desert.

7 The Lord’s angel found Hagar near a spring of water in the desert—the spring that is along the road to Shur. 8 He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

Let me reflect on this image….. 
A stream never decides to go where it wants to go. The terrain always dictates its path, unless it wears away at the rocks to form a canyon. That’s really, really hard to do, and it takes a very long time. So are our lives or paths often not completely our own choosing.
For me, my terrain is certainly not linear, once governed by outside forces. In retirement my stream sometimes meanders through different terrains, often stopping for a while to form a deeper body of water, but spilling over to explore other paths. Wherever I go, whatever path I touch, life is nourished or started along my banks. My water is life-giving. Animals come to my edge to drink. People stop by to be refreshed and renewed. In my waters people’s lives are transformed to eternal life, an abundant life and a resurrected life. In my water God reveals himself in love, power and “I am.” In these waters I am complete. My fulfillment is not where I flow, but what I carry along. May my banks overflow with living water.

Washing a child’s feet…..
I am excited about what God is going to do tomorrow at Ashley. Volunteers will want to come at 11 a.m. if possible, or soon thereafter, since you should beat the crowd and park more easily. Also we will be getting organized and choosing where volunteers want to serve. Brian will be in charge from Samaritan’s Feet National. I am the site coordinator.

I have no idea how many volunteers will show up, but I am basking in God’s glory and provision that tomorrow will be a great day. It’s a time to connect with the community volunteers, families in the neighborhood, the school staff of course the children. It’s a time to pray and expect God to be present in seen and unseen ways. Come and stay as long as you are able.

Chester

6/11/2017:  Abundance Revisited

I want to revisit a story I wrote in 2010 about God’s abundance. I thought about that story and God’s lesson to me today as I was talking with someone to share my passion for reaching children at Ashley School. Once again I felt overwhelmed by the needs and lack of resources as I try to serve the Title 1 school and the neighborhood. On the one hand it is sad and frustrating to witness the dysfunctions of the neighborhood and the families, to make sense of this strange culture and to bring some kind of change through this ministry

3/31/2017:  Real World Relationships

I hope you don’t mind my borrowing from the WMU Missions Mosaic magazine this month. The question therein is asked, “How can we be more intentional and live with authenticity with our neighbors and co-workers?” Both words, intentional and authenticity, caught my attention. There are 3 points to doing so:

1. Recall how God has been at work in your life. Sometimes we are able to recall God’s work in our lives, and then we get sidetracked and frustrated at the next negative thing that happens. We need to keep remembering all God has done for us. “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.” (Psa 126:3) When these things are in the front of our minds, we become a more willing and impactful witness for Him.

2/20/2017:  Personal Reflection

You know one of my gnawing questions for the past couple of years has to do with my understanding of God’s desire for us to have abundant life. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Do we really know how to live abundantly? How much of our understanding of “abundance” is rooted in our American Christian journey? We are told, and sometimes it is just implied, that we can have whatever we put our mind to. To a point that is probably true. Achievement and success comes with perseverance, hard work and networking. I hear all too often that success, wealth and healing is a result of God’s blessings on us. Not a problem with that, right? The underlying implication is often that we deserve it because of our faithfulness and favor. Somehow we have done something right, and God is pleased with us.

This sounds a little too much like prosperity Gospel thinking. I’m always happy to give God the credit for someone’s healing or promotion. But underneath there is a nagging question, “What about the millions of faithful Christians who pray their hearts out and still live in poverty or face hardships?” Were they not in God’s favor? What if my ill child dies? Does God love me less? And what about the overwhelming numbers of Christians who live in refugee camps, their lives stripped away from any inkling of American abundance? What if we lived in a tent, stood in line for soup daily, slept with several brothers or sisters, had no job to go to and not much hope to look forward to make things better? What would our faith be like then?

I think we all go there, at least we have been there. We all ask these questions. I remember shaking my fist at God and threatening him if he couldn’t do a better job at healing Allison. I remember screaming out to God without words, because I had none left. I thought God wasn’t listening. I could not go on living with the pain. In the midst of my anguish, Jesus knocked. He literally walked right into our house to tell me that he had heard my cry and came to show me the way. I didn’t know how things would end, but I knew God cared and loved me enough to show up at my door. What kind of Creator hears my whimper and comes into my life to dwell? Is this what Jesus means by abundant life? This sounds like the only blessing I need.

Perhaps the young Christian boy learning to play the djembe from his father in a Dogon hut in central Mali, his family fleeing from annihilation by Al-Qa’ida, knows something about God’s abundance. Perhaps the Christian family living in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, one of 60,000 people living in tents, has a real sense of what it means to live abundantly in Jesus. They are unlikely to equate God’s love with having material things. For me, I see this abundant living in a rather basic, stripped down scenario. I have known people in the last days of their lives, lying in their death beds, all things of this world having faded away, their eyes fixed on Jesus. God is carrying them from one life into another. They are fully trusting that God has provided everything they need. Isn’t that how we want to live our lives, putting ourselves fully in his hands with the confidence that we have everything we need? Isn’t that abundance?

Chester

2/14/2017:  Store items for Ashley students

Ashley needs supplies for the new Behavior Intervention Store reopening at the end of this month. Ardmore Baptist Church has been a vital resource to provide items that the children can purchase with their behavioral bonus points (cash).

Please look at the list below and generously give gently used or new items for Ashley. We are not limited to the items on the list. Feel free to give other things you think the children would enjoy. Collection bins are located off the lobby at the stairs and near the entrance door at the covered car loading area. Thank you again for your ongoing support and prayers for Hunger2Health and the Ashley neighborhood.

2/7/2017: Telling Our Stories

     Don’t you love a good story? We are all moved by a good story, one which speaks to us personally, strikes a nerve of truth, compels us to stretch out beyond ourselves. One of my favorite stories is the story of June in Joy Luck Club. It is a story of healing and hope. June and three other first generation American girls rebel against their Chinese traditions in order to find their true selves, despite their mothers’ hopes and dreams for them. They find that who they really are is very much connected with where they came from. It is very much my story. I am a first generation American born to Hungarian parents. If you remember the story of June, she was sent off to China just after her mother’s death to greet and to bring a message to her two older sisters who had been abandoned as infants by their mother during their flight from their homeland. These estranged sisters did not know anything about their mother or that she had died. June struggled with how to bring her mother’s message of hope and love. She feared that she would fail to relay the message adequately. In the end it was June’s presence and her personhood that were sufficient. Her sisters were able to know something of their mother through June’s presence.
People whom we know need to hear our stories. People whom God puts in our paths don’t know Jesus Christ. These people may only get a glimpse of Christ by knowing us. We have an opportunity to touch a chord of personal truth because we understand what they are feeling. We have experienced their pain. We have cried with them in their grief. We have known darkness and hopelessness without the saving grace of Jesus Christ. We have shaken our fists in anger when God seemed to turn His back on us when we cried out in need. We know the power of God’s healing. In the end our presence and our story will bridge the gap of their despair and pain. The lost will see Christ through us as we share in their lives. In the end God will act to reclaim a sinner or a lost soul, and He will do so because you shared your unique story.
My story is ordinary and compelling. Christ pursued and called me just as he calls everyone else. My barriers prevented me from listening for a very long time, until I exhausted my own answers and had nowhere to turn. I did not survey the religions available to me and choose Christianity. I didn’t even seek to know Jesus. I’m not sure what happened except that one day it was clear to me that Jesus was the answer. God had sent to me several people who continued to share their stories. Even though I listened, I was not ready. But I kept listening, until one day God’s light was the only thing I could see.
Darkness had taken over my life. It wasn’t an evil thing; just I never could make sense of my life. I figured that I could make the best of each day, but the best only ate at me in the long run. The very best I could offer was not good enough. I could create art, learn scholarly things and love others passionately. However everything that was around me and everything I could create was temporary. In the end everything dies, and we are merely a wisp in the wind of time, blown from one place to another until everythig we ever did has disappeared. God had abandoned me. We live our lives fully, and then we no longer matter. My anger at God blinded me and kept me from seeking him.
To hear Pam ask me in 1975 whether I knew Jesus as my Savior and Lord caught my attention. I had been to church as a youth, and I had heard this statement many times before. Nobody ever asked me personally to affirm my relationship with Jesus. Why now was this question so compelling? I guess that I had nothing else to live for. This question begged a simple answer, yes or no. Perhaps this story was the truth. Perhaps God had reached into my life one more time to claim me as his own. If this were true, if Jesus had died for me, if God really loved me like nobody ever had, if God really raised him from the dead and provided a way to eternal life, then I really had a reason to life again. Perhaps this time I was ready to listen.
I knew Pam only for a brief time. She happened to be there at a low time in my life, a time when I needed some answers. My wife Susan had been praying for me. Pam took another step towards me. I guess I took a step towards her as well. After all, I sensed God’s nudge, his knocking. Pam was Christ to me in a way I had not seen. I’m not sure that she ever knew what I was going through or the effect she had on me. I haven’t seen or heard from her in 41 years, and in a real way it doesn’t matter. It was Jesus who spoke to me. It was God who relentlessly pursued me. It was Pam through whom he spoke.
If that isn’t a compelling story, I don’t know what is.

Chester

1/16/2017:  Federal School Improvement Grant

Congratulations to the 3 schools in W-S that received a Federal School Improvement grant to be in effect for the next 5 years. The model for Ashley is a transformation one to improve reading skills, boost leadership skills for students and develop cultural competencies, according to the newspaper article in today’s WS Journal. Ms. Linville also stated that they are focused on overcoming the image of a low-performing school. Experiment in Self-Reliance (ESR) has already approved money to hire a full-time self-sufficiency case worker at Ashley to work with families. This grant also brings with it a school improvement coach. It is a great time to be connected to Ashley Academy as a volunteer!

11/22/2016:  Followup to Prayer Coverup

The Prayer Coverup poster is down, and the little people are put away until next year. I can’t say enough about it, how it gave us a prayer focus and a joy for this month. Thank you to the Sisters of Faith for your creativity and your hard work. You guys are awesome.

We had a great response from the people. I remember last Sunday watching a family with small children eager to paste a child on the poster. Dad showed his daughters how we pray for these names on the backpack. I stood there and thanked God for you.

11/5/2016:  Prayer Coverup

Prayer Coverup has begun. We are asking each of you to take a backpack refrigerator magnet with the name of an Ashley child and to pray for that child and his family. Also take a child doll and place it anywhere you want on the poster of the school. Watch Ashley Academy be covered up in prayer by Ardmore Baptist Church. Thanks to the Sisters of Faith for the creativity and work in making this happen.

10/29/2016:  Saturday Academy

10/19/2016:  One Hundred Man Tunnel at Ashley

Thank you so much for your support and presence during the 100 men tunnel celebration, BECAUSE of your support we were able to EXCEED our goal of 100 men (106).

This email is to extend information and an invitation regarding our male mentoring program. We would like to pair every male student at Ashley Elementary School with a mentor. If you are interested in becoming a mentor please complete the attached registration form to attend the Mentoring Orientation on October 29, 10:00-12:00, at Ashley Elementary School. Please email the form back to triadmentoringc16@ yahoo.com or fax it to 336-727-2344.

10/12/2016:  One hour a week can change a life

 By Renee Semones Guest columnist

9/25/2016:  Lord of the Small

9/16/2016:  Easy money to Ashley Schoo

Back2Schools: Together, we can feed hungry minds | lowesfoods.com | Lowes Foods

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9/16/2016:  Five years ago I read an article that W-S was the worst area in the country for families with hungry children. I didn’t believe it, so I set out to find out what was really going on with hunger. This was the beginning of my hunger assessment and the beginning of H2H, a ministry that is transforming lives (mainly mine).

8/22/2016:  Ashley Academy needs you to read to a Child.

Hunger to Health Ministry is helping recruit volunteers for the 2016-2017 school year to work with Ashley elementary students!
Caring adults who can commit to ONE HOUR EACH WEEK are needed to tutor and mentor students. Training and materials will be available.

The #1 need for many children at Ashley is a relationship with an adult who cares on a consistent basis. The reading materials are structured and easy.

Interested in being a volunteer? Go to https://www.wsfcsvolunteers.com/
Complete and submit a Volunteer Registration form today.
Orientation/Training for Reading Buddies:
Sep 14, 6 p.m. in Room F221 at Ardmore Baptist Church

8/12/2016:  Letter from Rev. Dr.KL Willams (Ashley Staff):

It is no secret that our young boys of color are in a national crisis. Equally, it is no secret that our young boys of color are bottled up with anger and frustration because of the road blocks to their success. However, throughout history, adversity has always been a catalyst for advancement. The challenge is how do we educate our young men of color to take the negative and turn it into a positive. This concept is biblically grounded in Romans 8: 28 “… we know that all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord…”