Going over what I've shared up until now, I realized that I'd never told you how all of this got started in the first place. This is not an easy story for me to tell, but if it helps to share, then share I shall.
Whenever I speak to folks about God’s plan in life, I always
tell them “God doesn’t take you where you want to go, but sends you where you
need to be.” Those words come not just
from years of studying, but from my own personal experience. In the summer of 2008 I was living in Corpus
Christi, Texas, a delicate gem of a city on the gulf coast, and I was at an
all-time low, both professionally and personally. After seven years of law enforcement, I was
not handling the strain very well, and I had just broken up with a woman I
thought I was going to be with for the rest of my life. Through all of this I felt myself drifting
away from God, and that September, I followed the advice of some friends of
mine and joined them in Bellingham, Washington, 2000 miles away from everything
that reminded me of my troubles. I gave
my two weeks’ notice, cashing in all the money I had saved up, sold my truck,
packed up my bags and headed to the Pacific Northwest. At the time I didn’t know what God wanted out
of me, and I frankly did not care. I
didn’t care about anything.
Arriving in Washington, it was a nice change of pace. Things were slower; I had far fewer personal
or professional responsibilities.
Granted the fact that I had no social life and no job had a lot to do
with that, but it gave me time to walk and to think about what I really wanted
out of life. I tried going back to
church. Being raised Missouri Synod Lutheran;
it had always been reinforced in my life how important a church family is, so I
tried out the local Missouri Synod church up there. I didn’t care for it. I went in there a complete stranger, and felt
like I left exactly the same way. So I
went to the local Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA) and found it a lot more
welcoming, but there was something just not right, not clicking for me. It didn’t help that I found myself in a job I
did not like at all, flipping burgers at a local restaurant. All of my high and mighty law enforcement
experience hadn’t paid off like I thought it would. I could not, for the life of me, shake the
funk I was in.
So I prayed. I prayed
for guidance, for some kind of message that would tell me what I needed to
do. In praying, I realized how far off
of God’s path I had wandered, because when I was younger I could talk to God
like he was an old friend. Now it was
like I didn’t know him at all. But he
came to me in the form of friends. The
few friends I had made when I was up there, would point out “You talk about
Texas all the time, why not go back. We
like you, but we know you’re not happy here.
We love you, go home.”
It became very clear to me that this was, in fact, the
direction God wanted me on now. Almost
as soon as I booked my plane ticket, I received a phone call from a friend
still living in Texas stating that he had a car lined up for me. It wasn’t anything fancy but it would get me
around town. I stopped at my aunt’s
house, who lived in Seattle, to visit before my flight left and, that night I
got a message from a friend of my family’s stating that she had a job lined up
for me at the daycare attached to the church my parents went to. Already my life was shaping up to be at least
60% better just by turning myself around and following the direction God wanted
me on.
When I arrived in Texas, I once again found myself
conflicted. Here was the only real home
I’d known for the majority of my life, but here too were all the problems I’d
left behind. I didn’t know how to feel
about my return. I was thankful and
grateful to have a job and a car, but nagging doubt told me that I had just
came back right where I started from, that I hadn’t made any progress at all.
It was here that God gave me something else to ponder, a
different struggle to face off with. The
pastor at our church, a man not far off from me in age, one who had helped me
as much as he could during my turbulent times, was called to another
church. This calling offered him
enormous opportunity to spread the word and he accepted it graciously. Thus we were left in a church that had no
pastor, which is as functional as a ship with no captain. The crew knows what to do to keep the ship
running, but that’s not much use when you don’t know where to go. To compound the matter, we couldn’t afford a
new pastor, our previous one made ends meet by working as a DJ for a local
radio station. Pastors from other
churches stepped forward to lend a hand and a voice, but they could not truly
lead our congregation.
This isn’t the challenge God laid before me though. I believe firmly that he did not want me to
suddenly jump up and go to seminary, but He did want me to teach His word, to
have an open dialog with others about God’s grace and the power of faith. One Sunday morning, we were expecting a
pastor from San Antonio to come and preach, but he suffered a car accident on
the way and would not be in attendance.
I was on the elder’s committee and we discussed what to do next. I said, “I’ll take today’s sermon.” I still have no idea what I was
thinking. I’ve spoken before groups
approximately one time prior in my entire life, and certainly hadn’t prepared
anything. I had an hour to figure out
what I was going to say, an hour to prepare a sermon from scratch and deliver
it before a group of people who knew me literally my whole life. Some of them were at my baptism when I was an
infant. So to say there was some
pressure there would be a gross understatement.
So I sat in the pastor’s vacant office with a yellow legal
pad while the rest attended Bible study and I prayed. “What, God, do you want me to say today? What do you need them to hear?”
I had two words written on the page by the time my hour was
up, “Prodigal Son.” A Bible story that
I’d heard my whole life, but had taken on new meaning for me over the course of
the last year. So I stood at the pulpit,
hands wet with sweat, looking out at a small sea of faces. I could feel my heart thumping in my
chest. I took a deep breath, channeled
everything I’d learned in high school about public speaking, and I could feel a
presence, something that felt like it was beside me and around me, like a
comforting hand on my shoulder. It
propelled me forward, and I started to speak.
I spoke about my own personal journey, about the perspective that it had
given me to our relationship with God when we go astray, and how no matter how
far we go from Him, all we have to do is turn around and He’ll be there,
waiting with a smile and open arms, because every day, in our own very special
ways, we are that prodigal son. This was
not a polished sermon by any stretch of the imagination, but it was unfiltered
and honest, and it resonated with the congregation. For the first time in my living memory people
actually talked about what was said on Sunday morning well into the next week.
That led me to a new ministry within the church. We called it “Mobile Ministry”, where I would
write up weekly Bible studies and e-mail them to anyone who was interested so
they had something to carry through the week, to learn from and discuss with
others. I changed careers, got back into
law enforcement and as I talked with my co-workers I learned of their various
personal struggles and we addressed that in Mobile Ministry. During this time I also spoke a few more
times, only with better prepared sermons in hand. I will never really know how much those
listening to me took with them as they left and I suppose it is better that way
in the long run. The church is gone, the
Ministry has faded away into a dusty, unused blog somewhere on the internet,
but those lessons I still carry and I pass on as much as I can as I look to the
next road God wants me to take.
Next time…Part 2: Finding a Home.
Good post! Keep rising...
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