Introduction
One of the joys of my long life is having the clarity of mind to rehearse the multitude of God’s blessings. Yesterday, I provided a special occasion to do so. In the providence of God, He has allowed me to influence the life of a delightful young woman. Yesterday was a very difficult day for her. She represented her mother and siblings at the funeral of her father. Her new supervisor, another staff member who resides in the office next to her, and I drove together to be there for her. This required us to spend almost twelve hours together, eight tooling down I-65 to and from the Gulf Coast. It turned out for me to be a day of reviewing God’s knitting of lives.
The Drive
An associate, Greg, offered to be our “Uber” driver. When they arrived to pick me up at the Lowe’s parking lot, Jim, another colleague about 5’ 7,” climbed out and offered to ride shotgun as he said, “Your legs are longer than mine; I’ll take the rear seat.” Then, on to I-65 and four-plus hours of conversation. There were no dirty jokes or off-color humor, though there were many stories and good laughs. It reminded me how different that trip would have been at 17, pre-Christ in my life.
What Were the Stories
The stories fell into three categories: God’s call upon our lives, the influencers God used on our lives, and the amazing women God brought into our lives to walk beside us in ministry and child-rearing. Each of us shared our testimonies, in one way or another, of God’s grace in calling us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Each of us shared how we connected with our wives. Greg and my stories were opposites. His was a stop-and-go story, and she was willing to take him back. My story was an initial long conversation leading to an all-day first date that led to a verbal agreement to marry within six weeks and engagement three months later, followed by marriage within a calendar year of that first conversation. Jim’s was similar.
God’s call upon our lives differed, but all three recounted the process specifically. For me, the most fascinating thing is the reality of the influences. Being eighty-five, this is something that I’ve traced often in the past fifteen years. I enjoy sharing these “stories” and flipping over the now almost finished needlepoint of my life and tracing the varied colored threats that have formed the picture of my life.
As I listened to Jim’s story, though I’ve known him for several years, I heard some “side roads” he took to clarify his calling from schoolteacher to salesman and manager who retailed above-ground swinging pools to the pastorate.
Throughout these historical accounts of our lives, numerous influencers surfaced.
Influencers
Greg shared several important individuals, but the one who caught my attention was a fellow CCC leader who had learned about nouthetic counseling (as Jay Adams dubbed Biblical Counseling in 1970 in his seminal work, Competent to Counsel) and was on his way to a university meeting to discuss it. This initial influence eventually led to another that directed him to Westminster Theological Seminary to pursue a DMin in Counseling under the tutelage of Dr. Ed Welch, who was once in my junior high group as a Youth Pastor and whose counseling class I taught when he was a seminary student.
As Jim recounted his journey, he encountered negative influencers who did not keep their word, leading Jim out of his business career, and positive influencers who led him to seminary and ministry.
I shared accounts of my mentor couple, Jim and Laura, who took me under their wing as a teen, challenged me to work at a Bible Conference my first summer, and motivated me by offering to match what I’d earn and pay it on my first-semester college tuition. I mentioned the forward to one of my books, where I wrote a preface recounting the seven “generals” of God’s army with whom I have been privileged to serve and how each one influenced me in a particular manner.
Refreshing and Encouraging
It was a long drive, but it was a refreshing time. All three of us were encouraged as we recounted and listened to the work of the Holy Spirit who brought us along, training us for the work of the ministry and giving us the occasion to celebrate being His instruments to be used by the same Holy Spirit to train others to ministry both as professionals and in living daily life to glorify Him.
None of our pictures are complete. The backside of His needlepoint portrait of lives will likely have further knotting of varied colors. One color strand will be prominent in each of our finished pictures. That color represents three wonderful godly women who stood beside us, worked beside us, prayed for us, and practiced all those other wonderful passages incumbent on them. Praise the Lord for these gals. We’d all agree that we have not always made it easy for them, but the Lord enabled them to be faithful to him and each one to each of us.
Conclusion
The second most frequent command in the Old Testament is to remember. The imperative form of the Hebrew word occurs twenty-five times. In Deuteronomy 4:9-10 we hear Moses encouraging the Israelites, “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget (this is a form of saying remember) the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live (for us, the way He opened our eyes to see the truth, or the way he brought our mates into our lives, or the way delivered us in a crisis). Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God and took your wedding vows, or ordination vows.” The exhortation to “not forget” or “remember” is a recurring theme throughout the Old Testament.
Take note that, in most instances, this is a social matter. We remind each other to remember, or we remember it as a matter of social function, as was our case on this trip.
Paul exhorts the Corinthians in chapter ten to remember how God worked in the lives of the Israelites and how they failed to remember.
In Jesus’ final week with His disciples, we read, “On that night Jesus also said, “I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done for you” (John 13:15). In transforming the Passover into the communion table, He instructed them and us, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
And so, my friends, I would charge you to remember God’s handy work in your lives by sharing the process of God’s weaving your picture with one another. You will be encouraged, refreshed, and reminded to live your life after the pattern of Jesus, and you will encourage others to do likewise.