Smarter people than myself have coined the phrase
"recovering hypocrite". I find
that moniker to be quite apt when describing myself.
I was raised in a Christian home and taught Biblical
values. I don't actually recall any
serious attempts by adults to relay meaty theology to me when I was a kid. But that could very well be due more to me
not listening than to any lack of effort on their part. At any rate, despite the best efforts of
those around me I grew into a young man who was infinitely selfish, unabashedly
critical of others, unashamedly arrogant about my own intellect, and casually
manipulative (yay for adverbs!); not exactly a set of characteristics to be proud of.
In the course of time I married my best friend Pheobe, without
a clue how to be a decent husband let alone a Godly one. And I had some kids,
Christopher and Michael, without a clue how to captivate their hearts (my
concept of good parenting was to criticize and discipline until I got the
results I wanted; see attribute list above).
I almost torpedoed my marriage through my own ignorance. And my children began to grow into miniature
images of myself which was decidedly unpleasant to observe.
In retrospect God was sovereign even during this period of
my life. Events proceeded exactly as He
had fore-ordained, rough spots and all.
This included the taking of my first-born son when I was 25. Christopher was diagnosed with a malignant
tumor on his brain stem on a date which will live in infamy for me personally,
December 31, 2002. He struggled with
this disease for the next nine months as his body was wracked and decimated by
both the tumor itself and the treatments he underwent in an effort to battle
it. He finally succumbed on September
27, 2003. It was six days after
Christopher’s fifth birthday. While I
now recognize the necessity of trials in a Christian’s life for the purpose of
growing one's faith the sickness and death of my son was a personal hell that I
have no desire to ever experience again.
Fortunately God had already set things into motion which would serve us
well during this impossible time; specifically my second child Michael. Because of Michael’s presence in our lives my
wife and I were forced to soldier on and be brave for him even when we didn't much want to ourselves. In a very real
way Michael’s presence saved both our marriage and our state of mind. He had no way of knowing it then and may
still not fully appreciate it now. But
in a sense he performed the same function for us as his namesake, the archangel
Michael, did for the nation of Israel.
By being in our lives he was God’s principle agent and our chief
protector, keeping the forces of the enemy (in the form of divorce and despair) at bay.
Even through this ordeal God was not yet ready to draw me to
Himself. It was not until the age of 30
or 31 that He kicked into high gear the process which would result in my
salvation. Saving faith has been
described by some as having three separate but necessary components. First, one must have an acknowledgement of
the truth of God's revelation as recorded in the bible. Second, a personal surrender to Him must take
place. And third, life must be conducted
in a manner which reflects the first two components. Due to my aforementioned Christian upbringing
I have always believed that Jesus is the son of God and the only means by which
the gulf that exists between man and God may be bridged. But it was nothing more than an intellectual
agreement with biblical truth. Said
another way, I had never made it past the first step of saving faith outlined
above. What God did at this point in my
life was to bring me to a place and give me the ability to move past
acknowledgement to surrender and then conduct.
He did this in my case not with any outwardly miraculous
circumstances. There was no near death
experience or proverbial flash of light in my back yard. Instead, much as Elijah found at Horeb, there
was simply a still, small voice that continually worked upon my heart. It slowly chipped away the rancid and
festering layer of sin that was feeding upon my soul like a parasite. And I was finally brought to the point where
I decided that I was tired of disobeying the call of God from scripture and it
was time to make a change.
So began a new chapter of my life that I continue in to
this day. The crowning event of which
was the birth of my third child, my daughter Kayla. Through the arrival of this precious gift
into the world God brought full circle to my family the healing which He began
with Michael. She has breathed new life
into our lives and the tag team of her and her big brother fills our home with a delightful chaos that my curmudgeonly
adult sensibilities sometimes do not appreciate for the blessing that it is.
The more I learn of who God is and what He has to reveal to
me the more I see how much I need Him.
He has gifted me with various inherent skills. These include the ability to communicate
through the written word and to both process and analyze data quickly. Before my salvation I gloried in these
intrinsic attributes and others. Now I
recognize that while they have their place and they are not wrong in and of themselves
(especially considering that they also share in the image of God in which I was
created), of much greater importance are the areas of Christ like character in
which I lack. Chief among these is one
which resounds like a trumpet call from the pages of scripture; love.
As a society we in the United States tend to glorify those
who are the most gifted, the most athletic, the most intellectual, and the most
skilled. In other words we focus upon
the shallow outward manifestations of a person's character. But we tend to esteem of little worth the
"inner man" who is most visible in acts of love, mercy, grace, and
empathy. In a totally unsurprising twist
of irony these are exactly the attributes most called for in the pages of
scripture; likely because God in His infinite wisdom understands that the
selfishness which is at the core of sinful man will naturally drive him to
exalt the outward while discarding the inward like so much trash.
And so I continue upon this journey of growing closer to the
Lord, increasing in the knowledge of Him, and repairing the damage done to my
marriage and my children prior to my salvation.
I have a clear view of the way forward to be a father who reflects
Christ to his children (although I struggle on a daily basis to maintain this
ideal). I feel incredibly blessed to
share a union with Pheobe that is stronger now than it has ever been. I choose now to love her with a deep
and abiding love that far surpasses what I felt on our wedding day. I feel the weight of years press upon my
shoulders as I reflect on the biblical truth that has been revealed to me so
far. And I sense the burden of how much
of Christ’s character I still lack. But
as the apostle Paul said in his letter to the church at Philippi “forgetting
what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward
the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”.
Soli Deo Gloria
Thanks for sharing this story.
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