Insights on Life Archives - STRATEGIES FOR LIVING

The Mistake of My LIfe

On a Sunday in early spring 1978, the exact date now mercifully forgotten, it took but ten minutes to announce a decision that changed the course of my life.

When my wife and I moved to central Pennsylvania to establish a new church we did so with high hopes and unbridled ambition. The dream, however, is always more exciting than reality, and there were many days when I didn’t know whether this venture of faith would survive. Or whether I would! Staff turnover, friends who came and went, financial stress, and the challenge of speaking three times a week had all left their toll. I was burned out, tired beyond belief, and ready to run.

At the conclusion of the morning worship service, I submitted my letter of resignation. After ten years of ministry, I was quitting … bowing out … finished! It is difficult to understand the thinking that went into that decision, but it seemed right at the time. And I am haunted by “what if?”

I devastated my family. My wife was becoming more involved in our church’s ministry and our daughter was approaching her last year of high school. Leaving my congregation speechless, and my family in an uproar, I decided to return to seminary and complete my education.

I share my story, for I am not alone in making a decision that turned out to have had catastrophic consequences. None of us is free from doing things we will always regret. The question isn’t whether we have erred; the question is, what have we done about it? The temptation is to recoil in self-pity, or perhaps, to blame others and play the martyr. It is only when we are honest enough to accept responsibility for our actions, however, that we will be able to reconstruct.

It is easy to put a positive spin on our journey through life after the fact. Don’t give up on yourself … mistakes are not irreversible … you are a better person for the experience. But all of that was of little help and no comfort when I was in the throes of guilt and despair.

Leaving active ministry was truly the mistake of my life, a decision that was without merit and counterproductive. My experience at Ashland Seminary was a disaster. My personality made me unpopular with both staff and students, and a four-year degree in Counseling was of little value for a counselor I am not. And I set in motion circumstances that following graduation left me isolated from my family and my peers.

But Erwin Lutzer is right on when he writes, “We assume God is unable to work in spite of our weaknesses, mistakes, and sins. We forget that God is a specialist; He is well able to work our failures into His plans (Lutzer, Failure: The Back Door to Success, p. 18).

When I look at where and who I am today, I am amazed. I would not want to relive the last thirty years of my life, but neither would I want to take them back. The trauma that followed my resignation from Trinity Temple was, if not part of God’s directive for my life, still to my benefit. They helped make me the man I am today. All things did, indeed, “work together for good.” I matured, my wife is back, and my relationship with God is now stronger and more fulfilling than it has ever been.

With a lifetime of experiences to share, I have now become a writer. And thanks to the benevolent grace of God, the next ten years promise to be the best years of my life, a living demonstration of this great truth: in God’s Kingdom, it’s never too late to be what you might have been. Praise the Lord!

When Disaster Strikes

It was a picturesque, fall day in Central Pennsylvania, but it meant little to me. The year was 1984, and I was attempting to make some sense of what was shaping up to be the darkest days of my life. Recently divorced, my career as a minister in shambles, I was disoriented, driving in a daze, all my dreams laying as in ashes at my feet.

Distracted by an article on the seat to my right, I reached over to grab it, pulled the steering wheel to the right, and smashed into a parked car. When I told that to the officer, he smiled, but for me, it was no laughing matter. I had totaled the clean little Datsun van I had just purchased, and that to replace a car I had demolished a few months before when I ran a red light. It was that kind of year!

It wasn’t too long after this I received a phone call from a bill collector, threatening all kinds of mayhem on two credit cards I was unable to “pay in full” as the bank was demanding. “Mr.,” I told him, “I don’t own anything, I don’t have anything, I’m not worth anything. You go right ahead and sue, and I’ll discharge it through bankruptcy.”

Twelve years and, frankly, a lifetime later, I was reviewing my life story with an Attorney preparing my last will and testament. I left her dumbfounded. By then, I was beginning to recover from what had been the darkest period of my life. Driving coast-to-coast as a long-haul trucker, I was living on my off-days in a 40-ft. Hunter Legend sailboat berthed in Poulsbo, Washington. I was debt-free, with no installment loans, no credit cards, and virtually no monthly bills; the truck covered my living expenses. I didn’t own a car; the truck was my transportation. “Mr. Scott, what happened?” she asked. “How did you do it?” And I had to confess, I didn’t have a clue. It wasn’t that I made a great deal of money; it’s that I was debt-free! If you don’t have to spend it, you save it; and that’s what I did.

And I’m still unable to chart my recovery. But I serve a God of second chances, a God who can take a failure and turn him around. But the one thing that changed the course of my life, and the point of this conversation, is that I never renounced my faith, and I never gave up. I worked hard, maintained a responsible lifestyle, and gave God a chance to put my life back together.

I have told my story elsewhere, for the turning point in my life happened in the cab of my truck, halfway across the state of Texas. I was reflecting on the chaotic condition of my life when I shouted a desperate prayer: “GOD, WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?” And suddenly a quiet voice, an inaudible thought, passed through my mind that had all the earmarks of divine direction. “ALL I WANT FROM YOU IS THE GIFT OF A HOLY LIFE!”

I took God at His word and launched a rebuilding process that has brought me to where I am today. If you were to see me now, with my marriage restored and plans to make the next ten years the best years of my life, you wouldn’t believe how far I have come. And I owe it all to a gracious, understanding, and compassionate God Who gave this failure a new start in life. It worked for me, and it will work for you, too. Give God a chance!

The Shadow You Cast

You may feel abandoned, ignored, or simply taken for granted, but you have a legacy, a critical circle of influence – that can be fulfilled by no one else. Nothing beats family, we are told, and, indeed, they are your legacy. Society may never know, nor little care, who and what you are, but you can etch it in stone: your family will tell the tale!

As told in his book, Today Matters, and a book I highly recommend, John Maxwell tells the story of a study done by Richard Dugdale. As a member of the Prison Association of New York, Dugdale was surprised to discover six members of the same family, all in prison for a variety of offenses, including burglary, attempted rape, and assault with intent to kill.

The family, he discovered, could be traced back to a gentleman he called Max, born sometime between 1720 and 1740. A heavy drinker, he had six daughters and two sons, some of whom had been born out of wedlock. By the time of his study (in 1874), Dugdale estimated the family line included some 1,200 people.

Of the twelve hundred, and here Maxwell quotes Dugdale’s findings, 180 were paupers, 140 were criminals, 60 were habitual thieves, and 50 were common prostitutes.
Another study, this by A. E. Winship, was done on the family of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards. The onetime President of Princeton University, a traveling preacher and respected theologian, Edwards’ legacy encompassed some 1,400 individuals at the time of Winship’s study. Of these, Winship found 123 college presidents, 65 professors, 100 lawyers, 30 judges, 66 physicians, and 80 holders of public office.

In the words of the Apostle Paul, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”

Our God, I have often said, is no man’s debtor. Honor Him, welcome His Son as the moving force in your life, and you will cast a shadow that will bless your family and all who have known you. Your legacy will not be found in your service to the community, the accolades you garner, nor the accomplishments of your brief sojourn on earth. Who you were and what you stood for will live on … in the lives of your family.

The principles you lived by, your conduct under pressure, the distinguishing marks of your character, and most important of all, your relationship with God, will cast a shadow on all who have known you. Indeed, as nothing else could, they will inevitably tell the story of your life.

ON FUNDAMENTAL REALITY

There are four fundamental questions in life that demand an answer. Every one of us would like to know why we are here, what is right and wrong for us, the meaning of our life, and what will happen to us when we die. Origin, meaning, morality and destiny; on these four fundamentals hinge everything you are and all you hope to be.

Academia and the scientific community would like to tell us we are here as the product of an evolutionary cycle that started millions of years ago. They would tell us our purpose in life is to be happy, that right and wrong are what we choose them to be, and that if there is an afterlife, it will be determined by our goodness.

Each of the great world religions address one or more of the issues in question, but they don’t adhere to reality. For Buddhism, nirvana is found in the extinction of all desire. Islam would have us believe Jesus Christ did not die on a cross and that eternal bliss is promised only to those who have earned it by living a good life.

But the best answer to the four fundamental issues in question——origin, meaning, morality, and destiny–is found in the Christian faith. Only here do we discover we have been created “in God’s image” and are privileged to live as His emissaries on earth. And only in the Christian faith does one find forgiveness for sin, a challenge to model the life of our Lord, a moral standard that protects one from evil, and the promise of heaven, too.

During my high school days, a close friend once said, “Scott, you must be a saint! You can’t do anything!” Well … a saint I am not. I am a simple man, created in the image of God, privileged to serve as a living model of Jesus Christ to my generation. I have been given a moral standard that keeps me from doing something counter-productive, and at the end of my journey, heaven too!

And what God has done for me, He can do for you. So check it out, study the record, consider the alternatives, and discover for yourself that ours is a good God Who wants only what is for your best. And God’s best is personified in Jesus, the Perfect Model of who and what God created you and me to be. He will give purpose to your existence and direction to your life, and in tough times like these, that is a faith you can live by!

For more thoughts like these, follow me at indefenseoftruth.net.

On Becoming the Best You Can Be

There is a basic truth, a fundamental principle, that lies behind my writing and everything I do: God wants you and me to be the best we can be! No matter who we are, what we have done, or what we believe, God loves us so much He is committed to this one, great objective: that you and I might become the best we can be!

It is here we discover the reason God invites us into a personal relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ. A new standard of values, a new sense of right and wrong, and a new source of strength have made this the turning point in the life of every believer.

And, it is here, too, we discover the reason behind the limitations God places on our freedom. God wants only what is best for us and knows, because of the way He made us, that we are prone to push our freedoms to extremes. He made us with powerful drives, character traits necessary to our survival, and invites us into a partnership of intelligent cooperation that we might not self-destruct.

As I reflect on my checkered career, and those decisions that changed the course of my life––some made in a matter of minutes––I have often wondered how different my journey might have been had I been able to foresee the future. If only is a question many of us have asked of ourselves, but it does little good to recriminate. The past is behind us; we can’t change what has been.

There have been times I excelled and made my family proud; then there have been those times that prompt me to blush in shame. But I can’t undo the past, and if I could, I’m not sure I would change a thing. The low points, and the high points, have all contributed to who and what I am today. But God has been there through it all, carefully monitoring my progress, helping me learn from the experience, making me into the man I could have become in no other way.

The Apostle Paul once wrote, “God demonstrated His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” With no strings attached, without any assurance you and I would even care, God gave His very best that you and I might become our very best! The kicker here, however, is that it all begins when, and only when, we welcome Jesus Christ as the Lord of our lives. There is no other way.

From Discarded Refuse – A Masterpiece! –

In 1501, a twenty-six-year-old Italian artist was given an unfinished sculpture and commissioned to create a statue of the Biblical hero David for the Cathedral of Florence. To be created from a huge block of granite, it seemed to many an impossible task. But Michelangelo saw something others had missed and in three years’ time, he was able to create a masterpiece that has been hailed by many as the greatest statue created by human hands.

The original commission had been given Agostino di Duccio in 1464. He got as far as shaping the legs, feet and the torso, but abandoned the project in 1466. Ten years later Antonio Rossellino was commissioned to pick up where Duccio had left off but his commission was soon cancelled.

For the next twenty-five years, this block of marble lay discarded, exposed to the elements in the courtyard of the Opera del Duomo. It was, for some, a useless piece of refuse. But Opera authorities, hoping to resurrect the dead project, commissioned Michelangelo to see if he could breathe life into the inert piece of stone.

The two previous artists had abandoned the project, convinced that imperfections in the stone might threaten the stability of the statue. But Michelangelo looked past the defects and saw what it could be. For the next three years, he chiseled away at the excess, and from the huge piece of granite, there emerged a stunning masterpiece.

The depiction of David, poised and ready for combat, was inherent in the stone all along. It only took the vision and endeavor of a master sculptor to bring it to light. And that is how God sees you and me.

“We are God’s masterpiece.” writes the Apostle Paul. “He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.”

“Jesus didn’t die just to get us off the hook. He also died to resurrect the person we were destined to be before sin distorted the image of God in us. And He doesn’t just set us free spiritually. He also sets us free emotionally and relationally and intellectually. We are held captive by so many things. We’re held captive by our imperfections and insecurities. We’re held captive by our guilt and anxiety. We’re held captive by expectations and lies and mistakes. Jesus died to set us free from all the above. … He sets us free to become who we were meant to be.” (Mark Batterson, Soulprint, p. 11).

We may be haunted by failure, overwhelmed with guilt, and limited by our mistakes, but in God’s kingdom, our deficiencies do not determine our destiny. Our God is a God of second chances. He knows who we are, but He also knows what we can become. The world may see a hardened, marred piece of granite; God sees a masterpiece.

God has a unique plan for your life, a destiny that is different from that of anyone who has ever lived. He wants to take you as you are and where you are, that He might remold you into something you could never be without Him. In the hands of the Master Craftsman, you too can discover there is no limit to what God can do when He finds a willing heart.