Following the WHO

 Psalm 23:6 in The Passion Translation tells us,

“So why would I fear the future? For your goodness and love pursue me all the days of my life…” 

When Piper and I left the reception hall for a stop at her grandmother’s ranch to pick up her car and then head up the coast for the beginning of our honeymoon, this verse aptly described what we felt and looked forward to in our marriage.  And looking back today, I can honestly say that once again, God was true to His Word!

Once home from that wonderful week we split between the northern California coastline and the majestic redwood groves, not too far inland from the Pacific Ocean, we jumped into our normal work routines in our secular jobs and with our involvement at the Baptist Church. 

At that point, the only visual difference one might have noticed at the church was that there was another space available in the church parking lot as Piper and I now tended to come together, and that my very familiar black MGB had suddenly turned into a shiny dark blue model.  I had been hit by a drunk driver after work one evening a few months before our wedding and while I came out of the incident unscathed… my car did not.  As part of the body repair process, I also decided to have the car painted a different color.

The car was finished a few days before the wedding and even though I wanted to take it on our honeymoon, I was concerned that someone might write some “just married” phrases on the car and ruin my new paint job… so I kept the car hidden away in my grandmothers’ garage until we returned from our honeymoon.

Within a few months I went on the church staff as the part-time Youth Minister, and as would become my life-long pattern when it came to ministry positions, put in a whole bunch of extra time that was not on the paycheck.  But it didn’t matter as I soon felt a clear calling to the ministry and loved every moment I could spend ministering to the youth.

With the calling, I talked to our pastor and he explained that the best course of action for me was to go to seminary.  So, I filled out the preliminary paperwork and discovered that I needed to finish my college degree before I could proceed any further.  But during what ended up being a two-year adventure attending classes around my full-time job and ministry work, different things began to happen that caused Piper and I to re-visit our course of action.

Piper and I had become involved with the Charismatic movement before our marriage and had been baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues.  We were growing in our ever-increasing knowledge and understanding of Pentecostalism, with a definite leaning toward what we believed to be the truths of the Word of Faith message. 

We had been very open in all of this with the Pastor, who trusted and supported us and simply told us to “use our heads” when it came to sharing it with those under our charge in the Youth Ministry.  But it did tend to put us in quiet odds with some individuals in the congregation.  We even had some friends who were students at the seminary I was planning to attend, who had talked to me in private about what they considered to be our “unbiblical” beliefs.  

That conversation amongst other things, caused us to re-consider our plans to attend that particular seminary… as we thought that it might not be the best fit for us.  But I pushed on through and completed my college studies anyway and received a BA in Psychology with emphasis in family and adolescent psychology.  From there we continued to seek the Lord for His next steps for us.

After five years, both Piper and I began to feel a sense of restlessness at the church and found ourselves hungering for greater knowledge in the depths of the Bible that we agreed wasn’t available there.  In the mean time, there had been some restructuring in the church leadership and the departments that we were heading and when the youth were put under the Christian Education Minister’s direction, Piper and I became the leaders of the College-Career group.

We continued to pour our hearts into our involvement in the church activities, but with the beginnings of our growing family, the hunger for more understanding and substance in and from the Word began to give us both concern for the future of our children’s growth in their Christian beliefs.  I can remember like it was yesterday when Piper and I sat down to talk and realized that we were in total agreement and even used the same term in saying that we were concerned that “our kids might starve spiritually” if we stayed there much longer.

Don’t get me wrong, the church was teaching solid Bible truths, but at that time seemed to major almost exclusively on evangelism and not too much into the rest of the rich truths that the Bible teaches us in order to be better, well-rounded, strong and successful individuals in the world.

We had bought one of the new-fangled VCR’s and had been recording different Pentecostal ministries that broadcast their services in the early morning hours, so we could watch them after my swing-shift work schedule at Hewlett Packard.  Their Bible teachings excited us and helped immensely in quenching the tremendous hunger for more of God that we were feeling… and needing in our lives.

It was interesting to me that while our Pastor (whom I always greatly respected… and whose memory I still do) told us that it was wrong for us to leave, the regional superintendent of our Baptist denomination honored our desires, but had strongly suggested that we stay at the Baptist church, saying that our congregation needed the message we had.  But our ever-increasing desire for deeper truths and our concern for our kid’s future spurred us on to finally say good-bye to our friends and family there. 

So, after the last Sunday service at the very end of December in 1982, we took a great step of faith and began another assimilation in our Christian walk and went to visit a small Pentecostal fellowship, pastored by a couple who had graduated from Rhema Bible Training Center, in a town called Broken Arrow in Oklahoma.  They were meeting in a room at the El Rancho Tropicana Resort/Hotel (where the Oakland Raiders held their summer practices) in the southern area of our hometown.

Piper and I were fully committed to follow what we both felt to be the distinct voice of the Lord instead of the voice of many folks around us whose opinions we were learning… needed to be secondary to His.  We were discovering that following the WHO we knew - was of more importance to us in the early years of our marriage than anything or anyone else! 

…and as we had in those early years, we soon realized, once again, that we had no reason to “fear the future… for God’s goodness and love were continuing to pursue us all the days of our lives…” (Psalm 23:6 TPT – personalized)

Is that a lesson that you have learned as well?