The SECRET - "Not What or How Much but WHO" - pt6

We didn’t realize it at the time, but as it turned out, leaving the Baptist church at the end of 1982 became a defining moment in Piper’s and my life.  When I look back in our history, it is easy for me to pin point that place in time as when Piper and I began to write the story of our lives in earnest.  From the very beginning of our marriage, we desired to start many of our own unique family traditions.  But that move from a traditional church denomination and its beautiful church edifice, seemed to set us free to follow what we sought to discover as the Lord’s special leadings for us.

For the previous twelve years, accounting for our dating days and first seven years of marriage, Piper and I had been heavily involved in her family’s church.  Therefore, we saw her family a lot and spent many Saturday and Sunday afternoons at their home for meals and fellowship together… and for the first three years of marriage, we rented an apartment within walking distance of both Piper’s parent’s house and her maternal Grandparents home.

When my maternal Grandmother passed away around 1980, my parents gave us the opportunity to rent her house from them at a discounted price in order to help us save up for the future purchase of our own home.  That said, by the end of 1982 we were living somewhat equally distant from both of our parent’s and had begun to split our time fairly evenly with both sides of the family.

When we started to attend the little church that met in a hotel room on that first Sunday in 1983, we began an adventure that I’m not too sure that either side of our family understood!  Throughout the following few years, my dad would occasionally ask me if we had ever considered going back to the more traditional, established, well known and respected Baptist church that we had previously attended, and with a smile, I would always answer “No… Why would we?”  Then I would explain how happy we were where we were, how much we were growing in our faith walk (an explanation that neither of my folks seemed to understand for years to come) and how much I enjoyed the ministry there as Piper and I, among other things, had been leading the praise and worship services since about a month after our arrival. * 

I would also have to say here, that while Piper’s folks seemed to understand our move from their church, they also had their reservations about a church meeting in a hotel room and our new denomination’s Charismatic/Pentecostal roots, the use of southern colloquialisms by some of its leaders and its lively and somewhat free form of singing and worship.

With the advent of our growing family, my job at Hewlett Packard, Piper’s involvement with Women’s Aglow Fellowship and the beginnings of her home schooling in connection with the Independent Study Program at the Santa Rosa Christian School, our lives and community involvement became much more independent from our extended family and seemed to take on a life of its own!

The Apostle Paul told his readers in Philippians 4:13 that, “Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.” (The Message Bible)

As Piper and I jumped into this new phase of our lives, we began to closely focus our spiritual attention on the ONE that Paul spoke of in the above verse.  This scripture is basically telling us that it doesn’t matter WHAT I have, or WHERE I am… but what should matter the most to us as Christians, is that we can successfully make it through anything we face in this life… because of our relationship with and our dependence on the ONE by whom we are called… ie; through our faith in Jesus Christ and the truth and power of His Word.

The Passion Translation speaks of this type of relationship as a SECRET weapon that we should be trained to use by stating Paul’s words as, “I know what it means to lack, and I know what it means to experience overwhelming abundance. For I’m TRAINED in the SECRET of overcoming all things, whether in fullness or in hunger. And I find that the strength of Christ’s explosive power infuses me to conquer every difficulty.” 

I would say that we spent the next 20+ years training “in the SECRET of overcoming all things.”  Then in 2006, we took three years of advanced training in Bible College.  I used to joke with Piper that we came home in 2009 having received “Special Forces” training “in the SECRET of overcoming” in order to face the horrendous attack on Piper’s health. 

A few people questioned us about our decision to uproot our family when we did to move to Oklahoma, but you know… After being in prayer for a year about the potential move, Piper and I were in total agreement and knew that we knew that it was right and that without a doubt, God had called us to go exactly when He did.  

And with all the training in the Word of God, training in faith that was based on our ever-increasing personal depth of knowledge of how intimately God loved us** and having 20+ years of experience with the faithfulness of God… we crossed the border back into California in 2009 having already set in action in us, the mode of trusting in our training to operate without question in “the SECRET of overcoming” that we had been taught… to meet every challenge that was ahead of us.

Have you operated in that mode before?  Are you trained in The SECRET?

Stay Tuned…

 

*We soon came to learn that leading the praise and worship (song) part of the service at a Pentecostal church is very different than either the traditional hymns sung at our old Baptist church or the song services we had led during our youth meetings or regional snow camps where we led music a few times.  It was a definite learning curve for both of us with the new songs, styles of worship, and the art of leading the congregation into the presence of the Lord before the preaching of the Word for Sunday services or mid-week meetings.

**See: Ephesians 3:19