A Bunch of Wise-Guys

Who do you have to help you with the big questions in life?  Who do you have in your life that you can turn to when you are faced with difficult or confusing situations? 

We are not meant to live this life alone.  We are not created with absolute knowledge, allowing us to know everything we need to know.  To navigate circumstance we need input, perspective, and experience to aid us in our journey through life.  How many times do I make choices with out experience, knowledge, or know-how and just hope that somehow things will work out?  Too many!  If someone has walked that path before me, if someone has learned lessons from the school of life, wouldn’t it make sense to glean from them?

It’s been said, “A wise man learns from his mistakes, a wiser man learns from the mistakes of others.”  I don’t know who originally said it, but I’ve been saying it and trying to live it for the last 20 years. 

Proverbs 11:14 says, “Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counselors there is safety.” (KJV)

In my last 20 years I’ve taken this verse to heart and pulled in a team of 5 men that I trust, respect, and love. They have made themselves available to me when ever I have needed them.  They are a motley bunch in whose ages range from 40 to 79.   They all love Jesus, love their families, love what they do, and have sought to be faithful to the call that God has put on their lives.  

1. One is a part-time teacher at a local college.  Worked 30 years at local shipyard before semi-retirement.  Is single, never-married, and has been walking with Jesus for over 50 years.  Faithfully serves his local church and loves his neighbors in his community. 
2. One is a facilities manager at a church in another state.  He’s over 60, and at 45 he decided God was calling him into ministry.  He picked up and moved his family to Dallas, TX.  He worked full-time as a vending machine operator, served the church, attended/graduated Dallas Theological Seminary, and was able to love and be there for his family through out those grueling time demanding years. 
3. One is my best friend who is a project manager for a large construction outfit in another state. He is a year younger than I am but started a family before I did.  He has always had a heart to serve God and His people.  
4. Another one is my pastor.  He retired from pulpit ministry a few years ago and felt God’s leading to start a non-profit organization to teach and train missionary pastors all through out Asia.  His ministry has now branched into Africa.  At 65 he stepped away from a “sure thing” and stepped out in faith to something that has taken off.  He too has always been someone who put his family first before anything else.  Many in ministry sacrifice their families for “success”, I’m grateful for his example. 
5. The last one is my dad.  The father-son relationship is a unique relationship.  For me, I didn’t always see the sweetness of it.  As a disciplinarian, and me needing a lot of discipline, I didn’t always see eye to eye with my dad.  It’s only after becoming a dad do I see the task more clearly that was before both my parents in raising me and my brothers (we were not an easy group).  My dad has always loved us, sought to put us on trajectories where we had the best chance to succeed, provided for our needs and many times, our wants too.  My dad has loved my mom and been faithful to her for almost 50 years.  He’s been very successful in his career and has helped build solid foundations in countless young men through coaching sports, leading Cub Scout Packs, and Boy Scout Troops.  

When I have something that I need to work through, when I have a decision that seems out of my wheelhouse, when I need experience and wisdom to speak into my life… these men are where I go.  Not all of us talk every week.  Some of us touch base on social media every once and a while.  But I know that when I need some wise counsel, they make themselves available to me.  I have all of their cell phone numbers. 

Who do you have?  Who do you know that you can reach out to?  

These are just 5 men that I have in my life that I’ve always been able to turn to, pray with, and ask some of life’s deeper and more significant questions to.   My wife is a source of wisdom and balance. Within my church family there are many women who have given valuable and cherished insight.  Within my church family there are those that God has used to shape my understanding and focus.  My older brothers are also a good sounding board for me.  As we talk, God has used them in my life to sharpen, humble, and quicken me.   I got real quick running away from them!  Just kidding.  But no, really.  :)

God has not left me alone to figure these things out.  

It’s these 5 men, whom I affectionately term my “wise guys”, that speak into my life.  

You don’t have to do life alone.  Find three, four, or five folks that you love and trust, that you respect their witness in life, that there are elements of their character that you would desire to attain… reach out to them.  Let them know you admire and respect them.  Ask them, extend them the invitation to speak into your life.  Allow them the honor and opportunity to help see you flourish and succeed as you face the challenges and opportunities of life. 

We will fail at times.  We will fall at times as well.  But in a multitude of counselors, you will have the best possible opportunity to succeed!  Take heart as well, as you make yourself available for others, your failures will be their successes.  We’re in this together, let’s not go at it alone.

May God richly bless you!

God Does Not Always Deliver

What an amazing thought.  The ‘God of the Universe’, the ‘Almighty’, the ‘Alpha and the Omega’, the ‘Beginning and the End’, the great ‘I Am’ does not always deliver.  

The other day, friends of mine asked for prayer for a relative who was grieving at the passing away of their two year old boy.  The toddler was found face down in the pool, having been there for sometime, they were able to resuscitate him.  It looked good for a few days.  He was doing really well.  But then he crashed, he crashed hard.  He didn’t recover.  His mom, hates God.  Why did this boy regain consciousness and have marks of improving only to die shortly thereafter.  God did not deliver.  He certainly could have.

He did deliver a one year old boy from Escherichia coli, commonly known as E-coli.  A few years back our church prayed for a young boy to be delivered from this awful bacteria.  He was healed.  Two years later, at 3 years old, this same boy found himself in an fast moving aqueduct in his backyard.  The nanny took her eyes off of him for two minutes and the little boy found himself swept down the deep water way that feeds the farms in central Washington.   The nanny, once she realized what happened, jumped in and swam after the boy looking for him frantically.  Under barbed wire, through culverts, and down the aqueduct, she spotted him hanging on to a bush on the side of the embankment. 

When she got to him, alone hanging on to a bush, she asked him how he was able to grab the bush and keep from being swept down the fast moving aqueduct.  He said a lady named Jewel lifted him out of the water and had him hang on to the bush.  This is central Washington where it is flat.  The nanny didn’t see anyone for miles.  Not to mention, how many of us if we had rescued the boy from the fast moving water would just walk away in that moment?  None of us.  But yet, God delivered this little boy through an angel named Jewel.   Why him and not the boy from the pool? 

We might find ourselves struggling with the ‘why’.  We might even note how unfair our circumstance is.  We have a disease or debilitating illness, our life is falling apart before our eyes, we are fired from a job we were good at, we see our children suffer before our eyes and we can’t do anything about it, our parents hurt us, we are affected by others bad choices, and the list goes on.  God, why don’t you deliver?  Aren’t you supposed to be good?  Why, why don’t you deliver?  

I’m reminded of the words that three men once spoke boldly before a world ruler.  As their own life was threatened by being burned in a furnace, they said these words, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter.  If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”   Daniel 3:16b–18

Yes God can deliver, and He does.  Sometimes though, He does not deliver.  These three men understood this.  In verse 18 there is the pivotal three letter word, “But”.   This three letter word takes the phrase or sentence before it and negates it with what follows after it.  So what one of these three say is that no matter what happens, they are being true to who they are and the convictions they have. 

God is holy.  God is true.  God is good.  God is love.  God is righteous.  These three followers of God knew this.  Therefore they were able to stand under unimaginable scrutiny, and in the face of death, still be obedient to the Word of God.  We still talk about this story though it happened thousands of years ago.  Think about that. Their act of obedience in the face of death still is told on Sundays and through out the week thousands of years later. 

God takes our situations, our dispositions, our circumstances, and uses them to glorify Himself.  He doesn’t always tell us the why. He doesn’t have to.  May we understand that His love for us in unfathomable.  And in that love for us, we can stand in our circumstance and know that God can deliver us.  BUT, if He doesn’t, He is going to use it to magnify and glorify His name.   It’s not up to us to figure out how or why, it’s up to us to be obedient in the journey.  

The apostle John in his gospel account records a conversation between Jesus and Peter.  Peter wants to know what John’s role will be after His resurrection.  So, Peter asks, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”    John 21:21–22

Wherever we find ourselves, His word to us is, “You follow me!”.  He does not always deliver.  But in whatever circumstance we find ourself in, He will glorify and magnify Himself, therefore we will follow Him.  The first question in the shorter catechism of faith, based on the Westminster Confession of Fatih is this:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

1. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

May He be glorified through our life in whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, whether He delivers or not.  Sola Deo Gloria.