God

Discussions of God can be very controversial. Does he exist? If he does, is he interested in our lives? Is God even a he? How should God’s existence affect the way we live? If it’s possible to interact with the power that created this infinitely amazing universe we live in, and if there really is life beyond our physical existence here on this planet, that’s a really big deal and may be worth devoting a big part of our lives too. If not, then not much in our life really has any meaning.

For myself, I’ve found plenty of evidence that a creator exists and that we can interact with him. Most of that evidence is found in science and history and the nature of things, but that’s not what I want to tell you about here. There are plenty of books written on those subjects already. Here, I just want to share some stories from my life that have shaped who I am. They include some evidence of personal experience which is a significant part of my belief in God, but I’m not sharing it to convince you. It’s simply part of my story. If it helps you in your search for the creator of the universe, wonderful! If not, I hope you at least find the stories interesting. 

My reaction at this understanding surprises me still when I think back on it. I sincerely believe God’s Spirit was guiding me in my response. I prayed. I clearly remember the silent conversation I had in my mind with God. I said, “God, you want me to love everyone, but I can’t do that. There’s no way I’ll ever love some people no matter how hard I try. But you can do anything. Can you please help me love everybody? Amen.”

It wasn’t just a onetime prayer. It became a central part of my relationship with my maker. Every day, often multiple times throughout the day, I’d think in my mind, “God, please help me to love everyone.” Sometimes when people made me angry or fearful, I prayed, “God help me to love this person,” or “… these people.”

In my childish faith I stumbled on a couple very important spiritual principles. First, I believed that God existed and cared about me personally. Second, I realized that I was incapable of doing what my creator expected me to do. Third, I assumed that only God could help me. Finally, I submitted to God, desiring to do his will and asking him to help me succeed.

This was the first time in my life that I saw the hand of God. Up to this point I had believed God was real because my parents and other people I trusted said so, but as I prayed this prayer, I saw God working in me. His spirit was changing my heart. I noticed that I wasn’t as angry when people were mean to me. I wasn’t as fearful of bullies at school. The list of people that I could honestly say I loved grew longer. I found myself seeing things from other people’s perspective, being more empathetic though that word wasn’t in my vocabulary yet. I even noticed for the first time that Danny struggled with emotional fear and pain.

Before I started praying for an ability to love others, I thought Danny was perfectly happy in his constant state of cruelty. I assumed he enjoyed hurting people and being mean made him feel good. After I started praying for love I noticed that Danny was actually very unhappy and even seemed afraid of something. Cruelty seemed to flow from his fear and unhappiness, but being mean never made him happy. Even when he smiled a cruel smile after hurting someone he wasn’t at all happy. I still didn’t love Danny, but I could see that he was suffering. I no longer hated him. This wasn’t a gradual change over a long period of time the way most attitude changes happen. I was significantly transformed overnight and the change continued to grow from that point on. 

Now an atheistic psychologist would explain this sudden change as resulting from my conscious choice to think about loving others, and God had nothing to do with it. That’s possible, but the degree and rapidness of the change seemed at the time to obviously be God working in me. Even with my adult critical thinking mind this experience counts as strong evidence for the existence and goodness of our creator. The change that I experienced seems to me very unlikely to have come from simple chemical reactions and electrical signals in my brain. I believe there was a supernatural power at work. This alone doesn’t prove God is real, but it is a small bit of evidence.

Evidence aside, it was a major milestone in my life. This experience dramatically shaped the person I was; it influenced my development as a child, and it still influences me today. I never stopped expressing that prayer asking God to help me love everyone.

That night I was thinking about snow. It was fall and the weather was turning cold. We’d had a teaser snow with small, isolated flakes drifting down and melting on contact. This would be my first winter in Michigan and the thought of playing in deep snow excited me much more than your average third grade boy. I’d never experienced deep snow before.

I’d spent the past 3 winters in tropical climates. (Before Hawaii my dad had been stationed at Clark AFB in the Philippines—another place with a lot of fond memories such as water buffalo, and adults who didn’t even know what snow was.) I was born on Wheelus AFB, Tripoli, Libya and lived there in the hot, snowless desert until I was 3. We spent a year at Fort Campbell, Kentucky where I turned 4, and I remember seeing my first snow, but never more than an inch or two on the ground.

So now I’m in Michigan, about to turn 8 years old, teased by a few snowflakes, and I can’t think of anything I want more than a huge storm to make the snow at least a foot deep. I want it bad and I want to ask the creator of the universe who loves me and cares about me personally to deliver. But now I know I shouldn’t just ask God for selfish things I want. I should be more concerned with things that are good and what people need, not just my personal desires.

Well, my creative, youthful mind found a solution. I prayed for snow telling God that my brother and sister would really enjoy some deep snow. I prayed, “Lord, you know I want it for myself too, but Sharon and Bruce would really love deep snow. It would make them very happy. For their sake, could you make it snow a bunch, piling up as high as our back porch?”

It didn’t snow at all for a while. Then we got another light snow that melted on contact. Then we got a faint dusting overnight that melted at sunrise. It seemed like forever before we even got enough snow to make a snowball. We finally did—about an inch on the ground, but it melted in just a couple hours. Thanksgiving came; my birthday, my mom’s birthday, Christmas, new year’s all came and went. The ground was now covered with a few inches of snow that wasn’t melting.  It wasn’t the deep snow I’d hoped and prayed for, but it was fun. I’d had countless snowball fights, made a snowman, went sledding, even ice skated on a patch of ice Dad had made on our back yard by spraying water every day with the garden hose. I was thoroughly enjoying winter and had forgotten all about my prayer to God.

I remember walking up our driveway with piles of snow on each side, entering the sidewalk pathway that led to our back door, rounding the corner of the house, and beholding the miracle.  The snow in our back yard was exactly level with the porch. I just stopped and stared as Bruce and Sharon stomped up the steps to the porch. There it was, my prayer granted. I’d made the request for Sharon and Bruce but they didn’t even notice. I knew in my heart God didn’t really do it for them. As I stared at the porch, scanning my eyes over the level surface and continuing over the seamless snow surface extending level with the porch on all sides I was awestruck and humbled. The creator of the universe did this for me. He’s showing me again that he really exists, that he hears the prayers of my heart, he loves me; he wants to bless me. He may not grant most selfish prayers, but sometimes, if our hearts are right, he will give us what we ask for, even small things. At that moment I knew I worshiped an awesome God and I loved him.

I’ve often wondered what Jesus Christ meant when he said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3). I’ve grown to believe that one characteristic of being “like little children” is to be teachable. As an elementary school boy I was quite teachable and God was teaching me some valuable lessons. The next big lesson came about a year later.

The concept that we needed to ask God to forgive our sins certainly made sense. I accepted that it was true. What bothered me was that I couldn’t remember ever asking God for forgiveness. I thought my sins were forgiven already, but these ladies had planted a doubt about something very serious. I wanted to know for sure I was headed for heaven. It was more important than anything else I could imagine. It bothered me so much I couldn’t remember my Bible verse.

Each week we had a Bible verse that we were supposed to memorize, and this week it was James 4:17, “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” I’ve never been skilled at memorization, and memorizing verses in King James English that made little sense to my young mind proved extra challenging. But this verse made sense to me. I knew it was saying that God considers it sin when we refuse to do what we know is good. I just couldn’t remember the specific wording of the verse, and it wasn’t just the awkward old style of speaking English. It was because I was distracted.

In my heart I was troubled by the notion that my sins might not be forgiven and it left me mentally unsettled. I had made a habit of reviewing my memory verse as I lay in bed every night before praying and going to sleep. I wouldn’t pray until I could say the verse in my mind without peaking at the little slip of paper we each received with the verse typed out. This night I couldn’t get it down. I kept looking at the slip of paper and reading the words, but I couldn’t repeat them again even immediately after looking. So I finally gave up.

I’d never had to do that before. On other weeks I’d managed to repeat longer verses in my mind, some of them in such strange wording that they made no sense at all to me. Tonight I had a relatively short verse, one that actually made sense even in the old King James Version, but for the first time I couldn’t manage to repeat it without looking no matter how many times I read the words.

In frustration I began to pray, but I couldn’t concentrate on praying either. With an attitude of irritated surrender, I prayed about my sins. “Lord, I’m positive you’ve already forgiven my sins, but just in case, and I feel really silly saying this to you, would you please forgive me of all the wrong things I’ve done.” Immediately, and inexplicably my emotional state changed. One instant I was aggravated and a little embarrassed, and the next moment I was filled with a sense of joy I’d never experienced before. It was miraculous.

Psychologists might explain the sudden surge of emotion as a natural reaction to believing my guilt was forgiven; I would go to heaven, and I didn’t need to live in fear of hell, but that psychological rationalization doesn’t make sense. I wasn’t struggling with fear or guilt. I had long known I was guilty of sin and believed God had forgiven me so I could go to heaven. The emotion I’d been experiencing was annoyance that these ladies told me I had to do something that I couldn’t remember doing. I had a little doubt mixed in there because I trusted these ladies, but in my mind I was quite sure they were wrong. Maybe there were other kids there who needed to ask God to forgive their sins, but not me.

No, I believe the sudden, dramatic swing in my emotional state was caused by God’s spirit within me as a sign. God reassured me again that he was there, hearing my prayer, and he was pleased. The experience told me that I do need to seek forgiveness with an attitude of surrender to him. I understood that I was growing and learning. Whenever I faced some new knowledge I could bring it to him with a willingness to submit to his will, and all would be fine, even if I struggled with doubts and questions. Later I would learn that repentance—that is, turning away from the sin with a resolve to do what’s right, was also an important part of this confession, seeking forgiveness process.

As a final sign, proving to me that God’s Spirit had been working in me that night, I recited James 4:17 without looking at the slip of paper. Before praying I had tried repeatedly to get through it and failed. Even immediately after reading the verse I couldn’t repeat it in my mind. Now, without even looking at the paper again, the verse was there. I remembered every word and never forgot it. The next evening I still knew it without looking. That had never happened before either. Most weeks I’d have to peak at the verse on the piece of paper each night before I could repeat it in my mind again. With this verse I never had to look again. In an instant I knew it.

That night I fell asleep elated, in a state of spiritual peace and joy that I’d never experienced before and would never forget. Some Christians would say that was the moment my sins were forgiven and the emotions I felt were a result of the guilt being lifted. I suppose that’s possible, but it’s not what I believed at the moment. As I fell asleep that night, I remember thinking that I’d been a Christian all along, and God had forgiven my sins before. I concluded that I’d received another special gift from my maker—an answer to prayer and a special reassurance that he knew me personally and loved me as his child. Years later I wondered if I’d received a form of the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” that night. I’m still not sure what to call it, and I don’t think it matters. What’s important is that I never forget that it was real. This experience became another milestone in my life.

Each milestone of my spiritual growth has been important in reassuring my faith and setting the course of my life. It would be a couple years before my next major milestone.

I didn’t know it at the time, but my 8th grade year would be the last retreat with this group who I had grown to admire so much. (I still have their “Friends of Jesus” vinyl album with each member’s signature on the cover.) They had chosen a theme of total devotion for the weekend, sharing about how everything we say and do and even think should be focused on serving God.

I had never really thought about that before. To me, God was a major part of life, but not the center of life. I assumed that everyone went through life doing what they wanted, seeking their own way, with God kind of on the side. We’d try not to sin, and repent when we failed, so that we could all end up in heaven with God someday, but I’d never considered that my creator might want something more from me. This weekend I was confronted with the concept of 1 Corinthians 10:31, “whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

Throughout the weekend this concept convicted me. I knew I’d been falling short so far in my life, just going with the flow and doing whatever appealed to me; dreaming about the future with a selfish attitude, wondering what I would enjoy the most, not even considering what my Lord might want. I just took God for granted. He’d be there for me to make requests to and ask forgiveness from, but I never considered that I should ask him what I should be doing with my life. Now I was confronted with the question, “what does God want me to do with my life? How can I live to glorify Him?”

I imagined myself as a lead singer in a band traveling all over the world sharing the Gospel and winning souls for Jesus. I questioned the usefulness of my current life. What good was I doing in school learning all this useless stuff? All that really matters is the Gospel message and the world needs to hear it! By Sunday morning I was ready to make a radical commitment. After sharing music and a message with us the band offered a time of personal prayer where we could pray alone or with a band member or other adult counselor. I felt a need to get away by myself with God.

It was cold and rainy outside so I wandered off to a quiet spot in the lodge gazing out the windows on the south wall. There I spoke to the God who created me and all that I could see. The memory is very vivid in my mind. I told God that I was all his—I wouldn’t hold anything back. If he wanted me to quit school and join a band, I’d do it. If he wanted me to just start preaching, telling everyone in sight the gospel message I’d do that. Every decision I made from this point on would be focused on serving God. As I prayed, I was filled with a sense of peace and joy similar to what I’d felt four years earlier when I’d first asked God to forgive my sins.

I wasn’t expecting a voice from God answering my prayer, but suddenly I sensed a message in my mind. It was calm and full of love. I felt that God was pleased with my heart, but the message was “No, don’t do anything that extreme. You must honor and obey your parents, stay home with them and go to school. Continue to live right, avoiding sin, doing good always. When it’s time for change I will guide you.”

This quiet moment with my maker became the biggest commitment of my life. It didn’t produce a radical change that everyone noticed, but it set the course for my life that totally shaped everything I’ve done and who I am. The only immediate change was that I started reading the Bible daily, trying to read it all from cover to cover. I read the New Testament first then the old. It took a couple years because I was a very slow reader, but I made it. I also spent significantly more time praying than I had before. Slowly, over the years, I grew, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Every step guided by this commitment to the God of Truth and Love.

When I left Camp Greilick that day I had no idea that I wouldn’t be back. I assumed that we’d have another retreat with the “Friends of Jesus” the next fall and the next one after that, but life changes. That year our youth group leaders, Phil and Sally Tappert, left for Texas. They were a very devout young couple who had a major influence on my life leading our youth group and teaching Sunday school. They had their first baby during their time serving in our church and were very much loved by the congregation, but they felt called into full time ministry and headed to Bible college for training.

When the Tapperts left, the entire youth ministry changed. No one could fill their shoes. An elderly couple stepped forward and did their best. Youth was still a top priority for the church, but I learned how dramatically and quickly things I take for granted can change. We still had youth retreats, but never again in such a grand setting as Camp Greilick or with such a gifted group of facilitators as the “Friends of Jesus.”

Over time the memory of Camp Greilick faded. I couldn’t remember what the building that we met in was called or even what it looked like on the outside, but I never forgot the fireplace with a big moose head hanging over it, the beautiful wooden interior with a high vaulted ceiling, or the grand wall of windows facing south.

30 years later I returned to Camp Greilick with my Boy Scout son, Reed, for summer camp. As I made my way around the camp I wondered if I might find the old cabin and lodge of my youth retreat memories. In the rush of activities getting checked in, settling into tents, taking swim tests, etc. I forgot about my youth retreats and focused on helping the scouts with their summer camp experience; until dinner.

Almost 2 years after committing my life to serving God I experienced something that, over time, would prove to be perhaps the most hard-core evidence that the creator of the universe is really involved personally in my life. I don’t like to use the word prove, but in this case God really proved himself to me beyond all reasonable doubt.

During the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years our family made a long road trip out west. We crossed the Mackinac Bridge and drove through Michigan’s upper peninsula, through Wisconsin, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Colorado. Then we returned home following a more southerly route back to Michigan around the southern tip of Lake Michigan.

Along the way we camped in our tent most nights, but occasionally stayed in motels. It was a wonderful, charming trip filled with memorable sights and experiences, even though I was crammed in the back seat of our car with my brother and sister. We visited Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, the Black Hills, a mining museum in Wyoming, Rocky Mountain National Park, Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak, Cripple Creek Gold Mine, and the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). I also remember being fascinated with sites along the road such as rolling grasslands in Wyoming, Antelope, endless corn fields in Kansas, old windmills, free range cattle, etc. I experienced all of these things with God as my companion and frequently marveled at his creation, but the experience that stands out happened at the USAFA Cadet Chapel.

We had already visited USAFA earlier in the week, but on Sunday morning we returned to worship at the cadet chapel. I was in a state of humble admiration.  The chapel was beautiful and full of meaningful symbols. I felt super impressed with the cadets, the best of America’s best, budding leaders working diligently in this rigorous environment. I admired them from a self-image of the slow-to-learn outcast, struggling to get respectable grades, hardly noticed by anyone—far from influencing others as a young leader.

As the worship service proceeded, I gazed around at the towering chapel structure like many of the tourist-worshipers around me. Abruptly, while we sang a traditional hymn in the middle of the service, everything changed. I was a cadet. The tourists around me were gone, replaced by more cadets wearing their dark blue uniforms. We were still singing the hymn, but instead of a tourist singing in a crowd of tourists, I was a cadet, singing among fellow cadets. The vision only lasted a fraction of a second, but it was very vivid and alarming.  I had never experienced anything like it before, nor have I since. I wasn’t day-dreaming about being a cadet or thinking about cadets worshiping. I was just singing the song and admiring the building when suddenly I was transported to a different reality. My brain perceived something very different from the reality around me and I could see something that wasn’t there as if in a hallucination.

Startled, I stopped singing for a moment and looked around. No one noticed the dazed expression on my face because they were all singing the hymn, so I rejoined, singing the familiar words, but my mind remained focused on that bizarre vision for the rest of the service and the rest of the day. I continued reflecting on it for the rest of the trip and through the weeks and months following. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Now my sister, Sharon, had picked up a USAFA catalog somewhere. She fit the mold of best-of-the-best leaders that the air force was looking for. Sharon earned straight A’s in all her classes, sang in the school choir, earned high achievements in Girl Scouts and 4-H, etc. She read the catalog with curious interest for a few days, then set it aside deciding not to apply.

So, I picked up the USAFA catalog, perusing it with curious fascination from the humble perspective of a shy, slow kid who wouldn’t even dream of being a cadet. I enjoyed reading about the academy and learning about its programs. The catalog sat in our house, and for a couple weeks I occasionally felt inclined to pick it up and look through it. Over time I sensed this strange desire to go there and be a cadet. I kept dismissing it as impossible, but I read the section about how to apply and what types of candidates were likely to be accepted. That reinforced the complete unreasonableness of thinking that I could get in. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling. Then I remembered my vision in the chapel. I hadn’t thought about it for a while, but it started coming into my mind more and more frequently. When I prayed, I sensed something telling me the vision would become reality.

After maybe a month of these feelings growing stronger and stronger despite of my rational attempts to dismiss them, I decided to make USAFA a goal for my future. Once I made that decision, I had a strange confidence that God would get me there somehow. I know the confidence wasn’t based on realistic circumstances, but there it was.

When I told my mom I wanted to apply for the AF Academy she immediately asked, “Do you have a backup plan?” She didn’t try to discourage me, but I knew she thought the idea was crazy and I needed a realistic backup plan. I saw the relief in her face when I said I’d also been thinking about going to Michigan State University to study forestry or agriculture, but those ideas seemed the most unlikely in my heart.

That fall I joined the cross-country team, but had to quit because of painful training injuries. I had increased my running miles too fast. I decided to wrestle through the winter to stay in shape, hoping I’d do better with track in the spring. I found that I was a natural at wresting. I never did very well in track or cross country, though I kept running all through high school, but I earned a chest full of medals wresting and became a team captain my senior year. Once I decided to go to USAFA I never earned a grade below A in school and graduated at the top of my class—valedictorian!

But my appointment to USAFA was far from easy. I took the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (P-SAT) my junior year and scored below their minimum standards on the English section. In response to my “Precandidate Questionnaire” USAFA told me I didn’t qualify to even apply. Fortunately, when I took the real SAT, I scored well above the minimum standard and the scores for my math and science sections were in the top 1%. With those scores, USAFA accepted my official application.

During the fall of my senior year I failed the Physical Aptitude Exam (PAE) because I couldn’t throw a basketball far enough. So I practiced and got better. When I took the PAE again I passed the basketball throw part, but I couldn’t do the chin-ups because I had injured my left elbow wrestling. My coach contacted officials at USAFA explaining what had happened so they waived the PAE.

Through all these setbacks I still felt confident that God would get me into USAFA, and it looked like things were going well. I received a presidential nomination and with all my achievements in 4-H and wrestling, my perfect grades, exceptional SAT scores, etc., I appeared competitive. Even my parents started to think I wasn’t so crazy, but they were afraid to get their hopes up for such a competitive appointment.

My senior wresting season should have ended with a trip to state finals, but I tore ligaments in my left knee and ended up in the hospital for surgery the weekend of state finals. A few weeks later I received a notice of appointment to USAFA with my leg ironically in a cast! I rejoiced that God had come through, getting me an appointment against all odds, but I had one more test of faith.

My doctor contacted the MRB again and his arguments proved to be convincing. Basic Training started on a Monday. The Thursday before that I was out running and timing myself for a 3 mile distance, hoping to be under 21 minutes. I fell a few seconds short. My recovery was the fastest Dr. Herr had ever witnessed, but I still didn’t think it was fast enough. I’d worked hard, but fell short of my own expectations. As I entered our house still breathing hard from my run, Dad was on the phone and motioned for me to come over. He handed me the phone saying the doctors at the MRB wanted to talk to me. They questioned me about my recovery, and I apologetically explained that I still couldn’t run as fast as normal. They were amazed that I was even close to 21 minutes! They told me I could go ahead and report for basic training, but they wanted to examine me in person before they’d let me start.

When they examined me the following Monday, they shook their heads and told me I owe my doctor a huge thank-you. They’d never seen anyone recover so well from the kind of injury I had, certainly not in 2 and a half months! They let me start basic training and gave my leaders instructions to watch me closely. I excelled in all the physical demands of the training, only missing one flicker-ball game when my coach noticed me limping slightly and pulled me out.

I’ve experienced many more milestones with my maker: answered prayers, epiphanies of understanding, recognizing his fingerprint in creation, a miraculous healing, guidance of mentors, being used to touch the lives of others, getting married, becoming a daddy, etc., but the milestones I shared here from my childhood stand out as the foundational moments in my life with God.