Growing in my Understanding of God

Summer marks “beginning” points in my life, another year with Christ – this is my 53rd, and another year of ministry – my 47th with IVCF/IFES. Many of you, our friends, have stood with us for 20, 30, 40 years of this journey, in friendship, prayer, encouragement and support. We have realized anew what a rich gift you have been to us!

Often our lives can only really be understood in retrospect. What has my life been about? What meaning and direction has it had? Jacob, patriarch of the twelve tribes of Israel, could say towards the end of his life, “God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day.” (Genesis 48:15) Certainly for most of his life he did not feel he had a shepherd; rather, he thought everything depended on him and his wits. But God’s persistent care and gracious interventions finally brought him to see that in reality he had a shepherd. So I too, can see much more clearly how God has loved and led me, and in the journey made himself known to me. I’d like to share how my image and understanding of God has changed and how these changes have shaped my relation to him, and how ministry has flowed from this.

It was when I was 17, in Charlotte, NC, as a very restless and messed up teen-ager, that Christ came into my life while on a weekend retreat – he knocked on the door (of my life) and I was ready to open it up to him. His entry brought an experience of forgiveness, peace, joy and love that I had never known before. I realize now that this powerful experience with Christ set a direction for the rest of my life – to keep growing in the knowledge of him and of making him known to others. A journey with him began and I remember soon telling a friend, “I don’t know what will happen to my life, but I can’t imagine it without Christ at the center.”

That journey took me to Davidson College, where it became my prime purpose to make Christ known to classmates and not to become a spiritual casualty myself. I took part in starting an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) group at Davidson, and then after graduating gave four years to pioneering IVCF groups in Florida, Alabama and Tennessee. After that and my marriage to Marilyn, we spent many more years with IFES, pioneering student groups in Bolivia, Argentina, and then in Mexico, central America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. For 14 years we have been back with IVCF, seeking to care for our staff.

Jesus Christ as my Personal Lord and Savior

My dominant image and understanding of Christ in those years was that Jesus Christ was “my personal Lord and Savior.” I knew him personally – that meant I could experience him in a personal way, directly in whatever place, whatever circumstances, whatever condition, and that he knew me and was committed to me, to be with me, to guide me, and to keep me. He was my Savior, the one who loved me and gave himself for me, and through whose death on the cross for my sins and through his resurrection I found ongoing forgiveness, grace, and mercy. He was my Lord, the one to whom I was to submit, obey, and follow all my days.

As my Lord, he also became my example and model, the one I was to imitate and be like. What mattered was doing his will in my life. His lordship brought ongoing challenge and struggle, but also power and direction to my life. I had a cause to live for, a mission to accomplish. I loved to see him in the Gospels, and to listen to Paul teach about him. This personal relationship with Jesus as my Lord and Savior shaped the direction of my ministry. He had called me and sent me to students, and my primary task and passion was to help them know and follow him as personal Lord and Savior.

Jesus Christ as my Shepherd

As I grew older, and experienced many changes in myself, I began to feel that something was missing, and that I was running into problems and questions I hadn’t faced before. More significantly, I felt inwardly weary and a little disillusioned about my own following of Christ. He seemed more distant, and I more aware of my failures and limits. I was moving into my 40’s! with a greater awareness of my own needs, I became more open to God’s work in me in new ways: I became aware that he was revealing his presence and grace in and through others, and also that he was showing his intense desire and commitment to care for me.

He showed me that not only was he my personal Lord and Savior, but also my strong and loving Shepherd – a shepherd who knows intimately, loves deeply, and cares for wisely each of his sheep. Scriptures like Psalm 23, Ezekiel 34, Isaiah 40 and John 10 spoke powerfully and helped to shape my image and understanding of God as shepherd. Allowing him to shepherd me led me to new ways of relating and opening up to him, and this experience of God as my shepherd led to a new focus in my ministry. What he showed me he also wanted me to show others.

Coming to know God as Shepherd involved a change in my understanding of how I was to relate to him. I had understood that it was basically all up to me to follow Jesus, learn from him and do his work. This exaggerated sense of my part and responsibility became a heavy yoke, one which was increasingly difficult to bear and which dampened my enthusiasm. It was not a yoke that gave rest to my soul, as Jesus had promised. The new understanding of God as my Shepherd put the focus back on God – his love, his care, his initiative. A major shift also came in discovering that I needed others in my life. I needed their help, gifts, love, friendship and counsel. In fact, it seemed that God’s primary way of shepherding us is through others. Learning and embracing this has been a process of many years now.

To submit to God as my Shepherd not only changed how I saw and related to God, but also gave a new direction to my ministry. I saw in colleagues and in younger fellow-workers many of the same tendencies and needs I found in myself. God’s ministry became one of helping others to know God as personal Lord and Savior, and as loving and wise Shepherd. I felt called to be more of a shepherd of shepherds. This call dominated my life in my 40’s and 50’s.

God as my Father

In recent years, in my 60’s, God has been making himself known to me, and drawing me to relate to him more and more as my Father. I look at Jesus anew and see that the central driving passion of his life was to love his Father and do his will. And his supreme gift to his followers was to bring them into the same relationship with his father as he had. The joy of being his son and the worship of my heart became more and more the motive and energy for which to serve him. My own success and others perception of it became less important (although not entirely). After all, it is his work and the outcomes are his.

As my image and understanding of God has focused on him as Father, so my ministry to others tends to reflect more of being like a father to them (and grandfather too!), seeking to show them the Father, and in his name to bless, affirm, love, counsel and gently correct. My primary concern is more about helping them to know and trust ever more deeply this strong, good, wise and loving heavenly Father, as Jesus did and taught us to do.

At this stage and place in my life, God’s call is to accompany others on this journey of knowing God as he wants to be known and trusted by us. For me, at least, it means knowing him as “personal Lord and Savior,” as “Shepherd,” and as “Father.”