Speaking of Changing the Subject…

Years ago, the Lord called my family and me to pack up our lives and move nearly 2500 miles to the spiritual frontier of the Great Northwest. Within two years of arriving here, I had exhausted my personal storehouse of strength, finances, spirituality, ideas, and leadership. It was there that God met me in the quiet early morning to reveal that I was not the man to lead our church.

I was crushed. My grand dreams, my uprooted family, my wounded pride, all shattered against the firm words of God.

In the long weeks that followed, I struggled with how to communicate my failure to our church family. Then, God whispered to my soul, “But I will make you into that man if you will let me.” The years that have followed have been excruciatingly joyous. In His relentlessly gracious work, God has used a profusion of relationships, circumstances, teachings, and resources to slowly yet steadfastly mold me into His new creation.

What follows here amounts to little more than a few theological burps churned from the intestinal fires of regeneration. I pray that these thoughts might be a small catalyst toward encouragement, challenge, and transformation.

-Tim