“Count it all joy when”   James 1:2

This Sunday I will share my story with the congregation of my church.  Since my wife and I are new members, few people know much about my life with God.  I realize that many of you who receive Today’s Word probably don’t know much about me either.  So here is the very short version.

My life was about counting.  I counted five academic degrees.  I counted houses and cars.  I counted money in the bank.  I counted careers.  Everything I counted was an effort to build walls of protection in order to be self-sufficient.  God tried many times to break into my fortress.  I suffered with emotional and physical issues.  I knew the pain of body and soul.  More than once I thought my life would fall apart.  But each time God drew me near the breaking point, I gathered my own will to survive and continued counting.  I counted everything except suffering and trials.  Those things I tried to avoid at all costs.  And the costs were very high.  I had to lie, cheat, steal, deceive and act unfaithfully in order to maintain my fortress.  In the end, I had lots of things to count but nothing worth counting.

Five months ago God decided that He had waited long enough for me to wake up to reality.  He removed my self-protection.  In one day, every dollar I had was stolen.  I went from millionaire to penniless.  All of those things that I counted on were gone.  God knew that until I lost everything I would continue on my path of independence from Him.  So, He took it all away.  Just like Job, He sent a messenger to tell me that the life I thought I had was over.  That message finally broke me.  I fell on my knees and confessed that my life had been a life of selfish desires.  I realized that I tried to barter with God.  I saw that I wanted life on my terms.  And I knew that all my life I had avoided God’s messages in my pain and suffering.  But this time I couldn’t avoid it.  There was nothing left to lose.

I started writing about this pain.  I started looking at the message in His Word and the message in my heart.  All of those years of academic studies suddenly became an avenue for me to understand something I never knew before – that without a heart of obedience a head full of theology means nothing at all.  God wants me to write.  Everyday.  Today’s Word.  Articles.  Studies.  Even a book.  God reaches out through these words into lives like mine, lives acquainted with sorrow and grief.  I have discovered that we are all connected in the fellowship of suffering.  It is in those places that God opens the windows of heaven.  Our pain is the thread that sows us into heaven’s quilt. 

I don’t know how God will resolve the problems I face.  My debts are overwhelming (and it’s a good thing they are because otherwise I would be trying to use self-sufficiency to escape them).  My life has been forced to become “daily bread”.  But I am doing exactly what God wants me to do.  I have opened my life to His scalpel and He is cutting away what is not needed.  And for the first time in half a century I find that I am counting joy.  It was the treasure I looked for all my life, hidden right in front of me.