The iceberg

Boy Howdy,  do I ever love my Texas friends!  How could I not?  I am treated like a visiting dignitary.  When we went to Houston in 1975 to minister, never could I have dreamed that God would build from a little bit of faith and an enormous amount of hard work and hard-earned money by Nick and Euphanel,  a Retreat where thousands come for a fresh drink of water.  Most weeks and on many weekends they host a different group of people who come for different reasons. ...but always for refreshment.  I too received refreshment.   I stay with Nick and Euphanel in their beautiful home and relish every minute of being with them and with the dear friends who show up to visit.  I sometimes attend the meetings of FirstPlace4Health whose retreat coincides with my visit and board meeting with the Goads.  It is very nice not to be in charge of anything at all.  Michele, my dear friend that lives about ten minutes from me here in Bear Valley is a four-year veteran of Wellnesss Week with FirstPlace4Health.  She now leads worship and Bible studies for women who come from many states.  What a joy for the women,  Nick and Euphanel and for me who all love her so much.  I read in scripture that the early disciples returned to the ministries they began, in order to encourage and receive encouragement to keep on keeping on.  I came back home from Texas to head right into "keeping on" with discipling.  Some call it "counseling".  Some call it "mentoring".  Some call it "hogwash".  I don't hang around Christians who don't understand the meaning of the word "discipleship".

Ted and I were never personally "discipled",  even though Ted studied Greek, Hebrew,  homiletics and ministry skills for eight years.   Both of us came from parents who were emotionally and spiritually deprived.  They could not give us what they did not have.  We took the empty places in our souls into our marriage.  Usually a wife expresses our emotional needs first.  Even gentle, kind men like Ted have well-guarded emotions.  He had to, from the time he was a very small little boy.  You may remember that the one who personally threw me a "rope of hope" was the world's most well-known evangelist in history who was gone from home most of the time.  I expected nothing more of my Ted who worked forty hours a week and carried eighteen units in school for all eight years of training for ministry.  I worked as a secretary and as a musician while doing my best to cover the parental needs of our two boys. ...then we hit the ministry running, our baby girl was born,  and we continued to run, and run, and run.  Eventually my pain surfaced in the form of leaking-out anger, exhaustion, then dark depression.  Euphanel and Nick,  new Christians themselves offered the very large amount of money required for us to seek out a counselor that ministered only to missionaries and pastors. ...and so we went to Lewis McBurney in Marble, Colorado who said to my Ted,  "I don't want to hear anything about your ministry. When are you going to make your marriage your ministry?"  Also with Dr. Mc Burney that week were a missionary couple from India and a pastoral couple from Wichita, Kansas.  All of us were totally committed to the Lord and to ministry, but there was emotional distance between all three middle-aged husbands and wives.  Lewis worked hard and long with all of us in order to break through the twisted perceptions of passages such as Romans 12:1 and 2.

Our ministries have always drawn the lost and the hurting.  ... predictably.  There was so much new fruit from our ministries that the emotional deprivation we continued to endure was buried beneath the joy of giving birth to so many spiritual children.  ...but hidden below the water line was most of the iceberg, waiting to sink our passion-for-the--needs- of- people ship.  I did not understand in my soul that Jesus came to serve me, even though my mind had memorized the scriptures that told me so. I honestly believed I was here only to serve Ted, my family and everybody on the Planet.  I read and taught about Jesus' washing the disciple's feet, but it never occurred to me that He came to wash my feet, and I certainly did not expect my Ted who had so many other feet to wash to wash mine.  We had completely given ourselves to the Lord to be "living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to the Lord.";  however  the "pattern of the world"   blocked our being able to "test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will".   That "worldly pattern" is headed up by Satan himself who is relentlessly destroying the marriages, families and health of sincere full-time workers.  ...and he uses whatever he knows is hiding beneath the waterline.  He watched it go in.  God's will is always for us to be free of hidden bondage that hides in the generations and twists scripture.  Satan did it with Jesus. Why would we think he doesn't do it with us?  The sweetest gift God could give us was to remove us from the last two of our three pastorates and give us freedom to "go and make disciples" of people who want to be disciples.  The unbelievable pressure put upon pastors, especially in today's world of terribly broken people is beyond human endurance.  Add to that having to "make nice" with ego-driven board members, the agonizing cries that accompany the birthing and the dying of the sheep,  and meetings and more meetings. ...many of which seem so redundant.

Our oldest son Doug is in Heaven with his dad that he loved so much that he followed us all the way to Texas and back to California.  I know in my heart why he did that. The comfort I receive as I miss them both so much is that I know they are together at the feet of Jesus where all is understood and forgiven.  ..but the tears of loss are streaming as I write and I will not stop them until they are fully shed. ...for today.  I am so proud of our two remaining children and their spouses. All four reach out to so many hurting people but they diligently guard their marriages and their homes.

..so what is true "discipleship" anyway?  Discipleship is caring about each other and subsequently the Body of Christ enough to journey alongside them as the Holy Spirit reveals to them the pain that is hiding beneath the surface of the water.   No one should have to take that journey alone. ...not even pastors and missionaries.

I am thinking of Paul:  once a murderer,  probably even members of his own family.  Was he married?  He had to have been to be a member of the Sanhedrin.  Did his wife divorce him or did she die from lack of emotional closeness to Paul, her husband?  Where was she? Why isn't she mentioned?   As I read the tender words Paul writes to his beloved disciples I know with surety that Paul was "transformed by the renewing of his mind" as he took the journey to his once-dead soul that in turn murdered so many others. Was all of this his "thorn in the flesh"?  We do not know, but soon, perhaps we will.

Matthew tells us in his book: "Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks".  All of these writers of scripture were "transformed by the renewing of their minds",  perhaps even as they penned the words the Holy Spirit gave them.

Just a couple of lines of our beloved hymn come to mind right now:

...then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee
HOW GREAT THOU ART; HOW GREAT THOU ART!

Love,

Jo