In His Own Words

One of my dearest, closest friends remains in ICU after being struck by a car on July 4^th while returning to his van after a fireworks show. Please pray for Kim and for his family.  

Some men inspire you by their quiet, reflective, honest pursuit of God.  Kim has been such a man in my life. In my eyes he is a spiritual giant.  In his own eyes he is “one beggar telling another where to find food.”  The unforced rhythms of grace in his life have gently pointed this beggar to the path of prayer, to greater dependence on God, to the outstanding power of the gospel.  While we were in Mexico he wrote, “My encouragement to you would be just keep preaching the gospel to yourself and others. It truly is the power of God, and our protection against the enemy of our souls.”

Over a decade ago Kim had brain surgery, and two weeks later he gave a message at our church.   In it he said:

“We need to live today with intensity because today is all we have. God has shown me that we need to take the gift of today and live it.  Live it with as much joy and live it to invest as much in the kingdom as possible.  We have today.  We don’t have tomorrow.  We worry about tomorrow.  We plan for tomorrow but we don’t have tomorrow.  No matter what is happening in our lives, God has given us the opportunity to find deep pleasure and satisfaction in Him.  But we’ve got to live today.    

 “The God that we serve is not a tame, safe God.  We cannot determine where He is going.  We’ve got to quit trying to say where He is going, and we’ve just got to hold on.  Hold on for dear life and be with Him. 

Weaknesses are a gift from God.  Rather than hiding from them we need to learn to exploit our weaknesses. God gives you and me, God gives us as a body weaknesses so that we understand how much we need to depend on Him.  If we didn’t have weakness, we wouldn’t depend on God, we wouldn’t pray.  We need to learn to quit hiding from them and quit hiding our weaknesses from each other and we need to say, “Hey, I’ve got a weakness.  I’ve got a problem.  I’ve got a crisis...We don’t need to be shrinking back from them, we need to acknowledge them.

Learn to be persistent in prayer…Throughout the last couple of weeks God has shown me how basic prayer needs to become in our lives and how basic He wants it to become.  Most of the time we see problems and we try to design a solution for the problem.  God has shown me that’s not what He wants us to do.  When we see a problem the first thing we need to do and the continual thing we need to do is ask God to solve the problem…When God solves the problem we don’t have to go tinker with it.  He does such amazing things when He solves a problem.  And that’s the lesson of prayer that I believe God wants us to learn.”

 When we returned from Mexico, Kim and I met one early Tuesday morning for coffee and to catch up.  We are still catching up and building up two years later.  I always walk away with things better aligned to God’s perspective.  Sometimes he’ll give me a book title to consider like Prodigal God by Tim Keller or You Gotta Keep Dancin by Tim Hansel.  Occasionally I’ll even write out some comment he makes.  Here’s one I came across this week, "I think it’s real critical for people to stop and thank the Lord for everything he’s given…Start with thanksgiving and make things come back to God. Starting out with thanksgiving makes all the difference. This particular weakness brings us back to God in the way of deeper dependence on him." 

So, his words bring us full circle to where we find ourselves in this very moment – in need and in full dependence on God.