For most of my life, faith and hope were words I heard other people use, but they weren’t real for me. As a child, I suppose I had what some would call a child’s faith, the kind that comes from not yet knowing yet how chaotic the world can be. That innocent faith didn’t last long. When I was seven, my mother remarried an alcoholic, and overnight my world became unpredictable. Trusting anyone felt unreasonable, and hope wasn’t even an option. After all, hope requires some evidence that looking forward won’t reveal a worse nightmare.

I’ll call him Forrest.  He was a good guy, neither reckless, nor cruel,  nor nor an atheist.  He believed in God.  But he wasn’t patient enough to think things through.  He wanted results sooner than wisdom usually requires, and without the obedience that faith demands.  It never entered his mind that he was impatient.  He believed he was hopeful.  He also believed that acting on hope was what you were supposed to do, right?.

I’ve started my life over more times than most people would consider reasonable.  Enough times, really, that I stopped considering it ‘starting over’ and started thinking that packing up and moving on, was normal.  I guess you could call me a kind of a nomad. The thing is, I didn’t know what I was looking for, only that wherever I was it never seemed to be the final place. It began in New York State, leaving my family’s crowded apartment for my own small hole in the wall while working in a grocery store.  Then on to college where I rubbed elbows with elites, then further still, across an ocean, to Africa as a teacher trainer.

People who know me understand that I’m not an extrovert. I’m far more content sitting alone in a comfy chair with a good book than I am standing in a crowded room making small talk. Even some of my professors noticed it. In organic chemistry, we were required to write detailed notes and observations during experiments. My professor, himself a quiet and thoughtful man, was always urging me to write more than I did. One day he scribbled in the margin of my notebook, “Stan, you’ve got to stop being a man of few words.”

My uncle was a hunter. Every weekend during hunting season, he went out for rabbits, pheasants, grouse, and sometimes squirrels. He brought them home, and my grandmother prepared them. It was one of our main sources of food. In his bedroom, he kept his shotguns and rifles in a locked cabinet. He never let me or any other child near it. It was for adults only, he said.

In one way or another, we all count the cost of our actions. And if we are honest with ourselves, most of us haven’t done it very well.  Too often our decisions are based on how we feel in the moment, under stress, under pressure, or while trying to escape pain. We act without fully understanding the consequences of what we’re choosing.  That’s not surprising. We’re fallen people, limited, emotional, and broken. We aren’t Jesus Christ, who alone was perfect.

Recovering from a severe malaria attack, I sat in the living room of my bungalow watching geckos hunt flies on the pink and baby blue walls. Shirtless, I looked down at my concave belly, I hadn’t eaten in five days, and saw scores of white, mini crabs crawling across it and maneuvering around the beads of sweat pooling here and there. Scabies, I thought. What fun.

I love Africa and its people. Ghanaians saved my life once or twice, fed me when I was hungry and cared for me when I was sick.  It was from them that I learned about true kindness.  But Ghana was very poor country in the early 1980s and lacked modern infrastructure.  So, I also learned the true meaning poverty, corruption and, to the point of this story, dirty feet.

The Bible says that we need to honor our fathers and others. So, as I talk about my stepfather, please don’t misunderstand me, I do not dishonor him. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that my stepfather was a broken man who, in a paraphrase of Scripture, “did not know his right hand from his left.” (Jonah 4:11) As he was lost, so was I was once lost.  So, believe me when I say that I have forgiven him, as Christ has forgiven me.  He did the best he could with what he believed he had.  He just didn’t believe he had more.

As a Boy Scout, I took great pride in my uniform. My grandmother bought it for me when my parents were too poor to afford one, and I cherished every stitch of it. I felt special.  I didn’t have much in the way of material possessions, we were just too poor.  Most of the other scouts had full uniforms.  I often felt separate and different because of our poverty.  The uniform changed that, because it made me equal to the others.  I had it all—the shirt with all my badges sewn on, pants, belt, socks, hat, sash covered in merit badges, my neckerchief, and the neckerchief slide. It was the finest and most dear thing I owned.

My parents divorced when I was very young—maybe two or three years old. My mom and I moved into a three-bedroom apartment already filled with my grandparents, two uncles, an aunt, and a cousin. For me, this was paradise. There was always someone to hold me, play with me, or simply spoil me.

As I approached late middle age, I became born again. An old man in the world became a new child in Christ. And like many new believers, I carried an assumption that turned out to be wrong. I believed that God’s blessing meant an end to suffering; that once His face shone upon me, life would smooth out, prosperity would follow, and the hardships I had endured for years would finally loosen their grip.

In 2 Corinthians 12:10, Paul writes:  “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to my belief in God was the reality of suffering. The world seemed filled with wars, disasters, disease, poverty, hate, and cruelty. In the 1970s, it was common for evangelists to stop me on the street asking if I’d heard the “good news.” When they began talking about a loving God who gave His only Son, I could only stare in disbelief.

Life stinks used to be my motto.  There was a time (I was much younger then), when most mornings, I’d sit, tired and hungover, with a cup of black coffee and a cigarette contemplating all the evil in the world.  I relived the evil I had experienced, and that I witnessed, and I analyzed all the ways that life stunk.  The holidays made it a little better but Thanksgiving, until a few decades ago, always made me angry.  Because at Thanksgiving we are supposed to be thankful and during that time I couldn’t think of anything to be thankful for.

Part 3 of this series on getting closer to God dealt with finding a mentor — someone who will tell you what you need to hear and give you godly guidance and feedback.

This is part three of the four-part series on getting closer to God. Part one was about prayer being of primary importance in a relationship with Him. Part two covered learning God’s Word, which is vital to understanding what God says to you. This part is about the necessity of having men or women of God in your life to help you in your walk.

Life is a battle. Every day we face temptations, challenges, and even the weakness of our own flesh. If we try to fight in our own strength, we will lose. But with God’s power, love, and sound mind, we can overcome (Philippians4:13). The best way to strengthen ourselves for the battles of life is by drawing closer to God.

Life is a battle. Every day we face temptations, challenges, and even the weakness of our own flesh. If we try to fight in our own strength, we will lose. But with God’s power, love, and sound mind, we can overcome (Philippians4:13). The best way to strengthen ourselves for the battles of life is by drawing closer to God.

Many Christians think of “calling” as something that happens only in the church: preaching, teaching Sunday school, ushering, or going on mission trips. But your call is not limited to the pulpit or a church program. Your true calling is tied to the gifts God has given you, and how you use them in His service.