WhiskeyFoxtrot

“Bad guys don’t usually take the time to sterilize their bullets before they use them”, Dr. Fisher told me as I lie in the Emergency Room at Penrose Hospital on the afternoon of December 9th, 2007. “So, we are going to have to go in and clean things up.” I managed a bit of a smile. The pain didn’t matter now that I had a steady drip of morphine. Nothing much mattered at that moment  and I wasn’t worried now that my daughter Rachel and I were in the hands of specialists who would get us going on our long road to recovery.

They wheeled me towards the operating room where I was met by an anesthesiologist who was ready to put the mask on my face. “I want you to count to 5″, he said. “You’re lying” I grinned, ‘I’ll never get to 5 and you know it!” I remember getting to about 2.

The next thing I remember was waking up in a strange room. The pain had been bad enough before surgery but now it was worse. I looked down as best I could to see new bandages coming up my belly. The increased pain was due to the long incision which went from just below the bottom of my breastbone to just below the belt line.

A few moments later, Marie, Laurie and Grace came into the room. My thought processes were glacially slow due to the morphine and the aftereffects of the anesthesia. Something wasn’t right but I couldn’t make it out. I looked at them and slowly counted noses. “Marie. Laurie. Grace. Let’s see, Rachel is in the ER. Hmmm…. Let me try that again. Marie. Laurie. Grace. Oh…Stephanie is missing. Wait a minute. She wouldn’t go off to the bathroom at a time like this. She is way too aware of propriety and would want to see me.” Without thinking it through, I blurted out, “Where’s Stephanie?”

Marie couldn’t find the words. We had argued the last time we talked, before surgery, on this topic. She had been trying to tell me where Stephanie was and I was sure she was confusing Stephanie with Rachel. Marie stared at Laurie. My eyes turned to Laurie with a questioning look.

“She’s—she’s gone, Dad” she said in a flat voice.

Watch David, Marie and Laurie on “Good Morning America“

The worst moment of my life.

Here is what Marie said happened next:

“David stared at us, speechless. His face flooded with despair. He didn’t try to debate with us this time. The full force of our family’s loss came slamming into his mind. “She’s gone?” He dissolved into great sobbing. He even seemed to pass out momentarily from the emotional pain. I leaned over the bed railing to at least hold his hand. It went limp, but I continued to hold it until he regained consciousness.

Finally, he was able to form a new question: “Then what about Rachel? What’s going on with her? What have they told you?”

“They were doing surgery on her,” I said, “but they had to stop for a while. Something about her body temperature. They said they’ll go back in as soon as they can.” (Gone in a Heartbeat, Tyndale Press)

But I knew. If Stephanie didn’t make it, Rachel wouldn’t either. At about 10 pm that night, she peacefully crossed over to join her sister in the communion of the saints.

Up until that moment in the recovery room, I thought Rachel was in a for a long haul with her wounds. I had no clue that Stephanie had even been hurt, much less killed. (She was killed instantly in the minivan.) This could not be happening. God had called us as a family to go around the world. Because we had not done that yet, there was no way He would allows something like this. At least, that is what I thought.

Heartbreak. Devastation. Questions. Since I was so wrong about this, I must be wrong about everything else I thought God was telling us.

Why didn’t God do what He said He was going to do?

This is an honest question and if we are all honest with ourselves we ask this question more often than we will admit to. I found myself in the position this time of not being willing to run away from it or make excuses. I had to know. I didn’t have to know much else about the New Life Church shooting, but I had to know what was going on with God.

Let’s break it down.

Why did I think He was going to do this thing?

Over many years, I had felt that God had said many things to me. My practice was to take what I thought I had heard and compare it to scripture. I worked hard at this using various bible translations, online tools, Greek and Hebrew dictionaries and lexicons and then comparing all that with what I was seeing out in the real world. My journal and my hard drive were full of notes, entries, and documents detailing what I thought God was saying.

I spent a lot of time and effort working through what I thought God had said. But what if this wasn’t the best method? What if that process, with all the effort and thought, was only giving me a partial picture? And how could the Word of God only provide a partial picture?

Slaves vs. sons

My pastor, Brady, has been teaching our church about the difference of being slaves versus being sons. A slave works for his master trying to be accepted by him. A son doesn’t have to please his dad to belong to the family. He is already accepted into the family. He does stuff because he is a son, not to become a son. It is the difference between asking God to bless our plans versus asking God what he is doing and moving together with Him.

It is the difference between doing it on our own and doing it as a matter of our relationship with God. I may have some understanding based on the written Word of God, but I will not have His heart. A lot of us have it 2/3rds right. We love God with all our mind and strength, but our heart? What does that look like?

Morris’ Steps

My friend, Morris Ruddick, has a way to pray which demonstrates the way a son would get answers from God:

• Pray into issues and ask the Lord questions
• Receive the revelation
• Pray to get the illumination on the revelation
• Pray to get the instruction on the illumination
• Pray to get the direction and wisdom on the instruction
• Pray for the release (timing) as the picture becomes clear.

Maybe you don’t see how this reflects the relationship of father and son. Take a look at this video:

Wisdom

Morris used a word I want to go back to – wisdom.

“If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.” James 1:5-8

The Greek word for wisdom is sophia. So then, philo sophia, is the love of wisdom.

Plato said:

“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils — no, nor the human race, as I believe — and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.”

I’m not much of a Platonist, but that is good advice if the wisdom we seek is the wisdom of God’s heart.

This then is not a quick process, a magic 8 ball, where the answers pop right up. We are dependent on God’s timetable. Some questions, like the lingering question of “Why Stephanie and Rachel?” for me, have no answer in this life. God does not promise us answers. He promises us wisdom. What God wants is not our performance, He wants relationship, like a father to a son.

Standing

Now we come down to the nitty-gritty. Life is not always a primrose path. Jesus promised us that in this life we would have trouble. What are you going to do when the winds blow and the rain falls? You will stand on the rock. That rock is the revelation you have received. But if that revelation is based more on your own study and working things out in your mind rather than on your relationship with God – what then?

“Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.” Ephesians 6:13

You may be standing on a rock, but that rock may not be firmly on the ground. The truth of the matter was that I thought I knew what God would do based on my study and effort. The idea that God would protect us until our calling was fulfilled was erroneous. Therefore, I projected my thoughts onto God and made it His promise. So, it wasn’t a matter of God not doing what He said He would do, it was my not understanding what He was trying to get across to me.

Confidence

“For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.
Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:15,16

A slave doesn’t have that kind of confidence. He bows before his master, maybe even grovels a bit. A son, however, is not afraid to come into the presence of his Father. When you are trying to make that stand based on your own efforts, it really isn’t a very confident stand. It is more like,”I really, really hope this works!”

“Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence  before God;
and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.” 1 John 3:21,22

There is that “heart” thing again.

Rest

“So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His.
Therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest” Hebrews 4:9-11

Seems to me the end of it all is rest. God is your Father. Everything has been already completed before the foundation of the world. He wants relationship with you. How much better can it get?

But be clear! This is not being irresponsible. Take just a little example. Look at that second point up there under the steps from my friend, Morris. “Receive the revelation”. That is a very good opportunity to go into the stratosphere. Some folks have their own space suits they spend so much time up there. Others run right off to “do what God told them to do”. Good luck with either of those choices. For many of us it is very hard to stay in peace and rest and let God complete the process.

“He who rules his own spirit [is better] than he who takes a city.” Proverbs 16:32

If you are performance based, you won’t believe this verse. “Let’s take this city for God!” “You need to get up and be doing something, not just sitting there!”. I’ve always wanted to tell folks who say stuff like that to go read their Bibles and chill. The children of Israel entered and took the land – while at rest. Go back and read the verses around that verse in Hebrews 4 and you will see that the writer of Hebrews equates entering into rest to entering into Canaan.

Being Led

When your are at rest, you can be led. As long as you are running around, you cannot be led. The children of Israel didn’t just get up one morning and decide to conquer Canaan. They were led in.

“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.” John 16:13

The Holy Spirit is called the Comforter for good reason. He is here to comfort and guide us. We are not left as orphans. The call of every son in the kingdom is not only, Abba, Father, but Veni Sancte Spiritus – Come Holy Spirit!

Conclusion

Nope. I still don’t know why Stephanie and Rachel are dead. Better yet, I don’t know why the rest of us New Lifers are still alive. Having walked the parking lot with police photos and measuring tapes and checking all the angles, it doesn’t make sense to me. But it also doesn’t matter any more. Even though I didn’t have answers in those early moments and days, I knew God. Answers were not the important thing. He was the important thing. I also discovered I was not wrong about everything else I thought God was telling us, just a couple of narrow, albeit important to me, things. Now almost three years removed from the tragic events of that day I can honestly say that I am closer to Him than ever before and  more importantly, that I trust Him more than ever before. My hope is not built on circumstances, answers, and outcomes, but on our relationship.