Trading Miracles for Grace (eBook)

[1] My Journey
to Authenticity

As much as I’d rather not share my personal history with you, I think it’s important to know something about me. The more you know about my life experiences, the better you’ll be able to understand my reality and how those experiences have shaped my God worldview.

I was born in 1961 in Los Angeles and adopted by my parents in January of 1962 after spending my first eight months in foster care. My father was a good dad in the sense that I always knew he loved and cared about me. He was never abusive and always encouraged me to come to him no matter what problems I encountered in my life. He wasn’t really involved in my life per se, as he rarely left our house after work and didn’t attend all my athletic events. He did take me fishing from time to time, which I greatly appreciated.

When it came to the spiritual side of life, my dad was not present. His “holy roller” Southern Baptist experiences growing up in Mississippi discouraged him from ever wanting to have anything to do with church. I never discussed spirituality with him. I’m sure he thought religion could be a good thing to help someone follow moral rules and learn how to be a better person, but nothing past that. Ironically, my dad told me the two things one should never discuss are religion and politics. At least I’ll be honoring half of his instructions here.

My loving mother was a “reformed” Christian who was raised in a Midwestern Lutheran church. She told me in her later years she struggled as a child with the “fire and brimstone” style of churches she attended. When I was younger, I remember her taking my sister and me to a non-denominational church that replaced its organs and hymnals with guitars, keyboards, and drums. This more modern style of church played worship songs (older hymns too) that were more in line with the kind of music I enjoyed. The pastor of that church always dressed in casual clothes and not the frilly garb of pastors or priests in more formal churches.

When I was seven, I recited Psalm 100 in front of a small church we attended. For accomplishing that task, I was given my own King James Bible. That Bible had a black cover and all the edges of the pages and the words of Jesus were colored in red. I can’t seem to remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can still recite those verses from memory.

Justice and Grace

Perhaps my doubts about God’s activities or even his biblical character representations started when I was in a fifth-grade Sunday school class. The teacher was trying to teach us about God’s endless forgiveness and that no matter how many times we sinned, he would forgive us. So, in front of the entire class, I asked her, “If I murdered someone and asked for God’s forgiveness, would he forgive me?”

She said, “Yes, of course.”

I then asked, “What if I kill and repent again?” She again said God would forgive me.

After about three more iterations of the same questions and her affirmations, I simply stated in front of the class, “Well, I don’t want to believe in a God like that.” The teacher immediately escorted me back to the adult sanctuary and carefully seated me next to my mother. Since then, I’ve come to have a better understanding of sincere repentance, justice, and God’s amazing forgiving grace.

During my youth, I remember having dinner at my grandmother’s house many times on Sunday evenings and watching the Billy Graham crusades on TV. His delivery and his preaching methods were powerful and impacted me. I loved listening to the invitation song, Just as I Am, and seeing the people humbly come to the front of the stage to either accept the gift of grace for the first time or to rekindle their relationship with God. There seemed to be sincerity and heartfelt emotion displayed on the faces of the people who came forward. It wouldn’t be until later in my life that I would deeply experience this same forgiving grace that greatly moved me closer to God.

Making Sense of My World

I remember always being afraid of dying. I recall our entire grade school being sent home near the end of our school year when Robert Kennedy was assassinated. They continually played the videos of the assassinations of both Kennedy and his older brother on TV, and it frightened me.

When I watched the movie Brian’s Song about a professional football player who died of cancer, I became a hypochondriac. There was always a sense my time on this Earth would come to a premature end. I was diagnosed at forty with a bone-marrow disorder, a chronic form of blood cancer that will undoubtedly limit my time on this Earth. So, I’m no longer a hypochondriac. I’ve jokingly asked my wife to place the phrase, “I told you I was sick!” on my tombstone.

During my freshman year in high school, I watched one of my baseball teammates keel over on the field during a game and die from a heart attack right in front of me. His autopsy revealed he had the heart of an eighty-year-old man, and his death rocked my world. I can still clearly picture him lying in his casket, clothed in his green and gold–colored baseball uniform at his Catholic funeral. I remember thinking, “What was the purpose of his short life? If God loves and protects those of us who love him, or if Jesus loves all the little children as the Sunday school song suggested, why would he allow this boy to die at only fourteen?”

My mom bought me a special Bible in high school that had four different translations and showed all the same verses on the same page. I loved that Bible, because if I couldn’t understand the King James Version, I could easily look at another translation on the same page to gain a better understanding. It’s funny to me now that I preferred trying to read the Shakespearean English of the old King James Version when I was younger. Perhaps I thought it better represented the exact words God wanted for us. I must have errantly thought Jesus originally spoke in Old English (thees and thous) during his days on Earth and it sounded different (smarter?) than the modern English I was used to. Today I find it strange there are Christians who continue to read and quote from the Old King James version.

Reading the words of Jesus really impacted me. He seemed like a quiet man who spoke with a calm wisdom. Even at an early age, I could see his parables and teachings were filled with power and wisdom for life application.

Choosing a Path in Life

I met my high school sweetheart and future wife when I was sixteen. She came from a stricter Lutheran background, but I watched her quickly move away from that denomination the more she was exposed to the informal non-denominational churches that were popping up around us. We read the Bible and prayed together, and I recall how good that made me feel. My mother and grandmother always encouraged me to find a Christian girl who loved God, and I was willing to take their advice. But I had a problem. I was too spiritually weak to overcome my own pleasure-seeking desires and was easily influenced by peer pressure. When I was with my girlfriend, I acted one way, but acted completely opposite around my friends. I truly was a chameleon. I claimed I was a Christian and tried to live that way as best I could but always had a sense of guilt when I was acting differently around my friends. I realized early it was extremely challenging to live up to the standards of Jesus and just how easy it was for me to choose wrong.

Playing football was my passion from the age of ten through my first two years in college. I studied very hard in math and science, but football was my life, and I desperately wanted to play in the NFL someday. In 1979, I graduated from high school and went to college to play football and hopefully obtain a degree in physics. I played two years of college football (really played one year on the JV team and sat the varsity bench the next) before realizing I just didn’t have the physical tools required to compete on that level, or certainly the next.

I was emotionally crushed the day I told my coach I was done. I can still picture the scene as I placed my white cleats on the top shelf of my closet with tears pouring down my cheeks, knowing my lifelong dream would never come to fruition.

My wife and I were married in 1983, and I finally graduated in 1985. We regularly attended a church in Davis, California, as well as a couples’ small group Bible study. After graduating, we returned to Los Angeles where I went to work in the aerospace industry.

Within two years of returning to Southern California, we had two young children and attended a non-denominational church. Although I was sprinkled as a child, I decided to get baptized by immersion. I was ready to restart my life with a Christian belief system that seemed strong, and a young family I loved beyond measure.

Risky Business

In 1987, I left the aerospace industry to work for a friend in a small communications business before having to relocate for work in Las Vegas in 1990. It didn’t take long for me to fall there. I started gambling, and video poker became my drug of choice. It was a lucky thing I didn’t have a lot of money at that time because there’s no telling how much I could have lost during those first two-and-a-half years we lived there.

I continued to attend church with my family, and nobody knew about my secret gambling habit. I regularly lied to my wife about having to meet with clients through the late-night hours, all while sitting in front of a poker machine...