By Al Everett

Editor’s Note:  This post by Al is longer than we usually blog, but in the way he unpacks the way God has dealt with him over the years I thought it would speak to a lot of guys.  For those of you who are confused in your present situation, let Al’s repeated discoveries of grace in God’s dealing encourage your faith!

I’ll never cease to be amazed at the countless ways my flesh finds to sidestep or overthrow the gospel in my life.  At least it tries to.  The Lord is faithful to regularly reveal these pockets of rebellion and has always given me grace to reorient my heart to the gospel.

I think I was probably saved when I was a child, maybe in middle school.  I’m still not actually sure; partly because since then, I’ve had several spiritual breakthroughs so life changing that they left me wondering if I was ever really a Christian before. 

One came as a young adult.  The young woman whom I was to marry suddenly called off the wedding and the relationship and gave no clear reason.  Turned out the reason married her himself just a few months later.  Devastated and bitterly angry, I spent three years in spiritual depression wondering who I was and how God could have allowed this.  It was a momentous struggle but God was faithful, not letting me go.  When the smoke had cleared the Lord had shaken me deeply, torn down strengths and assumptions and reoriented my life to serve him more single-mindedly.  Though I had been saved for ten years or so, for the first time, I began living my life to serve God alone.

Years later a less painful, yet no less reorienting revelation took control of my life.  By now I was married and raising three boys.  I was an active member and deacon of a local church and diligently serving God in as many activities as I could.  When two of my closest friends (and fellow leaders) took opposing sides of a doctrinal issue related to Christian obedience to the Old Testament law, my life would change again.  One felt it necessary to publically advocate his position in the church.  This led others, including my other friend, to publicly oppose him.  Coached by both of my more scholarly friends to adopt their position and oppose the other friend, I became confused and desperate to come down on the right side of this issue on my own.  I took to careful study of the Word and particularly, the purpose and place of the Law in the life a Christian.  Months later I emerged, convinced that everything I had been taught and believed about the Law and Gospel was upside down.  My study had revealed that my life was bound up, not in trusting Christ’s blood, but in keeping God’s Law, so much so that I found myself asking the question, “If I’m not meant to please God by keeping His law, than how am I to please God?”  The Lord answered me with Romans 7:6, “…we serve in the new way of the Spirit not in the old way of the written code.”  Though I had been saved for over twenty years, for the very first time, I came to understand the basic teachings of the Gospel and how the Holy Spirit of God worked on my behalf to produce obedience from the heart.

Recently I had another such reorientation.  It would bring many of my failures of faith into clear perspective.  After many months of very difficult trial, I found myself worn down and finding it difficult to maintain patience with people.  I was given a book, The Prodigal God, by Tim Keller.  The book is about the Prodigal Son’s elder brother, that brother’s rebellion against the grace his father extended to the Prodigal and, in more subtle ways, that elder brother’s rebellion against the father’s grace in his own life.  I read the book with little awareness of any need in my heart.  I actually got most of the way through it with no effect at all in my heart.  My wife picked up the book as well.  Not deceived in the least by my flesh, she immediately saw me throughout its pages.  She began to urge me to consider how much like this elder brother I have been.  I dismissed her.  After all, I had studied the Prodigal Son story.  I knew better than anyone this story was about the older son not the younger.  I knew it applied directly to the self-righteous Pharisees not the “sinners” they so despised.  I knew about Romans 7:6 and had studied the Gospel and how to apply it for years.  I had taught it to my family and friends and knew very well the trap of religiosity.  I knew how to preach the Gospel to myself and did so regularly, everyday.  No.  The “elder brother” was a religious person who depended on his religion, not the gospel, for his sense of right standing before God.  That was not me.

Wisely, my wife continued to pursue the issue.  As I said earlier, God does work in my life and since he often uses my wife, I decided drawing her out might be best.  However, another conversation brought no further conviction on the issue, but desiring to remain humble, I told my wife I would seek the Lord on the issue.

The Lord was quick to give many examples in my day-to-day life.  I was angry when people didn’t do what I wanted them to do, or when they didn’t seem to respond to my advice our counsel.  Angry outbursts and the quiet sins of impatience, intolerance, bitterness, rage, and gossip began to emerge in my life.  All of this against basically good people, people I loved yet people who failed to meet expectations – sometimes God’s but usually my own.  I realized this anger permeated my life.  It was the reason I woke up angry every morning, why I struggled to find joy in loving friends and family, and why I could always find the cloud in every silver lining.  

And worst, in spite of seeing all this, there remained a stubborn refusal to see myself as needing grace.  I was special after all, a chosen one, somehow seeing myself as being of a class set apart.  I had always found obedience to God’s laws and ways easy.  I did right because I loved doing right.  I lived by the rules.  I remained faithful to him.  “All these years I have slaved for you but did you ever have a party for me?”  

Suddenly it was clear.  I was the elder brother.  I was a rebel against grace.  But even when I sought to confess these things to my wife and friends, and to the Lord Himself, my flesh screamed in rebellion, “No, this is not you!”  And – as if I needed further evidence – when I grew disillusioned with myself and introspective and despondent because of these realizations, I could not bring myself to seek grace.  My inner Gollum screamed in defiance, “No grace hates us!  It wants to destroy us!”  I found a roadblock in my way.  Though I knew I desperately needed God, I returned again and again to seek evidence of my own faithfulness.

Finally, as I was listening to the worship song, The Prodigal, the Lord clearly revealed who I really am.  

I am no one special; just another sinner, recipient of His mercy, saved by His grace.  Though I had been saved for over thirty years, I suddenly knew deep inside that I too was a reckless rebel against God’s grace, just like all the prodigals around me.  And with that came the opportunity to begin to know what it really meant to receive undeserved mercy.  Praise God for it.  Praise him for his patience.  Praise God that once again he took me to the end of myself to show me the vastness of his love for me.

By Al Everett

I have never really liked winter.  As a young man I suffered from what doctors might call Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD for short.  Basically it meant I would be SAD in the winter because of the decreased amount of daylight.  Each year, as Day Light Savings Time ended, the dread would begin to build and soon become debilitating depression that would last until the first real harbinger of spring – the Phillies’ spring training games.

Over time I began to wonder if what the doctors diagnosed as a disorder might not actually be ordinary bitterness – a simple anger at God for allowing me to suffer the cold.  The proof of this theory came along when I decided confession was a better treatment for my bitter spirit than the doctor-recommended light treatments.  As a result, the Lord led me into what would truly be my first winter without being SAD for as long as I could remember.

Don’t get me wrong though.  In spite of that grace, I still hate being cold.  So when I get out there like most guys and start chipping away at the ice on my driveway on those below freezing days, you can bet I am struggling to find joy.  The old bitterness may be gone but man, I still do not like the cold. 

One winter’s day, as I was chipping away at said ice on my driveway, feeling a little joy-challenged, I began to daydream about my garden.  (Yes, real men do garden, but that is a post for another day.)  As I struggled with that ice, I started looking around and seeing a plant here and another there.  I felt joy building as I thought,

"Yes...that plant will soon be green again, and that one there, it’ll soon be covered with pink and purple fragrant buds, and that row of sticks, those skinny, dead twigs, they will be filled with flowers that will bring the hummingbirds and the butterflies." 

I remembered the warmth of summer and the joy of splashing with my daughter in our pool.  For a few minutes the ice and gloom were gone and I was in my swim trunks, smelling burgers on the grill and hearing the crack of a baseball against a bat.

C.S. Lewis wrote that Narnia was a place where it was "always winter but never Christmas," a sad metaphor for a world separated from God.  You know, our present struggles in this world are winters of a sort, but because of the cross, with every winter comes a spring, with every death comes a resurrection.  If we look only at the cold and darkness of this present winter, we will be joy-challenged.  But if we can focus our sluggish souls on the spring to come, as God works all our trials together for our good, imagine the joy that His Spring will bring.  Believing is seeing and you can see it and rejoice in it now, even while living in the throws of today's cold and ice.  God's grace brings the hope of spring into our present day reality.  Though we now endure circumstances of winter, we have hope for the spring as the power of Christ's resurrection builds in the darkness of our lives, anticipating the day it will explode in joyous, glorious, fragrant spring. 

By Al Everett

I’ve started reading a biography of George Muller that came to me from my grandmother’s library – probably more like a single bookshelf.  The book was published in 1899 and as such would have been written just months after Mr. Muller’s departure by a man who knew him personally.  Fascinating!

Today I read this about Mr. Muller:

"He constantly probed his own heart to discover the secret and subtle impulses which are unworthy of a true servant of God; and, believing that a spiritually minded brother often helps one to an insight into his own heart, he spoke often with Mr. Craik about his plans, praying God to use him as a means of exposing any unworthy motive, or of suggesting any scriptural objections to his proje.  .  His honest aim being to please God, he yearned to know his own heart, and welcomed any light which revealed his real self and prevented a mistake."

I love this approach to life and friendship.  George Muller “yearned to know his own heart and welcomed any light which revealed his real self.”  He actually prayed that God would use his friend to expose his sin or unbiblical thinking.  And he then took the steps to lay his heart and plans out for his friend to see, fully expecting Mr. Craik to address issues he saw.  

Apparently, Mr. Craik did not disappoint him and was faithful to point out problems with Mr. Muller’s thinking which he viewed as a real blessing of protection.

Interestingly, the next paragraph says,

"Mr. Craik decidedly encouraged him and further confirmed previous impressions…"

The insights he received from his friend were not all corrective.  These interchanges with Mr. Craik more often than not produced encouragement and freedom to move forward with ideas and plans.

Seems a good pattern for real fellowship.  A willingness to be exposed. A willingness to address questionable thinking.  A willingness to consider corrective observations.  A willingness to actively encourage moving forward with plans that honor God. 

I wonder how much confusion and disappointment I might avoid, how much joyful freedom in service I would experience if I saw and utilized the family of believers as a hedge against my own foolishness as freely and easily as George Muller seemed to. 

We each need a Mr. Craik to routinely speak into our worlds, allowing him access to correct our actions and encourage our plans.  We can’t all be George Mullers, but we can all be Mr. Craiks.