The Birth of a Dream (part 2)

(coninued from my last post)

One emotional event changed my life forever.  The event is not so important in this discussion, but the ramifications of the event are eternal.  In a moment, my entire paradigm changed.  I can’t fully explain it, but God opened my eyes and allowed me to see that I had totally missed the point.  As I was crying my eyes out on my bed, God gently said to me, “Andy you are not valuable because of what you do or don’t do.  You are valuable because you are my child.” 

Talk about a wake-up call.  In all my life, I had never known that.  At that moment, I realized that I had spent my whole life trying to earn God’s acceptance by doing.  And God then said, “I do not want your service as much as I want your heart, to know you, and I want you to know Me.”  Again, I was blown away.  God had called me out of hiding, and was healing these broken pieces in me that I did not know were there.  He said, “Andy, I love you for you.”  .  It was a lot to take in all at once. But immediately everything changed in how I saw this thing known as Christianity.  It took some time to sort it all out, but God gently and patiently taught me how to walk in this liberating knowledge. 

It was a time of a lot of “firsts” for me.  For the first time ever, I greatly desired to spend time alone with God.  When you stop seeing God as someone whose love you are trying to earn, and start seeing Him as someone who loves you for you, you want to draw close to Him. 

For the first time ever, I stopped trying to earn love and acceptance.  I stopped trying to please people.  I stopped doing in order to earn God’s favor.  In fact the whole motive of my service changed.  Instead of serving to earn God’s love, I began serving because of God’s love. (That, in and of itself, would free a lot of burned out Christians.) 

For the first time ever, I came out of hiding.  I allowed people to see the real Andy.  The façade that I had put on for years began to melt away, and authenticity became my greatest desire.  Your marriage will change dramatically when you allow your spouse to see the real you.  My wife told me later, “I knew there was more in there than what you were letting me see.” 

For the first time ever, I humbled myself to get the help I needed.  When you do not allow God to fill the void in your life, you will fill it with other things.  So I sought counseling to break free from some things that were keeping me from living a life of integrity.  I found healing from some past wounds,   I found freedom from past sins, condemnation, and shame.  I learned my true identity in Christ. (By the way, it is much more than “just a sinner saved by grace!”)  I learned how to take up the armor of Christ to defeat the enemy.  I learned how to walk in the freedom Christ has bestowed upon me by His grace.  It amazed and continues to amaze me how gracious and loving God is to me.

During this time, God dropped a book in my lap that really helped me on my journey.  To this day, it is still the best book I have ever read:  Waking the Dead, by John Eldredge.  As I was reading the book, I was astounded.  It was like this guy looked into my heart, saw everything I was feeling but could not yet express, and put it down on paper.

Things also changed in my ministry.  I stopped trying to build a church.  It’s funny actually.  In my arrogance, I actually thought that I could build a church.  Crystal and I decided to let God build the church.  Our role was simply to administer God’s grace to others.  For a whole year, I did not do anything organizationally at the church.  I basically showed up on Sunday mornings and preached.  And the craziest thing happened, God began to build the church. 

Crystal and I met a lady at Cracker Barrel and invited her family to church.  Sunday morning, Holly, her husband, Keith, and their two young sons were there.  They then invited another couple, who in turn invited another couple.  That alone doubled the size of our congregation.  The coolest part, all of them and many of their children were saved and baptized at Safe Harbor.

But something else also happened that led to the birth of our dream. (I know, you are probably thinking, “Finally!!!”)  God started sending people to our church from other churches.  Now, my goal was never to build a church of disgruntled Christians coming from other churches.  In fact, if I met someone who attended another church, I would not even invite them to mine.  But if someone visited my church because they were not finding life at theirs, I was not really going to encourage them to return to a place that was an unhealthy environment for them.  So here is what I did.  When a person from another church visited ours, I would sit down with them and learn their story.  And what I found was this: these people weren’t disgruntled; they were hurting.  Instead of receiving help and encouragement from church, they were beat down with shame and condemnation.  They felt like all of their efforts weren’t enough.  They were burned out, and they were far from God.  Another light bulb moment: there are tons of people out there just like me.  When I asked them about their walk with God, it was virtuously nonexistent.  They had a desire to do right, and they wanted to please God, but to know him intimately was a foreign concept.

Crystal and I found ourselves doing a lot of counseling.  And I simply began teaching them the things God had taught me.  My preaching also centered around these truths.  And do you know what?  These disillusioned believers began to find life.  I saw their eyes light up as they began to realize there is so much more to this journey of faith than what they had been taught, and they found freedom.

And I also found out something about myself: I never feel more alive than when I am helping someone find freedom in Christ.  John Eldredge says, “Don’t ask what the world needs.  Ask what makes you come alive, and do that.  Because what the world needs is men and women who have come alive.”  In the midst of helping these believers, God said to me, “This is what I want you to dedicate your life to, helping others find freedom and purpose, helping others come alive.” 

So there it is.  God used my failures, my pain, and my desires to birth a dream in my heart.  That is why “Eleutheria” (freedom) is such a big deal to me.  Christ has set us free, but so many fail to walk in that freedom. I desire to help them discover how to walk in the liberty to which we have been called.  And so we are setting up a place of refuge for individuals to come and find freedom.  And though we do not fully know how the ranch will evolve, we do know that it will be a place of healing, restoration, and freedom.

My heart leaps from my chest and tears well up in my eyes as I write, because I know that God has used everything in my life to bring me to this point.  The journey hasn’t been easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is.  But I can say this with great certainty, the journey is worth it. And though I am not there yet, the dream is just as alive and well as it was when God first whispered it in my ear.  And my God is more real to me than ever before.