The Seed of Hope

Oooohh! I SEE it now!

Several weeks ago I was asked to join a team that was writing a Daily Devotional for the newly formed Highlands College, a School of Ministry located at Church of The Highlands, here in Birmingham. I was so excited that my initial reaction was to attempt a back flip while giving a high-five to Pastor Keith, who had recruited me to be a part of the team! Better yet, I was humbled by the invitation, and honored to be given the opportunity to write about the Bible for our church. Of course I’d be willing to contribute my thoughts to a Devotional. Why wouldn’t I?

My excitement quickly turned to doubt as reality set in. Look, I just began reading the Bible four years ago. There are passages in the Old Testament that I’d never even read; how could I possibly write about them? The same question could be posed for many parts of the New Testament that I’d read but really didn’t understand. I was overwhelmed by the mere prospect of being on a timetable to submit two devotionals per week for the next few months.

After much consideration, I made the decision to withdraw my name, based on the determination that I just had too much on my plate. Of course, I knew the real reason: I was afraid that my interpretation of Scripture wouldn’t measure up. That fear was something that had followed me from elementary school, when I had totally misinterpreted the meaning of a passage that I had been assigned to study. Quite obviously, it was a memory that I hadn’t forgotten…

I changed my mind.

Then I made the decision not to withdraw my name. You see, I believe that God opened this door for me to be a part of this writing team because I need to learn the Bible. I’ve recognized the fact for some time now that my lack of Scripture knowledge, of not knowing God’s Word, is a liability for me in many ways. Thing is, I didn’t really know what to do about it. I almost enrolled in a part-time ministry program at church, but I didn’t think that it was a really good fit for me, or vice versa. I’d even considered on-line classes through an accredited university, but I never really felt the urge to act on it.

To make matters worse, I was recently reading Sun Stand Still, a book written by Steven Furtick, the Pastor of Elevation Church in North Carolina. In his book, Pastor Furtick states in no uncertain terms that you can’t truly live by audacious faith or consider growing a ministry without not only knowing the Bible, but speaking it! It didn’t take me long to realize that I couldn’t have God’s word in my mouth if I didn’t have it in my mind and in my heart.

That being said, I decided that I was gonna be a part of that writing team, and I was gonna learn Scripture, and as with everything that I do, I was gonna seek God’s help in doing it.

Prayer

Last Sunday marked the beginning of a three week period of a morning prayer service at Highlands, which is fittingly and simply called Twenty-One Days of Prayer. I always look forward to this time of personal and corporate prayer; in some ways it feels as if the heat of the summer has dried me up spiritually! Actually, it’s probably vacations, time at our lake house, and the lack of a set schedule in the summertime that disrupts my time for prayer and worship in the morning. To be quite honest, I lose the discipline to go after God each day with all that’s in me.

By the time that Thursday rolled around I was back in the groove, rolling out of bed at 5:15, grabbing a cup of coffee, making it to church by 6:00, and gettin’ my prayer on. I love praying with a few hundred hungry-for-Jesus Christians in the morning!

While in prayer that morning, I was reflecting on the two devotionals that I’d already submitted to Pastor Keith, and on the one that I was going to write later that day. I could choose to write about a passage from Isaiah, Corinthians, Psalms, or Proverbs. I’d read each of the four, and share my thoughts about whatever jumped out at me.

The truth is that there are some days when I read Scripture and nothing jumps out at me! And that would definitely pose a problem. You see, when I write for The Seed of Hope, I get to pick the topic, which is usually the thing that’s weighing on my heart that day. The notion of being assigned something to write about was totally different for me, and it was planting seeds of doubt in my mind.

I offered a prayer…

Lord, when I read Your Word today, let me see something that I’ve never seen before. Let me see it with a new set of eyes. Give me a revelation. Let it be impactful for me, and for those that I may share it with.

When the service was over, I headed back home to have coffee with my wife Jackie, and to read that day’s suggested passages from the One Year Bible with her. Actually, Jackie doesn’t like to read early in the morning, so I read the Bible out loud for both of us. It’s a blessing for me to do it.

Ouch…

As soon as I turned to 1 Corinthians 7 I felt that old, familiar sting. Chapter 7 is a letter from Paul to the Corinthians about marriage. And divorce. And it has always been one of my least favorite passages from the Bible.

Jackie is my second wife, and I’m her second husband. We’ve been married for twenty-two years. Yes, I truly believe that God has forgiven both of us for divorcing our respective spouses. And I believe that God’s blessings and favor are on our marriage, or we wouldn’t be doing the things in our business, in our home, and in our church that we do for Him. I am truly blessed, and grateful that God saw fit to use me to serve His Kingdom, in spite of who I was.

Still, every time that I’ve read Paul’s thoughts on divorce, and the mark it leaves on children, and the condemnation that comes with it, I’ve felt the sting of the barb that’s apparently still lodged in my skin. And every time that I’ve read it aloud, I’ve wondered if my sweet wife was feeling the same thing. Of course, I didn’t have the courage to ask her. I didn’t want her to know that it bothered me, and I didn’t want to know if it bothered her.

Fighting the urge to close the Book, and pressing on, I read something that I’d read several times before. But for the first time my eyes saw something that I’d never seen before…

17Nevertheless, each one should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him. 20Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him.

Oooohh! I see it now….

Jackie and I had been married for seventeen years when I was born again, and it was another year and a half before God laid this ministry on my heart. I’m firmly planted right where I was when God called me to serve Him. And that’s where I’ll remain.

Look, I’m not trying to make a case for myself to you, because I’ll be judged only by God. The point I’m trying to make here is that while the pain of the divorce itself will never go away, that barb of shame that pricked my flesh every time that I read 1 Corinthians 7 is gone. For good.

God forgave me a long time ago for my divorce. I had to find forgiveness for myself, and I found it in what I thought would be the least likely of places: The Bible.

Sometimes, you just have to ask God to restore your sight.

Funny, how God works...

I’ve spent a lot of my quiet time during the last couple of weeks reflecting on the past. Well, that statement may be a broad stroke of the brush. More specifically, I’ve been reflecting about the last year or so and how a big desire of my heart has changed during that period. Funny, how God works…

Not long after my spiritual awakening in 2006, I was afforded the opportunity of giving presentations for Redken (the hair care manufacturer) at various venues around the country. At some point during each of these presentations, I would matter-of-factly give the lion’s share of our salon’s amazing success to God. It was after I’d spoken to a group of people in Chicago that I realized that it was of greater importance to me to speak humbly about God and what He’d done in my life than to speak proudly about our salon and its accomplishments. Speaking openly about God in a business arena made me feel, I don’t know, empowered, for lack of a better word.

I would always return to Birmingham and our salon flushed with enthusiasm. Our business, Salon M², became my personal platform for speaking to people about God. I’d speak to anyone who’d listen; customers, vendors, and even the guys that cleaned the windows! Speaking to them would, for a brief time, fill my insatiable desire to tell people about my God. It would also fill the voids between the times that I’d get to speak for Redken. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I was making a difference in the world.

The invitations to speak became fewer and farther in between, and eventually stopped coming at all, either as a result of the economy, or because of my insistence on sharing my faith with others. I was crushed. There was so much about God that I wanted to share. I couldn’t figure out why God wouldn’t just make those people ask me to speak!

I began hounding God…

Yep, that’s what I said. Every morning I’d get in my prayer chair and at some point during prayer and meditation, the topic of speaking to people would come up. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ll let you know that I’m not timid when it comes to sharing what’s on my heart. Not even with God.)   

God, are you listening to me? What am I missing? I’m wanting to go out and do this for You! I want to share what You’ve done in me and with me to people everywhere, not just in this city, or state, or country. I want to take this around the world. Come on!

This went on for weeks…months. I knew that I was probably aggravating God (I didn’t know then that we must be persistent and consistent in our petitions), but I didn’t care. Apparently it was His idea to put this fire in me, so He was gonna have to listen.

It was during one of those early morning rants that God gave me the idea to launch The Seed of Hope, which I did indeed do in 2008, with the help of Jason, a guy that had worked on our salon website.

The Seed of Hope immediately became, and I pray will continue to be, a way of sharing what God puts on my heart. It was a platform upon which I could stand and shout praises to God! I didn’t have to wait for an invitation to speak, and I could be as BOLD as I wanted to be in sharing my thoughts and my love for the Lord.

I love to write, but I’ll be honest in telling you that my love was born from the inability to speak, which I love even more.

I’ll also confess that while I loved to talk to people, I wasn’t a very good listener. Most times, my conversations with someone consisted of either me doing the talking, or planning on what I was going to say as soon as they stopped talking. I was so busy concentrating on myself that I rarely heard what was on a person’s heart. How could what they had to say possibly be as important as what I was telling them?

…funny how God works.

During a conversation with my wife Jackie one morning in the spring of 2010, God laid it on my heart to put a small, quiet room in our salon, which we did indeed do, a couple of months later.

I figured early on that the room would serve as a place for me to write, and to conduct monthly mentoring sessions with our team in the salon. In other words, it would be a place for me to share my thoughts and to speak, either verbally or through the written word.

I was wrong.

It didn’t take me long to realize that the room was a place for people to share what was on their hearts. They came into that room to talk, to unload, and to vent. My role in the room was to listen, the very thing that I had a hard time doing.

God was teaching me that in order to be a good speaker you have to be a good listener; that the best listeners are the ones that shut out their own voices and the world around them to concentrate on the person that’s right in front of them. Hmm…

Since I’m talking about the way God works, and confessing a couple of things, I may as well share this with you.

In March of 2009 Jackie and I began attending Church of The Highlands here in Birmingham. Highlands is a non-denominational Christian church, which I believe is the best place for me to be at this moment. The culture at Church of The Highlands is so much different from the one that I grew up in, in ways that I won’t even attempt to cover right now. There is one thing that I want to talk about right now though, and that is prayer.

Before you jump to conclusions, let me assure you that prayer was a huge part of the church that I used to attend. In fact, I learned many prayers when I was a young child, and there was always corporate prayer during the church services. I knew what prayer was, to be sure. I knew how to pray for my needs, and how to pray for others.

What I wasn’t accustomed to, that’s very prevalent at Church of The Highlands, is praying with someone. I’m talking about personal prayer, like taking a person’s hand in your own, and praying out loud for their specific needs. I’ve gotta tell you that I wasn’t used to it, and I certainly wasn’t comfortable with it! My silent reaction to a person’s offer to pray for me was, “Look, you can pray for me all that you want to, and I’ll be grateful for it. But you ain’t gonna do it right here and now, not out loud, not in person, and definitely not in public!” Of course, I wouldn’t refuse to let them pray for me. I’d stand there and tolerate until they were through! Conversely, if I was listening to someone else, my thought was “I hope you don’t ask me to pray for you cause that would just be weird.”

Then God had this great idea for us to put the room in our salon. Here’s the thing: Even as the room was being constructed, I had no idea that it was gonna be a prayer room! That is, until the very first visitor asked me if I would pray for her after twenty or thirty minutes of conversation. Fighting the urge to excuse myself from the room, I nodded in agreement, closed my eyes, and began to pray.

This scenario repeated itself several times over the next few days, and in the process a couple of things happened. First, I began putting my fears on the back burner and prayed more boldly, taking my attention off of myself and what I was saying, and just letting my thoughts for that individual flow from my mouth in prayer. Secondly, I began to realize the unbelievable blessings that I was receiving for having the sacred privilege of praying for someone.

It has been fifteen months…

since we opened the prayer room in our salon. During that time, I’ve not only learned to be a good listener, but I love to listen to what’s on a person’s heart. The same can be said for prayer. Nothing humbles me more than those God-given personal opportunities to pray for someone in need. Nothing.

Funny how God works. He can take those things that we’re most uncomfortable with and make them desires of our hearts, even as we’re resisting what he’s doing.

And oh by the way…I still love to speak to people. I never pass up an opportunity to share my love for Jesus with someone, and the fire within me to take His message around the world burns as hot as ever. Well, of course God knows this. I still remind Him of it every day!   

...one Sunday in September.

A few weeks ago my wife Jackie and I flew to Molalla, Oregon (30 minutes south of Portland) to attend a wedding. Yes, Molalla is indeed a good distance from our home in Birmingham, Alabama! Yes, the cost of getting there far surpassed what we may have spent on a gift. No, neither the bride nor groom is a member of our family. No, neither of them were childhood friends, roommates from college, or lifelong friends. We’ve known the bride for about five years, and during that period of time, we’ve seen her, I don’t know, may a couple of dozen times at best.

So why would we invest our time and resources to travel to Molalla, Oregon to attend the wedding of someone that we’ve known for a handful of years?

Well, because the bride made an impact on my life the day that I met her in 2006. The consequences of that first meeting were instrumental in changing not only my life, but the lives of Jackie, our family, and the people that worked for us.

I love telling this story. I’m quite sure that I’ve told some version of it on this very site at some point, but I feel that it bears repeating for reasons that I’ll explain in just a bit. Besides, I never tire of sharing it...

…about Ann.

Jackie and I were attending a salon industry event in Atlanta, Georgia. That Sunday morning Jackie was participating in a cutting class, and I had been invited to a luncheon that was being given for salon owners. I’ll be honest with you in saying that while I really wasn’t excited about going to the luncheon, I figured that it would be better than sitting in our hotel room watching a football game between two teams that I didn’t like.

The keynote speaker at this luncheon was a lady named Ann Mincey, whom I’d never heard of and didn’t know the first thing about. (Again, the only reason that I was going at all was for a lack of anything better to do!)

I showed up at the appointed time and was immediately greeted by Lynn, our salon sales consultant, who grabbed me by the hand and led/steered/dragged me to this stunning looking woman who introduced herself as, you guessed it; Ann Mincey.

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur. I introduced myself to Ann, and then, per her request, I began sharing the condensed version our salon story with her. (If you’ve never heard it, and if you’re interested, click on A Seed was Planted at the top of this page.) When I’d finished, Ann thanked me for sharing our story with her, commended us for our courage in what we’d done, and then, curiously enough, asked if she could give me a hug, to which I readily agreed.

The luncheon began, and after a few opening remarks, the host proudly introduced the keynote speaker, REDKEN’s Vice President of Global Communications, Ann Mincey. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather! V.P.s of huge corporations weren’t supposed to be that nice.

Ann took her place in front of the audience and began sharing her own personal story of change, including her career with Redken (the hair care people). While it was indeed an interesting story, what impacted me the most was Ann’s testimony about God and   her faith. And while it wasn’t as bold as what some would refer to as “witnessing,” it was, nonetheless, my first experience of faith in the marketplace, and I was immediately impacted by it; a lot.

I returned to Birmingham, more determined than ever to grow our salon to a level of success beyond anything that I had envisioned for it. Of more importance was my commitment to change not only who I was, but the way that I lived my life. And, in a move that would change the course of my life, I made a decision to include God in everything that I did. Everything.

Change came and came fast. (I’d given God the green light.) I was so overwhelmed that quite often my mind was left reeling. Everything was changing…our business was growing, my outlook on life and on people took on a new perspective each day, and I was constantly seeking more and more of God. And I was changing! Every morning I’d stand in front the mirror and gaze into my own eyes, wondering what self-discovery I was gonna have that day.

It kind of freaked me out, and I wasn’t the only one that felt way. Jackie was left wondering where her husband went and who she was gonna be married to when the “metamorphosis” was complete. Our sons were wondering if I’d lost my mind. Apparently, some guy who talked about God and changing the world all the time had taken up residence in their dad’s body!

And you know? I couldn’t blame any of them for the way that they felt. Like I said, I was indeed changing at an unsettling rate, and I definitely was talking about God all the time, to anyone who’d listen. You see, I believed in my heart that the two were intertwined; I was changing because I was turning to God, and I was turning to God because I was changing. To complicate things even more, I had this inexplicable burning desire to share what was going on inside of me with everyone.

I was so lost. I was so afraid. I wasn’t sure of what was going on inside of me, of who I was becoming, of what I was becoming, and of what the driving force was to get this “message” out about God.

For some reason (I’m sure it was part of God’s plan) I turned to Ann. I got her e-mail address from Lynn, and proceeded to pour my heart out to this woman that I’d spoken to for a total of fifteen minutes. Even as I was writing, I remember thinking that it just didn’t make sense as to why I was reaching out to a person that I didn’t even know, and I expressed that very thought to Ann. I believe that I even included an apology for dumping my life into her lap. As I hit the “send” button to deliver some of my innermost feelings to this virtual stranger, I wondered if I truly had lost my mind.

About a week later Ann responded with a phone call. We talked for a few minutes, and a friendship was born.

More e-mails followed. I shared even more of what was on my heart, because for some strange reason, I felt that I was supposed to, that I could trust this person that God put in my path, and that He put her there for a reason.

That “reason” was revealed in a response that Ann made to comment that I’d made, questioning my worthiness of being a messenger for God. She directed me to the Bible, which was one book that I’d never read.

The word of the Lord came to me, saying “Before you were in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart”…The the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth.” Jeremiah 1:5-9

For the first time in my life, Scripture, which I had always feared, suddenly gave me great comfort. God knew me before I was even born, and the things that I had been sharing with others about Him were what He had placed on my heart. Hmmm…

This pattern repeated itself several times over the next couple of months; I’d reach out to Ann with a something that was on my heart, and she’d suggest one or two passages from the Bible that would not only provide me with an answer, but the perfect answer.

I became a student of the Bible. It’s an owner’s manual for the way we should live, and even for raising our kids. Today I own two different versions of the Bible, and other versions are readily available online if I’m unable to discern what a certain passage means. I’m hungry for God’s Word.

Catalyst

One definition of catalyst is “an agent that provokes or speeds significant change or action.”

Ann Mincey was certainly a catalyst for change in my life. Not because of her position with Redken, or because she was the keynote speaker at a luncheon that I attended, or because she is a woman (she could’ve been a guy named Larry). She’s a person, just like you and me.

You see, on that Sunday in September, Ann was willing to be a vessel of God. She was willing to share her faith in a business forum, which goes against the grain of conventional wisdom. She was willing to share God’s Word with me at those times when I was lost and confused. She was willing to take time out of her busy schedule to help a little guy from Birmingham, Alabama. Ann’s willingness to share, her love for God, and her love for people, had a profound impact on my life, and Jackie’s too. In many ways, she is like a member of our family, and we love her and think the world of her.

Molalla, Oregon? Heck, I suspect that we would’ve flown to the other side of the world to attend her wedding, if that’s where it was being held.

If He hasn’t already, I pray that God will put an Ann Mincey, or someone like her, in your path. I pray that this person will be a catalyst for change in your life. And I pray that, in turn, you will be a catalyst in the life of someone else.