Day 58.

Let me tell you of the value of true friends. The summer dream of the forest fades with the winter winds, and then amid the blazing snowdrifts the evergreens emerge like lovely sentinels. There, dotting the landscape, the evergreens are like friends who remain after the storms coldness has traveled through the forest of life. True friends are like evergreens in the snow-covered landscape when all else has faded. These are friendships born in the cradle of chaos. Friends that come amidst the trials and tribulations of life are gifts from God. The evergreens of my life were soon to be revealed. “They were the best of years, they were the worst of years.”

As I recounted yesterday, I had often said my faith had never really been tested because my life was too comfortable and I never really had to pray the Lord’s Prayer in regards to my daily bread. The biggest trials of my life lay just around the bend and had I known what was beyond I would never have chosen to go.

The trials of the three years leading up to my divorce were a series of spiritual attacks and personal fiscal failures accompanied by divine leadings and miracles that, had both my wife and I recognized, would have strengthened our resolve and not weakened it. In my journal (2001) I wrote, “In the dark nights of our soul and under the mountains of our troubles we can either dig a cave or a tunnel. In the cave we will become lost in the darkness, in the tunnel we can hope for the better side. In every affliction there is the seed of a great blessing, or a window of opportunity.”

By 1997, while pastoring 3 churches in the Mildura region, along with an intern assistant, I had rounded the corner of over 20 years of ministry. Many of them good years, but I was becoming frustrated by the sense of imprisonment in a style of ministry that I felt was not what I was called to do. Over seeing established congregations and refereeing church fights and even sometimes causing them because of my innovative style, youth emphasis, or intolerance with stuffy Christianity, led me to long for the front lines of the battle field. I wanted to be out where the souls were to be saved, not baby-sitting saints who didn’t appreciate the minding service. I finally decided, while pastoring a church in Victoria Australia, that Pastors like me should leave old established churches alone and stop trying to change them because it only becomes divisive. Those that want the change cause pain for those who don’t and this in turn becomes cyclical. I decided that change can really only happen in a dramatic way by starting something new, for then we can lay down a whole new set of ground rules without having to shift people from their comfort zone.