How I came to farewell my denomination of 40 years. Or, How do we know that’s God’s voice?

Does God speak things to you? Even without having touched on this topic with each of them, I’d wager I have friends at every point along that spectrum. 

Some who might say, “Dude (people my age are, after all, GenXers), if you think God is specifically speaking to you outside of the Bible, welcome to heresy.”

Others who talk about hearing God about as clearly and specifically as one could possibly imagine and certainly beyond what most experience.

You might reside at one of those ends or somewhere in between. I’m not today writing to convince you of anything. 

As a college student thirty years ago, I discovered that spectrum along with the fact that some people seemed to have “more” of God than I did. So I wanted it––Him––too. [It’d be immaterial for my purposes here to get into what I think was good or bad about all that was going on there; for now the point is just the story.]

One night, in a long session of earnest seeking and prayer, God spoke. He told me something about my future. Something good that was going to happen to me. And the reason I was being told ahead of time was so that I wouldn’t struggle with pride when it happened. 

Sure enough, the next day, it happened. 

Just not to me. It happened for somebody else.

Not purposely and certainly not knowingly, I’d stepped out in true faith and sincerely believed something my God had told me all while imagining the entire thing. 

At least I’d been smart enough (“you mean faithless enough” the Enemy would long taunt) to keep one foot in reality and make a pre-arrangement with God:

“IF…if for some reason this doesn’t come true? And it turns out this wasn’t You? I’ll meet you THERE where I sit on THAT marble ledge to wait for the cafeteria to open. And we are going to deal.” 

I was sitting. And we dealt. 

As best I can remember, it took rather some time for shock to wear off and devastation to sink in. Hours, perhaps days, but the real effects were long-term. My newfound conviction that God’s voice must be out of my reach devastated my ability to engage the topic for the following five years. For fully ten years, it handicapped me significantly. Not until fifteen years after the fact––the difference between age 20 and age 35––could I honestly say that I no longer experienced its effects when talking or praying about hearing His voice. Fifteen more years are now passed, and well, it’s finally an old, almost humorous story overwritten by many others and hardly thought of. 

_____________

Earlier this year I watched a video put out by the president of the denomination I’ve worked in for two decades and otherwise been a part of for four. He announced a celebratory demolition event at the denomination’s new national office property. 

And the Lord said to my spirit: “You’re going to be at that.” 

That’s odd. Really? I wonder why? That’s like… (checking map) 9 hours away.

But I pretty quickly jumped to Ohhh… hey! I’ll bet I could do that on the motorcycle! Might set a new record for myself…yes! I am going to run this by Tammy. 

And I began to plan my trip, operating out of a sort of a learned default that obeying even when not sure of the reasons is almost always preferable to skipping out because of doubts. I’d come a long way in 30 years. That old college-days wound was such a non-factor by now that it failed to cross my mind even in instances like this.

I did think a lot about the possible whys for such a trip, however, and while I really couldn’t say much for sure, what I began to say out loud to my wife and a few friends was, 

“I think… I’m going to say good-bye to my denomination.” 

Now while that wasn’t exactly a super logical statement, it was also not completely disconnected from a few certain things on the horizon that could have been construed as clouds. Six months earlier, I had filed an official complaint/report about a leader. There was a mediation process of sorts under way. There’d been an inquiry. But in no way did any of those present like some demise of the relationship was imminent. Perhaps some end lay beyond a bend in the road I could not see? I had no real ideas, but even if such an end was months off, I could easily appreciate how a loss like that would be best grieved properly.

Three days after the president’s video released, my denominational employment was terminated. Do we actually need reminders that His sovereignty is not limited by bends in the road? As if. 

But I wouldn’t experience the shock of the news for seven further days until the notice arrived via FedEx. No warning, hint, or discussion had preceded it. It contained one sentence of rationale. Nothing further has ever been added to that.

Clearly there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than I’d been privy to.

Suddenly, my good-bye trip had become über-pertinent.

A few asked why on earth I would consider even bothering with the situation any more––surely I was not still driving up there? But I figured that if the best I’d come up with was that this was good-bye, how could getting that irrevocably confirmed do anything but confirm my trip as well? 

I had to go. Fortunately, I did not take my motorcycle. (If you liked that sentence, take a moment to savor it, maybe print it out and stash it away, because you will never see it again.) I wasn’t in a good place, and driving a car was all I was going to be able to handle. The growing realizations about what people up the ladder must be believing about me… things that had never been explained to me… had left me the night before begging God for sleep for the fourth night in a row. 

Thankfully enough sleep came that by morning I felt I was okay to drive. IF the Psalms were playing. Anything else or nothing over the speakers left me rocking and jittery. But praise God, by Psalm 70 I had stabilized, and then had a car to myself for wonderful, wide hours of phone conversations. That night, at a childhood friend’s house, I slept in an unknown bed with an unknown pillow in a strange room of a strange house better than I’d slept in a week. Finally, tackling the final couple driving hours the next morning, I was back on the road to being myself again. 

_____________

At breakfast I was met by friends driving down just to be with me. When we arrived at the event together, I held back with hat, sunglasses, and covid mask, desperate to stay anonymous. While at the same time fighting to stave off wild imaginings about God engineering deliverance from our nightmare by sending some rescuer with more power than those who’d come against us. Foolishness.

I was there to say good-bye and nothing else. I took my moment alone in front of the demolition fence and reflected on my entire professional life. And felt nothing. Disappointing? Perhaps, but hardly surprising seeing as how I was standing in a parking lot I’d never been in looking at a building I’d never entered.

No catharsis, no tears, no word from above, no sense about the future, no anger, no self-pity. Silence.

“Well, it was really nice seeing you, Dann. We’re so glad we came to eat breakfast with you. We’re going to take off, now. You?”

“Actually, you guys go ahead. I’m going to find a spot at the edge of the parking lot for one more listen in case I’m still going to hear why He sent me up here. Thank you guys so much for coming. I will remember it for the rest of my life.”

I walked to the back of the parking lot and headed to a light pole where it looked like maybe I could sit down. 

Even before I’d gotten to it, He started in:

What if it wasn’t Me who told you to drive up here? What if it was just your imagination?

Yeah, and? I replied.

Oh, my. 

Apparently 2021 is irrelevant even in 2021, then?

Thirty years back, now, sitting there in my mind, even as my physical body is sitting here in the present. I already know his next question––and simultaneously my next answer.

How would you be?

I’d be fine. I’d be… totally fine…

BOOM.

See how far you’ve come? You’ve grown to absolutely know My voice. Along with knowing that it doesn’t matter about reaching 100% certainty about every thing every time, as that is not to be expected. It threatens nothing.

_____________

It truly did not matter to me if “You’re going to be at that” had turned out to be me––though I didn’t believe that––instead of Him. Without thinking much about it, I’d just acted anyway, allowing Him to direct from there. Neither my own faith/worthiness or his faithfulness/worthiness were connected to it like they had so very much been in my youthful episode. So what if I’d gotten this one wrong? I’d done the best I could with the spiritual discernment I possess at this time, and I did what I thought was obeying. If it turned out not to be? Okay, fine.  

The King had just reminded me that I have obeyed his voice over and over again in the fifteen years since my great wound concerning it healed over. Not to mention those times in the previous 15 where I’d stumbled through learning to navigate intimacy and abiding while still unresolved. 

And here, now––during the trials of 2021––I have yet to tell most people some of the ways He has at times spoken. Some of the most spectacular ways of my entire life. 

He has seen me. He knows it all. 

And He cares so much for me that he brought me nine hours from home to say something totally off topic that He declared was the topic. To sit me on a piece of hot concrete that would symbolize a piece of cold marble from thirty years earlier and grant one final healing touch to an old wound I hadn’t even realized could still use it. 

He hadn’t abandoned me then or ever. And isn’t it something how even our failures become integral pieces of how He fashions us into the child He is making us? Every part of me…100% redeemable.

I’d have driven nine hundred hours to be given a message like that.

I looked up and saw my car across the emptying parking lot. 

It was time to go home. 

That Passeth Understanding

We’ll be dispensing with the “Wow, it’s been like forever since my last post,” and “Oof, what’s up with 2020!?” stuff and get right to it.

Today was a lousy day.

I take it from the bits and pieces I’ve gathered about social media that lousy isn’t exactly an uncommon exclamation these days. 2020 has been a doozy.* 

[* For the word nerds only: How do you do it, English? Dispense a sentence about 2020 in the same stroke you nullify the previous commitment to dispense with doing the very same?]

My lousy, however, didn’t happen to be related to the virus. Nor even to the election or social events even as surely anyone who caught the smallest piece of that first presidential debate Tuesday must still be sorting through at least some levels of PTSD. 

I started the day feeling anxious. (This isn’t the lousy part, yet.) 

I’m not 100% sure why I felt anxious, but I was well aware that I did. Financial reasons, mostly (or at least partly) I guess. Overall silly stuff in the grand-world-stage scheme of things. Kid in college just finding out we unexpectedly still owe a few thousand for his current semester, never mind the next, which he personally doubts can happen, now. Record high tax bill showing up. A few other big bills. Pretty pedestrian stuff viewed from the outside. And another adoption––okay, this is big––and the creeping realization that the current straits are probably mostly being caused by this as expenses inexorably creep (or leap, depending on the Fee of the Day) towards that $30,000 mark. In my head, though, I’m not really worried about this piece. God has provided three times previously; it’ll come from somewhere. 

But, c’mon, we all pretty much know (and for sure know if we’ll just turn to the right and judge our neighbor’s anxiety instead) that anxiety ≠ “based on reality.” So the details of why I was anxious are basically irrelevant, wouldn’t you agree? Anxiety is much more a spiritual issue than a logical issue. It’s not in the end actually about math. It’s about trust. 

(In other terms, I’ve known times of way less money and been less stressed, and I’ve seen far bigger balances but witnessed them evaporate quicker than thrown water on hot pavement. So enough of my anxiety particulars. They’re about as periphery as yours are.)

Where I went wrong today was ignoring a premonition.

You know, before I start work today, I really should stop and deal with this heart issue. Get to the bottom of this restless, nagging anxiousness. 

“Ignore it, Dann, at your peril,” did the Spirit even whisper? 

Not sure. I’d already gallantly pushed it all aside. 

Nope, I’m getting cracking on this pile of work. 

Especially niggling were two nonsense phone calls. Dentist appointments. I’m our family administrator for everything but medical, but Tammy has given up on this one. Somehow we’ve kept up with six kids’ teeth (Read: “make appointments” not “prevent cavities”), but I don’t believe I’ve had a pro cleaning since Bangkok (so that’s at least 5 years). Tammy thinks she went once in New York. Then there was phone call #2. Setting up online account access for my organization with the telecommunications company. Simple. I was in a hurry to get them out of the way. 

EIGHT HOURS later… I’d made two dentist appointments.

There were calls to nearly double-digit offices searching for in-network doctors also taking new patients, literally an hour and a half of hold music with Marketplace healthcare, then subsequently eleven––you read that right––different telecom reps correcting me with four different phone numbers, transferring me all over the world, or to dead-ends resulting in at least six start-overs with the asinine computer answering system, his deafness only to be outdone by his chattiness, or to one rep I swear was not even a phone professional or was somehow fielding calls in some sort of nap room (he hung up on me!) and after hundreds (I can dream) of anger-burned calories later… I still don’t have a log-in, and still cannot pay my company’s hotspot bill.

Carnage complete. (Though there’s 100x the detail if you had the stomach for it.)

Fast forward through a few hours’ sacred-space date night with the wife and a repentance session for my unbelief, self-sufficiency, failure to trust, and prayer-less-ness, and you can easily imagine the flip-flopped world of difference from which I now write. 

But this query hits hard:  In taking a hard pass on dealing with my anxious heart first, had I not only missed “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,” but possibly chosen to actually forego a different day altogether? How would things have gone if my calls had been made, not just by a better-hearted man, but simply at different times on the clock? Or been fielded by a completely different set of people? I know Aslan far too well to seriously think I’ll be getting an answer on that one, but I can identify the thought, or the pressure (for whatever reasons) that I was too attuned to (there’s three words fun to string together):

Activity is the name of the game, dude. Pray later. 

Only to watch hours and hours unbelievably flushed away and away before my eyes with ultimately the entire day––not to mention my attitude––irretrievably wasted. 

Why do we so often only present verses 6-7 of Philippians 4 as a memorization pair? And not glorious verse 5, or at least its latter half? It strikes me as indispensable preamble. 

(Do you even know what it is?)

“The Lord is near.” 

That’s the reason we can “be anxious for nothing.” That’s the starting point from which we can begin to imagine that being anxious about nothing might be possible. 

I don’t know what your lousy yuck is today. Let hope in the truth that the Lord is near form your foundation of trust that anxiety can be dispelled and replaced with peace. It’ll pass all understanding. 

Thoughts of an evening on this Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday 2019 is just about over. Did you like it? That answer will vary as wildly, I imagine, as the answers to whether or not people “liked” Black Friday. Some get into such things, to be sure.

Some get fatigued.

Our culture can be… so much. Soooo much. We buy a lot, we say a lot, we post a lot. We compete for so many pieces of so many pies. Sometimes we’re the pie itself.

On Giving Tuesday last year (the Johnson family’s very first with “raising our support” as our daily reality), we skipped out. Totally.

Well, at least we skipped out on the side of Giving Tuesday you wouldn’t expect people like us to skip: the getting side. But I realized I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Couldn’t force myself to want to become part of the noise. So I decided to take a hard pass on The Ask. 

Yet this year––you’ve gotten our letter in the mail, read the previous ask emails before this one––was different, wasn’t it? I don’t know exactly why, but I didn’t feel right about last year, though I wasn’t sure why. Had I been… 

Prideful? (What do we need to ask for? We trust in the Lord, don’t we?) 

Presumptuous? (I’m sure there’ll always continue to be just enough in our account…)

Condescending? (Wow, these people are wearing me out with this asking! Thank goodness for me not beating my own drum like that…)

Passive? (I’m not one of these “Christian marketers” and I’m sure not about to spend any time learning how to become one…)

Or was I simply regretful come this year? (Yikes, I didn’t expect our account to bottom out like that and not be able to fund _________…)

Whatever it was, this year we participated. 

Prayed. 

Trusted.  

And…asked. 

Were our goals unrealistic? Ha! We won’t have any idea until after Dec 31, I suppose. 

But already the Lord has brought in more than what came in as extra funds  around this time last year. (Um, zero.) Because last year we didn’t ask. We didn’t shout out (or even whisper) to anyone that the Dann and Tammy Johnson family serving refugees in Clarkston, Georgia was a really worthy Kingdom endeavor. 

And––this is where I’m currently doing my deep thinking–– is it possible that what I didn’t see last year is that God (who frankly can make money drop into a mailbox from across the globe without my ever asking, and we’ve seen that more than once) might just be glorified in the asking?

I pray He is.

For our part, we rookies found the learning to Ask taking a level of humility and maturity that we have to work towards, or at least pray towards, perhaps grow towards. 

But for sure He knew what He was talking about when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (We learned that one eons ago.)

So of course today we kept up the Giving Tuesday habit that we never skip, the fun one: picking a few friends and giving away a few sizable chunks of change that we can’t exactly afford but at the same time choose to not care about cause that’s a minor detail the Lord can totally be trusted with. 

But, I mused, why did we give to them?

Because they’d asked. 

And so, now, have we. And I literally have no idea if we’ll even come within waving distance of our goal:*

-$8,000 from our monthly givers

-$8000 from other previous givers

-$8000 from first-time givers

That’s a lot of money. Yet it’s completely appropriate in light of our ministry budget, which happens to require quite a few a-lotsa-monies

For you, whether today or some other time before year-end, I hope that you give away more––to anyone, really––than you ever have. There are so many deserving ministries you already know. Some won’t be very good at making their voice heard. Don’t forget them. Some will. Don’t judge them. 

And may all your 2019 giving do what it was designed to do: connect you ever closer to your Father who Gave the Most. He loves you. And he loves the cheerful giver. 

*I did hit one of my financial goals right on the nose: my goal for our share of the $7 million Facebook frenzy matching giveaway pie this morning. 0%. I know, aim high and all that jazz.