Living By Faith – A True Example

My parents recently celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary.  At the party, my Aunt Phyllis read a statistic that only 5% of couples make it to the Golden Anniversary, so it was quite an achievement and something to celebrate.

While I was in NC, I decided to go through some old slides that my Dad took in the early days of their ministry (late 70’s, early 80’s), and looking through those slides, I felt even more astonished at their 50 years of marriage and nearly 40 years in evangelism.

Many of us talk about “living by faith,” but what does that look like?  Certainly, it is different for each of us, but looking back, I count my parents as my greatest example of living by faith.  They ignored societal norms and instead, forged a path that only God could have charted for them.  It was unpredictable, unconventional, and it was awesome.

I lived it with them, and I STILL can’t believe they did it.

I mean, who deliberately choses a life that is so off-balance and uncertain?  But they invited God’s faithfulness in ways that many will never risk experiencing (I count myself in that category – I’m a spiritual coward compared to them!).

When my parents married, my Dad was in a rock-n-roll band called the “King Bees.”  It was quite successful regionally and he was living the “good life,” rubbing elbows with famous singers and celebrities, and headed toward bigger and better things (but already feeling unfulfilled, surrounded by many successful, yet miserable, people).  But once he rededicated his life to the Lord, he was all in.  Dad decided that if this whole Jesus thing was really real, then he wanted to dedicate his life to spreading the good news.  So he quit the band and he and my Mom headed off to 8 years of school (college and seminary).  Dad pastored a small church in Texas for several years before feeling called into evangelism.

Initially, my Mom wasn’t too excited about this new “call” from God.  Evangelists didn’t have the best reputation then (or now), and it meant uprooting their young family (I was 4 and my brother was 4 months old when they started the ministry).  But my Dad felt certain that God wanted them to remain a “team” and that we all needed to travel together.

(Every week, for up to nine months of the year, a different church.  Revivals were big back then.  I love it that my parents were partners in the ministry.  This was a fancy sign!)

(Music was a big part of the ministry – the whole family sang and both my parents played piano and were songwriters.  We recorded a number of albums through the years.)

(When Morgan was really little, he would sit in “big church” until he sang, and then he’d run off to the nursery – ha!  My parents never “forced” or guilted us into participating.)

I only went through a few years of pictures, and I was amazed, looking at churches and people and living arrangements that changed week after week, year after year.  My brother and I were so young when they started the ministry, it all just seemed “normal” to us.  But looking back, I am not sure I have enough faith to risk it all the way they did.

I realize that none of us is really in control of our lives and that unpredictable things can happen at any moment, but Keith and I live a largely predictable life.  At least right now, we know where our income is coming from, we know where we will be sleeping tonight, we know what we have to eat, we have good educational options for our kids, we have good health insurance, etc.  My parents could not predict any of those things, and yet they smiled and they were at peace – I never saw them “fret.”  My Dad believed worry was a sin, and I can tell you, I never saw him worry, ever.

I recently read an article called “We’re All Trading Our Lives For Something.  Trade Up” from the blog “Becoming Minimalist” (the very title of this blog used to give me hives, but I am not as scared of it now, and have come to enjoy it, even when it makes me squirm)  that said many of us trade beautiful, significant things for the things society tells us we need.  The author encouraged people to “trade up” – to resist societal pressures and live with passion and purpose.   My parents provide a great example of people who did, and are still doing, this very thing.

Using the societal pressures mentioned in the article (security, comfort, luxury and victory), I’m just going to explore a few ways I saw my parents live by faith:

Security

My parents had a board of directors (a group of amazing people – that’s a blog for another day) who set the ministry budget, but they never knew if they were going to make it.  My Dad never compromised his commitment to go to any church that called him, no matter how small, and that he would never ask for money (we always went on a “love offering” basis).

(As far as I know, this was the smallest church we went to, in Seabrook, NH – the church met in a garage)

Some weeks, the love offering couldn’t even pay for the gas it took to get there, but my parents never complained, and year after year, they were blown away at how God provided.  We went to big churches and tiny churches, but revivals only provided about 20% of the overall budget.  The rest came from individuals who believed in their ministry and felt compelled to support them.  Some people were big givers, many gave small amounts, and God miraculously took care of my family and sustained the ministry.  I often think of this when I feel like I don’t have much to give – I think of precious people who would send $5 or $10 a month to support the ministry, and how God used their collective faithfulness to do amazing things.

It seemed that every aspect of “security” was a challenge for my parents.  They wanted to travel as a family, but home school was illegal at the time, so they were not even sure how we would get an education.  Eventually, they sought the help of the NC superintendent of schools, and after swearing them to secrecy, he told them of a school in Baltimore, MD, that had a correspondence school that various celebrities, circus families, and missionaries used to teach their children.  Back then, home school was largely unheard of, so it was a strange undertaking, with an uncertain future.  But, as with everything else in their lives, they fearlessly followed God’s leading, and trusted Him with the future.

“God delights in answering our impossible prayers.”  Bob Goff, Love Does

Comfort

Comfort was a state of mind for my parents.  They just learned to appreciate what was offered to them.  Each week, churches provided places for us to stay – usually with a family from the congregation or a local motel.  Sometimes we had great accommodations and sometimes it was terrible.  The terrible places are memorable because my parents would make it funny and we would have a big laugh.  One week we stayed at a beautiful cabin, but there was no running water or power.  We trekked over to someone else’s house to take showers, and ate so many roasted hotdogs, I don’t think I ate a hotdog for a couple of years after that week.  And we once stayed at a motel so tiny, my Dad joked that you could sit on the toilet and brush your teeth over the sink at the same time.   Seriously, one person had to sit down on the bed for another to pass by.

 (Ah yes, the Hayfield Motel)

 And this is how old my brother and I were when we got snowed in at this tiny motel:

Now that I’m a parent, I look back at these pictures in a totally different light.  I think things like, “I would lose my ever-loving mind if I had to spend 24/7 with my young kids in my space every second!”  I mean, think about it . . . tiny hotel rooms, being guests in homes (even worse because little kids are so unpredictable), teaching them, taking your kids to church every night, spending hours every weekend traveling in a van (“how much longer until we get there?”) prior to any electronics or built in DVD players (but we did have an 8 track baby!) . . . I would have had a first class ticket on the crazy train!  But my parents never complained, they never made us feel like an annoyance or burden, and they always handled everything with ease, as if our circus-like existence was normal.

“But godliness with contentment is great gain.”  1 Timothy 6:6

Luxury

Just as comfort was a state of mind, I also think luxury had a different definition to my parents.  If we had a roof over our heads, something to drive, something to eat, and something to wear, they were happy.  In fact, my Dad always acted like we lived in the lap of luxury, and I believed it.  My brother and I never knew that we didn’t have any money.  We got to travel and see the country, we ate well because church people know how to love you with food, and people at every stop would take us on “field trips” to the places where they worked and played (we visited all sorts of farms and factories over the years, went fishing and skeet shooting, we flew in small airplanes and rode motorcycles – my parents were adventurous and it was a fun and fascinating life).  And my Dad favored experiences over things, so if we were close to a theme park, they would figure out a way to take us to do fun things.  He always lived as if he might not see tomorrow or get another chance to grab the moment, so we LIVED.  As far as Morgan and I were concerned, we were rich.  My parents gave us an allowance and they told us they would meet our needs but we had to save for things we wanted (we both became good savers).

This is luxury when you are starting out in evangelism (check out the plaid curtains my Mom sewed for the windows):

Our first van was a cargo van and I sat on a plaid love seat (that would tip over backwards if Dad took off to quickly) and my brother traveled in a portable crib (he loved standing up and taking his hands off the rails to balance while my Dad drove) – definitely long before the days of child vehicle safety requirements!

“It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution.  It’s also a very clear path to happiness.”  Sheryl Sandberg

Victory

Our society is obsessed with winning and losing.  We love to rate and rank everything.  If my parents had operated with this mentality, they never would have been able to live by faith.  Even in their profession, there was pressure to play politics, meet the right people, get invited to bigger churches, and people were always asking my Dad why he didn’t hold big crusades like Billy Graham or take his preaching to the airways like televangelists.  But that wasn’t the vision or the calling, and although it was hard at times, my parents counted victory as being faithful.  There were times when they saw lives changed, saw pastors and churches encouraged, saw renewed passion for God, saw God’s love transforming hearts and minds – but sometimes they drove away from a church and wondered why God wanted them there.  Sometimes they grew weary.  A good friend once said of them, “Only when the final curtain of history has fallen, will we know the far reaching effects of the Riddle Evangelistic Association.”   Ministry can be tough to measure, but the beauty is that it’s not really meant to be measured.  We are just supposed to reach out and love, to share what we have experienced, and then leave the rest in God’s hands.

“When we get our security from Christ, we no longer have to look for it in the world, and that’s a pretty good trade.”  Bob Goff, Love Does

You have probably already surmised that I am really proud of my parents.  They are not perfect, but they were wonderful parents, and they taught me valuable lessons about living by faith.  My admiration for them grows as I get older and realize the difficulties of juggling the demands of life and raising kids, the pressures on marriages and families, and even the challenges of navigating the “church world.”

I don’t know how they did it.  Maybe that’s the real test of faith.  If you can explain it, if you can take credit for it, then maybe it’s not faith.  Because living by faith means depending on God.  It means finding peace and joy doing things that might seem crazy to the rest of the world.  It means being faithful, even when God doesn’t give you a “five year plan.”  It sounds careless, but real faith can be reckless and wild. 

My Dad often referenced the words to this Andrae Crouch song and I think it summarizes the life that my parents have lived:

“You may ask me why I serve the Lord.

Is it just for heaven’s gain?

Or to walk the mighty streets of gold,

And to hear the angels sing?

Is it just to drink from the fountain

That never will run dry

Or just to live forever and ever

In the sweet ol’ by and by?

No, if heaven never was promised to me

Or God’s promise to live eternally

It’s been worth just having the Lord in my life.

Living in a world of darkness,

He came along and brought me the light.”