Archives: Episode

June 19. Stuart Epperson. Stu grew up on a tobacco farm. When he was about sixteen, he and a buddy were hoeing corn on a mountainside in Virginia when they saw smoke rising and ran to check it out. Turned out to be one of Stu’s relatives and the buddy’s brother operating a corn-liquor still. Stu’s first shot at being an entrepreneur!  

He said that summer was when he knew he had been created for entrepreneurship.  

He went on to found the Salem Media Group, the leading US radio broadcaster, internet-content provider, and magazine publisher for Christian and traditional-values programming. He has more than 100 radio stations, including 67 in all of the top 25 markets and SRN News with more than 2,400 Affiliates.   

On this date in 1967, Stu founded the Winston-Salem Rescue Mission. He also founded Salem Pregnancy Support Center, One Kid At A Time, the Christian Association of Youth Mentoring, and Kidz Xtreme, an intercity Christian youth program focusing on Section 8 Housing. Not bad for a boy hauling moonshine. Today’s story takes a look at a moment in Stu’s grown-up family life. 

The man who understands his influence can use it for generations to come.  

One December morning, almost as soon as Stu had settled in his office, he learned someone had broken into his son’s home. There was gunfire. And his daughter-in-law Julie was there. Stu grabbed his phone and dialed her. 

Her phone rang, and it rang, and it rang.  

At last Julie picked up. With a crack in her voice, she told Stu what had happened.  

Like every weekday morning, she had dropped the kids off at school and gone back home.  

She was pulling back into their garage when she saw a pile of shattered glass on the ground. And the door she had locked just moments ago was now standing wide open. Instinctively, she grabbed her phone from her purse and managed to dial 911. 

She threw the car into reverse to back out of the garage, but a man in a black ski mask appeared at the door with a gun in his hand. He shouted at her to get out of the car, but she floored it, and he opened fire. Two shots exploded from his .45, but both bullets miraculously missed her. Julie’s car slammed into a tree, and the criminal escaped on foot. 

Within minutes police arrived and found Julie at a neighbor’s home—shaken, but happy to be alive. The police also discovered that as he fled the scene, the criminal had dropped his ski mask and his knife—evidence they could use to bring the masked man to justice. 

On the day that appointment with justice arrived, Stu accompanied Julie to the hearing where the criminal would be sentenced for attempted murder.  

Having worked with troubled youth through various organizations he had founded, Stu was familiar with the process. But this time, a young man’s anger had literally come to his family’s doorstep, nearly taking Julie’s life. Through all of this, it had been a challenge for Stu to respond in a way that honored God. 

Rather than take this personal story to the airwaves of his national media empire or use his power to destroy the young man who had nearly destroyed his own family, Stu showed up in court and looked for an opportunity to positively influence the outcome. Could any good come out of this? 

“When it came time for sentencing, the judge allowed family members to speak on [the criminal’s] behalf. The only male family member present was his great-grandfather. With tears welling in his eyes, the old man told the court he was a ‘good boy who fell in with the wrong crowd.’”  

Stu asked the judge for permission to speak to the court, and he asked why this boy’s father or his grandfather were not here for such an important hearing. It came out: sadly, neither one had been involved in the young criminal’s life. Two generations of fathers had been absent from duty. And the judge said he saw this “all the time.”  

“Prisons are full of young men who have fathers—if they can be found,” Stu later wrote about the experience. 

As a founding board member of Christian Association of Youth Mentoring, he is committed to help lead troubled young men out of a lifetime of bad choices. This happens through close relationships with father figures who are willing to invest in the young men. Over the years, Stu has seen the lives of many young men restored. 

“I have witnessed the positive results when an absentee father or adult male mentor chooses to get involved in a child’s life. Forging an emotional bond is true fatherhood and the best hope to stop this epidemic,” Stu said. 

“Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1 NIV). 

You have influence; use it productively. The man who understands his influence can use it for generations to come.  

Stones Cry Out. “50 Leaders of the Evangelical Generation: #43 Stu Epperson.” Radio Transformer. May 24, 2010. https://stonescryout.org/?p=3348. 

Epperson, Stuart Sr. “What it means to be a father.” Winston-Salem Journal. June 16, 2018. 

Do You Want to Learn More About This Man? 

Stu’s first shot at being an entrepreneur was making moonshine with a relative.  

They filled the trunk of his 1940 Ford with ten dollars’ worth of sugar and corn mash and turned it into moonshine, which they sold all over the mountain for five dollars a jug. Stu said he knew then that was what he had been created for. Entrepreneurship—not moonshining.  

At the end of that summer, the relative got busted. He went to prison; Stu went to Bob Jones University. He says, “We argued about who had the most confinement.”  

At Bob Jones, Stu learned how to live in God and how to build a radio station, and after he graduated, two years after his family home got electricity, it also had its own radio station. “It was illegal, but it was built,” he says.  

Next—to realize his dream—he needed a building to house a legal radio station. So he bartered. A builder would put a fully equipped building on Stu’s land, and after the radio station was up and running, Stu would advertise the builder’s company. Thirty-five builders turned him down before one agreed that the country needed a Christian radio station.  

June 18. Harland Sanders. Harland started his business career in a questionable neighborhood known as Hell’s Half-Acre. He owned a Shell gas station, and he wheeled out an old dining table to feed homemade ham and steak dinners to truck drivers.  

He was hard-working, hard-driving, and hotheaded, and he never backed down from a fight. Most people know Harland Sanders as Colonel Sanders of KFC fame, but today’s story starts out when he was a young man trying to get a toehold.  

When hard things happen, some men get angry. Some men get to work. 

The story starts back in the day—way before Kentucky Fried Chicken—when Colonel Sanders owned a gas station, and being type A all-the-way, he painted a zillion ads on billboards throughout the area. Of course, competitors took exception to Harland’s campaign, and one named Matt Stewart got himself a ladder and started painting out the signs.  

It was a tight community, and when Harland heard what Matt was doing, he grabbed a couple Shell Oil executives and raced over to stop him.  

The car skidded to a stop, and Harland and the two oil guys jumped out. Matt dropped his paintbrush, pulled a gun, and fired. But Harland’s aim was better. He fired and hit the reckless painter. Twice. 

“Don’t shoot, Sanders,” Matt said. “You’ve killed me.”  

Turns out Matt lived, and Harland was charged with attempted murder, but those charges were dropped. 

After that harrowing incident Harland changed, but not enough. He owned the Shell station, a hotel, and a restaurant in Corbin, Kentucky. He tried many different things, including correspondence-school lawyering and worked hard a lot of years. The businesses in Corbin did well. 

Then—through no fault of his—reality barged in and ruined Harland’s retirement. The interstate diverted traffic seven miles away from his businesses—a death sentence for a business like his. 

Facing bankruptcy, Harland sold his businesses at auction for a loss to pay the bills and taxes. Left at age 65 with only a $105-per-month Social Security check, Harland had an idea. And a recipe. 

Few people thought he could be successful, and some thought he was finished before he had started. Willing to risk to succeed, he put his wife and his pressure cookers into his car. And he franchised his eleven-herbs-and-spices formula to restaurant owners, who agreed to sell chicken dinners made according to his specifications. And a nickel for each chicken soon added up.  

“Don’t quit at age 65,” Harland said. “Maybe your boat hasn’t come in yet. Mine hadn’t.” 

He decided he could do one of two things. “Feed the poor and get rich, or feed the rich and get poor.” But money didn’t satisfy the Colonel. 

Harland knew he needed to change. He wanted to change. He tried to change. Finally, he realized he couldn’t change himself. “I knew I should have [Jesus]. I knew I should walk with him [but] I couldn’t reach him [because of] my sinfulness. I used to curse terrible, did since boyhood. I wanted to quit for years and years, but I couldn’t. [I realized] you’ve got to get God in your heart, and you’ve got to get in his heart, too.”  

Harland decided it was never too late to change. 

He accepted God’s forgiveness. Not long before his death he said that salvation became the greatest experience of his eighty-nine years. But he wanted to do more than change his own life. 

He sold Kentucky Fried Chicken for $500,000 and paid his first tithe. He gave the Canadian operations to the Harland Sanders Charitable Foundation to fund thousands of scholarships. “That’s where the Lord has saved me, I think, for that kind of a deal… to do something for him.” 

Harland made a fortune and gave away millions. “No use being the richest man in the cemetery ’cause you can’t do any business in there.” 

“So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him” (2 Corinthians 5:16–18 NLT). 

Do you think it’s too late? When hard things happen, some men get angry. Some men get to work. 

Damn Interesting. “Colonels of Truth.” Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.damninteresting.com/colonels-of-truth/. 

Gavaris, Dean. “Christian testimony of Col Sanders of KFC fame.” 1979. Accessed May 8, 2020. 

June 17. John Eliot. John dreamed of taking the gospel to nearby native Americans. On this date in 1670, John established a church at Maktapog and preached to them—a little haltingly maybe—in their own language.  

A fundamental Puritan tenet held that believers ought to be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves.  

So while he did his full-time pastor’s job, John managed to devise an Algonquian grammar so their language could be written, and then he translated the Old and New Testaments into Algonquin. Here’s how the church for Native Americans got started. 

When dreams are delayed, don’t give up. God will come through. 

One crisp October day in 1646, John and his friends tramped four miles from his house toward the Indian village on Nonantum Hill.  

When the Puritans had fled religious persecution in England to establish a church in the New World, they also committed to serve as missionaries to the natives, and John had often dreamed about bringing the truth of the gospel to them. 

But it had taken more than fifteen years for John to establish his own home and learn the native’s language. Finally, today the God-given dream would happen.  

“And don’t forget the many times I clearly told you what was going to happen in the future. For I am God—I only—and there is no other like me who can tell you what is going to happen. All I say will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish,” (Isaiah 46:9–10 TLB). 

John and his friends reached the principal wigwam, and several chief men of the village welcomed the visitors in English. John was honored by how graciously they used the few words of English they knew. Today would test how well he could communicate in their language. 

He stepped into the gloom of a large square room, where multiple fires burned. There were vents through the roof, but pungent smoke filled the air. Men, women, and children lined the walls. 

What a glorious sight! John fought back emotion so he could speak. And he spoke. 

Occasionally he needed the help of an interpreter, but it was obvious his audience wanted to hear the words from his own mouth, so he did his best.  

He explained what God considered right and good. Then he showed how no one could behave perfectly every single day. Then he said that Jesus was the only way to recover from this hopeless inability to please God.  

The people were attentive, and John taught for an hour and a half. Finally, he asked if anyone had questions. 

A man stood. “How may we come to know Jesus Christ?” 

John explained that the story of Jesus was in the Bible, but since the Indians couldn’t read the English words, they should meditate on what he had told them because it was from God’s book. “Do this much and often,” said John.  

He encouraged them to think about it when they lay on mats in their wigwams, when they went into the fields, and when they walked in the woods. Then he told them to pray and say, “Lord, make me to know Jesus Christ for I know him not.” 

Another man said he had tried to pray, but his friend said God couldn’t understand Indian prayers. 

John explained that God made all men—English and Indian. Since he had made them, He could understand them. 

Were “Englishmen … ever … so ignorant of God and Jesus Christ as they were?” asked another. 

John perceived the root of the question. “There are two sorts of Englishmen; some are bad… and live wickedly,” said John. These kinds of Englishmen didn’t know Jesus. But there were “a second sort of Englishmen,” who turned away from wrong behavior and looked to Jesus for help. “They are good men now,” said John, “and know Christ and love Christ and pray to Christ.” 

More than three hours passed! John asked the Indians if they were weary, but they wanted to hear more. John thought it would be good to leave them with a hunger for spiritual things, so he stopped, but promised to come again. 

As John walked home, he praised God that his dream to teach the natives of the New World was finally beginning to unfold. 

What dream has God given you? When dreams are delayed, don’t give up. God will come through. 

Adams, Nehemiah. The Life of John Eliot with an Account of the Early Missionary Efforts Among the Indians of New England. Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1847. 

Moore, Martin, A. M. Memoirs of the Life and Character of Rev. John Eliot, Apostle of the N. A. Indians. Boston: T. Bedlington Flagg and Gould, Printers, 1822. 

Do You Want to Learn More About This Man? 

A fundamental Puritan tenet held that believers ought to be able to read and interpret the Bible for themselves.  

So while he did his full-time pastor’s job, John managed to devise an Algonquian grammar so their language could be written, and then he translated the Old and New Testaments into Algonquin.  

The first Bible printed in America was Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, an Algonquin translation by John Eliot. It was published in 1663. 

June 16. Glenn Cunningham. Glenn had the courage and the drive of a lion. On this date in 1934, Glenn set the World Record for the Outdoor Mile. Four years later, he set the World Record for the Indoor Mile. Wait until you hear how he got started.  

When tragedy strikes, triumph starts between your ears.  

Glenn won races. But he never should have been able to walk. 

Inside the old schoolhouse, his brother Floyd stoked the large potbellied stove. Despite the February snow, his sister Letha played outside, and their younger brother Raymond was drawing on the blackboard. 

Mr. Schroeder had left the front door locked and kept the key, but anyone could get in through the side door—which only opened from the outside. 

“[Brother Floyd] was arranging the coal chunks on top of the wood, then he reached over to get the five-gallon can of kerosene that was kept nearby to get the fire started. He started to pour it into the stove. Then everything blew up!” 

Apparently, at a community meeting the night before, someone had left a can of gasoline they had used to refill lanterns before people went home. And Floyd had picked up the gas can. 

Flames engulfed Glenn’s legs. Smoke filled his lungs. 

Glenn and his siblings stumbled toward home but remembered their mother had spent the night with a neighbor, and their father had gone to fetch her home. Glenn fought fear and agony. 

“I remember screaming and not being able to stop, even when my parents and eventually the doctor arrived. [The doctor] held out no hope for Floyd. He was too badly burned.” 

But Glenn trusted God. He had nothing else to lean on. “We had attended church revivals and home Bible studies. In fact, I had become a Christian at one of those home meetings. And I remembered… Floyd’s favorite song.  

“Several days later, [Floyd] was humming that tune, then he actually said the words to the chorus, the first actual words I had heard since the explosion. He finished the last lines haltingly, ‘Meet… meet… at Jesus’ feet,’ then he took Mother’s hand and pressed it to his face.” 

Nine days after the fire, Floyd died. 

Tragedy defined Glenn. Pain became his ally. 

“The doctor told my parents that I might live unless there was too much infection that set in. ‘If the infection gets too bad,’ he told Mother and Father, ‘we won’t have any choice but to amputate. Regardless, Glenn will never be able to walk again on those legs. They are just too badly burned.’” 

Infection spread. Glenn overheard a woman tell his mother to face reality—the boy would be an invalid for life. But Glenn promised his mother he would walk again. 

At first he scooted a chair around the kitchen. He ventured outside to hobble along a fence. He did chores until he could work no more. He refused to give up. He thrived on the challenge. Christmas Eve he gave Mother the present he had promised—his first unaided steps. 

Glenn kept on keeping on. Kept walking until he could run, kept running until he became a champion—and he set the World Record for the Outdoor Mile. 

“Glenn posted a personal best time of 4:04 in the mile—in 1938, 14 years before Roger Bannister broke the four-minute barrier.” 

After his running career, at Cunningham Youth Ranch, Glenn taught some 8,000 children to never give up. “‘Each is lovable in his own way,’ Glenn once said of the children sent to him by parents, social workers, or juvenile courts, ‘and all are equally precious. God has granted Ruth and me 8,000 miracles, and we are humbly grateful.’” 

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1 NLT). 

Your loses may seem impossible to overcome; work hard to win the battle in your mind. When tragedy strikes, triumph starts between your ears.  

Adams, Jeff. Encouraging Words: Rebuilding Your Dreams. Enumclaw, WA: Redemption Press, 2017. 

Interview Spotlights. “GLENN CUNNINGHAM (1909-1988)…Never Quit.” Accessed May 7, 2020. 

Do You Want to More About This Man? 

Glenn’s hometown—Elkhart, Kansas—named a park after him, and in 1974, he was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame.  

From the University of Iowa, Glenn earned a master’s degree and from New York University a PhD. He also served as Director of Physical Education at Cornell College in Iowa for four years before he and his wife opened the youth camp.  

June 15. Kimo. Kimo lived in an Ecuadorian jungle, and his  tribe’s name was Waodani, but because of their stone-age mentality and violent ways, neighboring tribes called them the Auca, which means “naked savages.”   

As a boy, Kimo was was taught what all the Waodani were taught: that “he must spear and live or be speared and die.”  

Today’s story takes place eight years after Kimo and some other natives surrounded a small group of missionaries and speared them to death. One of the missionaries was Nate Saint, a jungle pilot. On this date in 1965, Kimo baptized Nate’s children, Steve and Kathy Saint.  

God can turn a place of senseless death into a place of life. 

Dark-green leaves spilled from the jungle on either side of the muddy trail that Kimo and about twenty others walked. 

Marj Saint and her two older children, Steve and Kathy, had chosen the destination. They were hiking out to the sandbar where, eight years before, Nate Saint, her husband and their father, had been killed and buried.  

They crossed a ridge, forded streams, descended toward a river, and now—in dugout canoes—poled downstream. 

When Kimo stepped out of the canoe onto the sandbar, memories rushed at him. Here the foreigners had shouted—in his language—“We are your friend!”  

But he—along with Dyuwi, Mincaye, and three others—spear-killed the men who had given them gifts. The men had guns, but didn’t shoot them. They only cried out, “Why are you doing this?” 

Now, Kimo’s heart hurt. His tribe, the Waodani, had once been the most violent society on earth. But because of the Creator’s Son, the people changed. Kimo looked at Steve’s and Kathy’s Aunt Rachel. When she came to live with the people who had killed her brother, Kimo was surprised.  

She had told them the Creator’s Son came down to the dirt to save His people from the darkness in their hearts. Kimo believed her. And he stood taller. Tomorrow he and the others would give this killing place new memories. 

Kimo scanned the beach. Jaguar tracks printed the sand, and it was growing dark. Some of the Waodani gathered cane poles and palm fronds to make shelters, and others fished for supper. Evening mist settled, the fires burned, and monkey meat and fish stewed in the pots. 

The next morning, the group gathered for a holy ceremony. The light-skinned children, who visited during school vacations, would be baptized with two Waodani teens. Kathy and Steve had honored Kimo and Dyuwi by asking the men to baptize them because the Creator’s Son had changed the warriors into God-followers. 

Kimo spoke to the Creator. “Seasons and seasons ago,” he prayed, “we came here to do a bad thing that made Your heart cry. But now look! We have come back to this same sand place to make Your heart happy.” 

After the prayer, Kimo lowered the children into the river. When he raised the children, and the water ran off, their faces were bright. Kimo told them to follow God’s trail—living happily and at peace. 

Afterward, the other warriors led the family into the edge of the jungle. They pointed to a tree stump. “This is where the five foreign God-followers built their sleeping house when they came to bring us God’s carvings and teach us to live well,” they said. It was also where the God-followers were buried. 

“Look!” Marj pointed at the ground. Four plants with bright-red flowers grew. “Wouldn’t it have been special if there had been five?” 

“But, Mother,” said Steve, “wasn’t Ed’s body found and buried farther downriver?” About ten feet downriver from the tree-house stump, they saw another plant with the same bright-red blossom. 

Jesus said, “The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10 NLT). 

Do you have a place of death—literal or metaphorical—that needs to become a place of life? 

Ask God to take your death place from the clutches of destruction and remake it into something good. God can turn a place of senseless death into a place of life. 

Based on an interview with Steve Saint, 2019. 

Saint, Steve. End of the Spear. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, SaltRiver Imprint, 2005. 

Do You Want to Learn More About This Man? 

When Jim Elliott, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian contacted the Waodani, only about five hundred existed. In-tribe killing was so prevalent that the tribe would have died out.  

But God used the death of the five missionaries, with Rachel Saint and others, who taught Jesus’ teachings to the tribe, to change Waodani culture. About 25 percent of the tribe have become Christ-followers. Christ’s gospel almost completely stopped the killing. Sixty years later, the tribe has multiplied and is growing rapidly. 

June 14. Phil Robertson. Phil grew up in a log cabin with no electricity or phone or toilet or bathtub, and he had four brothers and two sisters. And he grew up to be a reality TV star.

Phil says he came up in the 1950s, but it was more like the 1850s, and his family mostly lived off the land.

Must have been some good land because Phil went on to be all-state in football, baseball, and track, and a football scholarship took him on to university. But when the pros tried to recruit him, Phil turned them down because it would interfere with his hunting. For him, football was merely the vehicle to get his education.

And he did. Phil earned a bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s degree in education and supported his family as a teacher—until he hit a rough patch. That’s where today’s story comes in. By the way, on this date in 1991, Phil patented the duck call.

Blessing your enemies is hard, but it leads to God-given joy.

God used duck calls to change Phil’s fortune; God used His Word to change Phil’s life. If you have ever seen the reality show on A&E called Duck Dynasty, you have probably seen Phil, the wise patriarch of the clan. With his long brown hair and his longer not-so-brown beard, he looks like a penniless vagabond. But the duck call he invented made him and his family millionaires.

Phil grew up in poverty and rebellion. He married Kay when he was nineteen, but marriage did not bring maturity. He drank too much, experimented with drugs, and had multiple affairs. When Kay told him she was going to leave him, Phil decided to straighten up and follow Jesus.

Phil found a man who had once tried to introduce him to Jesus. (But Phil had thrown him out of his house.) This time, he asked the man to try again. Phil became a Christian and learned his first lesson: “Love God, love man, and try to be good. I decided I would try that. I had never tried before.”

Now Phil was an Arkansas fisherman and a hunter. That was his livelihood and his passion. And he explained how life was: “See, you got your Rednecks and your River Rats.”

River Rats were poor men who broke the law instead of getting an honest job, and they bothered Phil. River Rats, unlike Rednecks, were good thieves and often stole Phil’s fish.

But Phil had studied Romans 12.

“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.…Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.… If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. …Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:14, 17–18, 20–21 NIV).

Phil thought about the River Rats, the banes of his existence. That day, when he went down to the lake where he had laid a net, he heard voices. So he hid in the bushes.

It was the River Rats, and they were stealing his fish. Again.

“They’re stealing my fish, Lord? You want me to bless them?”

Phil thought of Romans 12. “Do not return evil for evil.”

Phil had caught these River Rats with his fish before and usually roared at them and showed his shotgun and threatened their lives. Like rats, they ran away. But this time Phil wanted to obey God and His Word.

“I wanted to see if this would work, but it definitely made no earthly sense for sure.” Phil approached the Rats and took his gun with him. “I was going to be good to them, but I brought my gun in case they weren’t good to me.”

Phil approached the River Rats as they were lifting Phil’s net. He asked them what they were doing with his net.

They pretended ignorance and said, “Oh, is that what this is?”

“Here’s what I am going to do,” Phil said. “I’m going to lift that net, and whatever fish is there I am going to give to you.”

The River Rats were shocked, but not too shocked to take the fish. They left Phil, but they kept looking back at him with pleased confusion. From that day on, they didn’t try to steal anything from the Robertsons.

“I figured that this meant God was right all along.”Phil smiled.

Who can you bless today even if they don’t deserve it? Do something for them in secret, and see what God will do. Blessing your enemies is hard, but it leads to God-given joy.

Robertson, Phil. Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as a Duck Commander. New York: Howard Books, 2015.

Robertson, Phil. “Fish Story.” Accessed May 7, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTzN3JX_xvA.

Do You Want to Know More About This Man?

When ESPN interviewed Phil, he said, “One time a bunch of geese came over and I was over there with the coach and talking about techniques or whatever, a big skull session on the practice field. I heard these geese. Remember we were practicing in the fall of the year — and the grand passage as we call it — the ducks and geese were coming from Canada. I heard these blues and snow geese coming over and I sort of fell into a trance. Of course I had my headgear next to my chest and I’m looking toward the sky and finally one of them coaches looked around, and he started cursing at me, ‘What are you doing son? Get over here! What are you looking up at?’

“I said, ‘A bunch of them geese, Coach. Boy they pretty, ain’t they?’

“He said, ‘Get your butt over here.’”

Terry Bradshaw said, “The quarterback playing ahead of me, Phil, loved hunting more than he loved football. He’d come to practice directly from the woods, squirrel tails hanging out of his pockets, duck feathers on his clothes. Clearly he was a fine shot, so no one complained too much.”

June 13. Dallas Willard. Dallas served for 45 years as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. He was also a Baptist pastor and wrote world-rocking books about what it means to be a Christian and what spiritual disciplines are all about. Dallas didn’t argue. He didn’t put people down. He didn’t have to have the last word. And the man never hurried. Here’s a story about one thing he did do.

When a man keeps his word, lives are changed.

It was 1985 when Dallas committed to travel across the world to speak to men he had never met. For no pay. For an undetermined amount of time. 

Dallas first received a letter from a South African man named Trevor Hudson—a Methodist minister who had been jailed with Desmond Tutu. They had protested apartheid—the government-driven system of discrimination, segregation, and unfairness based on skin color and facial features, which led to people who protested the system being brutally treated and arrested.

After he got out of prison, Trevor got mumps and was quarantined, and that’s when he discovered Dallas’s philosophical teachings on audio. As Trevor recovered, Dallas’s teachings resonated with him—especially the teachings about how a man could live aware of God’s presence all the time.

Once he was well, Trevor asked Dallas to visit him in South Africa. But there was a catch. Trevor didn’t have money to give Dallas for the flight or hotel costs, although he could try to raise money for the flight. He couldn’t even guarantee an honorarium for his services. All Trevor could offer was a sofa in a small sewing room at his home, and that the audience would be a few pastor friends for Dallas to teach.

Dallas didn’t take long to answer. He delighted in helping his students on the University of Southern California campus where he taught, so why would it be any different on the other side of the world?

He wrote Trevor that he would be delighted to go to Johannesburg. As for the payment, Trevor didn’t have to worry about providing it.

After a twenty-five-hour flight, Dallas arrived in South Africa. He stayed with Trevor and listened intently to his friends who would come to Trevor’s house. For three weeks, Dallas shared his wisdom and listened to his audience’s concerns about all that had been happening in the country. In between teaching sessions, he prayed for the people individually.

But it wasn’t only empathy Dallas shared. Into this time and place of brutality, where human life was demeaned, a place where people who stood up for the dignity of life were arrested, Dallas brought with him the joy of the Lord.

Singing hymns, showing photographs of his family, talking with the Lord in the middle of the night—Dallas’s joy was contagious. His contentment and intimacy with the Lord had become second nature to him.  Dallas’s demeanor made a profound impact on Trevor, who had seen much suffering under apartheid. He wasn’t used to seeing a Christian have such joy and open communication with God, and it started Trevor on a road of healing. He started to understand the joy of the Lord.

At the end of the three weeks, when Dallas was set to return to the United States, Trevor surprised him with an honorarium for the conference. Dallas accepted the payment gratefully, but before anyone could find out, Dallas took the money and gave it to one of Trevor’s friends who worked in a poor area of town.

After all, he had told Trevor not to worry about the payment.

Both Dallas and Trevor gained something profound from the experience. Dallas gained a new friend, someone he would even trust to critique chapters of his upcoming books. Trevor not only gained a friend, but he got a new view of God. Dallas had asked Trevor, “Is your God gloomy?”

That’s when Trevor realized that his viewpoint had to change. God could empathize with suffering, but He could also be full of joy despite the hardships. Even the Gospels showed just how happy Jesus could be!

To Dallas, there were no strangers in the kingdom of God. And despite having a career based on words, his actions did as much teaching as any of his lectures or his books.

“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16 NIV).

Has someone else impacted your walk with Christ? How can your actions speak life into others? When a man keeps his word, lives are changed.

Moon, Gary W. Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018. Kindle.

Moon, Gary W., ed. Eternal Living: Reflections of Dallas Willard’s Teaching on Faith and Formation. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

June 12. Steve Saint. Steve was born to missionaries in Ecuador—missionaries who wanted to reach a tribe whose basic teaching was, “[You] must spear and live or be speared and die.” 

And when Steve was five, natives speared his father, jungle-pilot Nate Saint, to death. After a time, the violent tribe did repent and turn to Christ, and one of the men who had attacked Nate Saint ended up baptizing Steve.  

After high school, Steve went to the United States and built a successful business career.  

But Steve’s Aunt Rachel, also a missionary, had been serving the tribe for thirty-six years. And when she died at the age of eighty, that same tribe asked Steve to come back to the jungle to help them.  

So Steve, his wife, and their four teenage children moved back to the jungle. That’s when Steve realized that providing technology could make the tribe self-sufficient.  

And he traveled back to the United States and founded Indigenous Training & Equipping Company (ITEC), which develops tools and sustainable training for missionaries. They equip indigenous Christ-followers to meet needs and share the gospel.  

Today’s story features Steve testing an ITEC device.   

God can be trusted. Give Him your pain.  

Steve mounted a wing onto an old hatchback car with the hatch removed. He was testing a fixed wing for possible use on the “Maverick,” ITEC’s flying car. Since ITEC didn’t have a wind tunnel, Steve would simulate one. 

He rigged a push-pull cable in the back of the car to manipulate the wing so he could measure lift. He asked an intern to drive the car, and Steve climbed into the safety harness in the back. The intern drove 30 mph.  

40.  

50.  

“Let’s try 55,” Steve said. 

The next thing Steve remembered was the faint voice of his sweet wife Ginny. He couldn’t feel his body.  

He lost consciousness.  

He woke. Saw clouds going by, flickering. Decided he must be in a helicopter. If he was, this injury was a bad one. 

The safety straps on the flying car’s wings had broken. And the wing sliced open the top of Steve’s head down to his skull. A severe whiplash caused his spinal cord to swell and cut off circulation.  

Later, as he lay in the ICU, Steve survived in a dark cave of agonizing pain. He heard Ginny’s voice. But he didn’t dare open his eyes. When he did, the pain monsters surrounded him. 

Then the doctors took out part of Steve’s spinal column to allow for the swelling, and they inserted metal rods. People throughout the world prayed for his recovery. But Steve said, “Please don’t ask that God will restore me to my normal, previous uninjured life. Pray that God will write this chapter of my life His way. I want God’s ‘Plan A.’” 

Steve’s determination to surrender to God’s best didn’t mean anything was easy. Now classified as an incomplete quadriplegic, Steve faced weeks in a rehab hospital and years relearning how to do even simple tasks. Where were his hands? Could he learn to move his legs? Most normal function would never return. He said he was as “dependent” in some ways as his “three-year-old granddaughter.” 

This man who had roamed the jungles of Ecuador, built successful businesses, and eventually founded ITEC, now felt incapable.  

“Having something to do that is worth doing and the ability to do it is one of the great gifts of life,” said Steve. “There is no pain I suffer greater than having to go days at a time without being able to do anything productive.” 

And people treated him differently. “When I sit in a wheelchair and other people are standing up, I become invisible,” said Steve. “They will talk about me as if I’m not there. My body doesn’t work, but my mind does. I’m still a person.” 

Steve admitted it was a “harsh, humiliating, painful road.” But he trusted God. “It’s either going to be my story or God’s. When we let God write our story, He doesn’t promise that all the chapters will be easy. …God frequently starts his best stories with the hardest chapters. Trusting God to take away pain is acceptable, but trusting God’s will and His love when He doesn’t take away the pain, that’s our greatest opportunity to demonstrate faith.” 

Steve encouraged others to let God make sense of life’s hard chapters. “In North America we tend to put makeup on our life-scars. But people with life wounds want to be ministered to by people who have scars where they have wounds. Our scars give us credibility and give the wounded hope that God can heal them, too.” 

“Then Satan… smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. …Then his wife said to him, ‘Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die!’ But he said to her, ‘You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity?’ In all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:7–10 NASB). 

Do you deal with pain God hasn’t removed yet? God can be trusted. Give Him your pain.  

Based on an interview with Steve Saint, 2019. 

ITEC. “Steve Saint.” Accessed 2020. https://www.itecusa.org/steve-saint/. 

June 11. Thomas Hooker. Hooker lived long before the United States had a flag with thirteen stars. He was a pastor willing to pick a fight he believed in. And he believed the people had the God-given right to vote. 

So he took his people and founded the Colony of Connecticut. Now there’s a man ready to act on what he believes. Today’s story gives us a more close-up look at Thomas Hooker, the pastor. 

It can be tough, but sometimes the right thing to do is to admit we’re wrong. 

Hooker shook his head because he didn’t know what to try next. The town troublemaker was at it again. Certainly, like most boys his age, he was young and mischievous, but for this boy, trouble wasn’t the exception. It was his norm. And he had been reprimanded—a lot.  

And this time, there was property damage. 

Seeing his property destroyed, Hooker’s neighbor was furious, and he demanded that the boy be reminded that such behavior was wrong. Now, Hooker—as the town preacher—was assigned to find out the truth and to dole out the punishment.  

While Hooker loved the truth, punishing wayward boys was not his favorite task. But the boy had been caught and hauled in to see Mr. Hooker, and the child now stood waiting to be interrogated.  

In his mind, Hooker rehearsed the lecture he was about to give, and he approached the young accused. Some guidance could surely save the boy from destroying property again. 

Hooker began. Had the boy destroyed the neighbor’s property? 

No. 

What had compelled him to do such reckless behavior?  

He didn’t do it. 

Didn’t he know he brought dishonor to his family and to God by sinning so much? 

But the boy crossed his arms and again said he didn’t do it. 

Hooker scratched his head. The evidence was all there. The property was destroyed. The boy’s reputation alone proved it was him. If he would just tell the truth, his punishment wouldn’t have to be as severe. 

But the boy shook his head and said he didn’t do it. 

Hooker asked question after question, but the answers were all the same. The boy said he was innocent this time and that someone else had destroyed the property.  

By this time, Hooker became angry. Destruction of property was bad enough, but lying on top of it? He had had enough. His voice rose, and he pointed an accusatory finger. If the boy would just admit the crime, this matter would be done and over with. 

But the boy said quietly, “Sir, I see you are in a passion. I’ll say no more to you.” Then he turned and ran away.  

Somewhat shocked, Hooker was left alone there. What sort of child would be so rebellious?  

But soon Hooker realized he had been too harsh. Aside from knowing the boy’s bad reputation, what proof did he have? No one had witnessed the crime. No one had seen the boy get into trouble with his neighbor.  

Hooker remembered the look of frustration on the boy’s face as he had run away, and guilt washed over the pastor. What if the boy were innocent?  

Satan was the accuser, and God was the judge. Hooker was the boy’s under-shepherd, and though he couldn’t figure out the true culprit, God would. And all Hooker could do was find the boy and apologize. 

Right away, Hooker had someone bring the child back.  

But the wronged boy didn’t care to meet the preacher’s sad eyes. He wasn’t in the mood for another lecture.  

Hooker told the boy that there was no proof he had done the destruction.  

The boy said he had not done it, and this time Hooker believed him. Said he wished he had believed him sooner. 

Hooker said that when they had talked before, he had gotten too angry. “It was my sin, and it is my shame,” Hooker said. “I am truly sorry for it, and I hope in God I shall be more watchful hereafter.” 

The boy’s indifferent expression suddenly changed, and he looked confused. He wasn’t used to a grown-up apologizing for being wrong. In fact, they had always said he was wrong. The boy’s mouth dropped slightly open, and he seemed not to know what to say. 

So Hooker continued to provide some older-brotherly advice to help the boy stay out of trouble. 

“He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy” (Proverbs 28:13 NKJV). 

Have you wronged someone? How can you make things right? It can be tough, but sometimes the right thing to do is to admit we’re wrong. 

Hooker, Edward W. The Life of Thomas Hooker. Lives of the Chief Fathers of New England. Vol. 6. Boston: 1870. 

Mather, Cotton. Magnalia Christi Americana or The Ecclesiastical History of New-England. Vol. 1. Hartford: Silas Andrus, Robert & Burr, Printers, 1820.