I was once asked a question that went like this, “If you were given one day to do anything you wanted, for 24 hours, with no schedules or responsibilities or possibility of being contacted, what would you do?”

I thought about it for awhile… In fact, I think about it a lot… When I’m buried by the cares and troubles of life… When I find myself too busy during the day to enjoy it, and too tired at night to enjoy my time with my wife…

An entire day? Whatever I want?

My dream day is one that consists of trying to re-construct the events that have been the source of some of my best memories.

The day begins with me waking up early, not in an exhausted or forced or dutiful way, but in an excited, Christmas morning way. The anticipation of what this day will bring wakes me up refreshed and alert.

I wander into the bathroom to perform the cleansing rituals that I do daily for the good of mankind, and find the water temperature to be perfectly scalding for the entire session – no loss of pressure or temperature even though I take a really long shower.

I walk outside freshly clean and scrubbed and see a spread of my favorite breakfast delicacies – plump strawberries, perfectly ripe bananas, freshly washed green grapes, Panera Cinnamon Sugar Bagels, crispy bacon, scrambled eggs with chunky salsa, and a steaming cup of Starbucks finest.

The sounds of nature waking up with me fill the air with a symphonic beauty that provides a stirring soundtrack to my breakfast feast. Now my wife walks out to join me in the festival of taste… She is at once radiant and vulnerable, she sits down next to me and leans in for a snuggle and a kiss. She is pain free today, and we both scheme and dream about what this gift of a day will bring.

Our activities would bring me to the exhilarating edge of danger and risk, as I dive deep, drive fast, and swing far. In the midst of all of the heart pounding adventure, we find a hammock to take a sun drenched nap in…

Now we are joined by some of our closest friends and family to laugh and play in the yard – watching the little ones yell and run, and fall and cry, and chase bubbles through the fields… Now it’s off to the water… The lake is so calm that it appears frozen, so quiet that it almost dares us to noisily slice through it’s serenity… Hours are spent racing and trolling, tubing and swimming…

The grill is on now and the steaks are almost finished… The ladies are busy inside preparing the side dishes of garlic mashed potatoes, fresh corn on the cob, a grilled chicken Caesar salad, along with a REAL fruit salad, full of the best fruits and completely lacking the dominance of cheap melon. The guys are outside hovering over the grill, sharing life and salivating over its contents…

The meal is one of those rare instances where everything is delicious – taste complementing taste – a complex assortment of flavors that is satisfying even the most demanding and discerning palate. The conversation is as life-giving and stimulating as the food, with hearty laughter the dominant sound of our authentic exchanges about our journeys of faith and life.

Darkness has now cloaked the landscape, but the full moon is providing some accent lighting to the beauty of God’s creation. The smell of hot apple pie and espresso has wafted out to the deck where we are relaxed and unbuttoned.

An epic film has been chosen to finish out this wondrously refreshing day, and the home theater is now occupied with blankets and fresh coffees…

After hugs and goodbyes, we slide into our soft and inviting bed to rest our tired yet refreshed bodies after enjoying a Sabbath day to worship and to play, to rest and feast, to laugh and reflect.

That is my answer to the question… What does your day look like? Is it possible to fight for a day like this? Does that day sound refreshing? I realize that is my dream day, but weren’t there elements that could happen quite easily? Weren’t there parts that we could honestly practice? Conversation, food, film, friends, naps, worship… All part of the Sabbath experience – all vital to our very makeup by our Creator.

What is your Sabbath Dream?

September 11th, a day that lives in infamy in our country for good reason was given a new significance for us, for it was the day that the birth mom signed the paperwork giving us a Temporary Placement. This may not sound like much, but it is the same right that adoptive parents have when leaving the hospital with a pre-arranged adoption of a newborn. We were one step closer to the adoption being official. Now she could stay with us overnight. No more dating!

We braced ourselves for how little she was going to sleep at night. We had heard the horror stories of babies that wake up every 3 minutes all night every night for its first 12 years of life. We worked out the plan of who was going to get up with her first, and went to sleep. With one eye and both ears open. She slept ten hours the first night. Then ten and a half. Then ten. Eleven hours. Nine hours. Over twelve hours! We stopped telling people because they were getting mad at us.

The date for the final step was set for October 1st. This was the signing away of parental rights by the parents. Since the identified birth father had not been responding to repeated attempts to contact, his rights would be taken away as long as he was served papers and didn’t show up. We prayed for God’s will. We prayed for God’s will to be that he didn’t show up.
We gave the birth mom a ride down to the courthouse. I once again resorted to trying to lighten up the situation for her and her boyfriend by doing some old material. I lamented the consequences of beeping your horn at someone in Michigan. They kind of chuckled at my statement that if you use your horn to alert someone to the green light that they are texting through, they will wave a special finger at you to thank you and yell out their appreciation while offering you an air-fist pump. I try to be funny when tense and monumental moments are happening. You should see me when Ange is scared in the Emergency Room.

The birth mom went in without us to appear before the judge to sign away her parental rights. Forever. Michigan should have the parents chisel their names into stone, because that is how firm and unchangeable it is. She was in there for thirty minutes, but every minute was a white-knuckled stress fest for me. I was obsessed with looking for the birth father, who could have shown up and contested it. His appearance would have changed everything. His appearance was exactly what was making me sweat. I had no idea what he looked like. So every young looking male that came down the hallway got my heart racing with anxiety. It didn’t help that we were standing next to the juvenile detention center intake office. Every two minutes another punk would come down the hall to face the music, while my emotional state was rising and falling like a dinner cruise on the ocean that is making you sick.

Meanwhile, Ange was humming and singing and praying and joyful. She was living the dream during my near anxiety attack. She was reading Psalms and smiling while my chest was careening towards cardiac arrhythmia. I prayed 32 foxhole prayers in a row. “Please God, don’t let this be him! I’ll get in shape. I’ll stop drinking Diet Coke with Lime. I’ll stop wasting time playing video games.”

Finally, they emerged from the courtroom. Tears had been shed. Lots of them. I offered a half-hug and a nervous smile. Angela gave a long, loving, firm hug for several minutes as she spoke truth and encouragement into her ear. Later we found out that the birth mom went back and forth and delayed and asked questions. We heard that she cried and said she couldn’t do it. Then she had a moment of clarity, grabbed the pen, dried her tears and said “I have to do this for her.”

We left the courthouse together and I stopped to buy everyone ice cream. The sound of suction filled the awkward silence as we all strained to get the ice cream through the thin straws. We arrived at the boyfriend’s home, listened to a song of her favorite band, then said goodbye. As we left, we saw her crying on his shoulder. Ange and I were pretty pensive and quiet as we pulled away. When we arrived at the church, the weight of what our baby girl’s mom had done for her kept us from cheering or dancing in delight. In fact, if you had been watching from the window as we walked into the church, it would have appeared that it didn’t go through.

We went home that night and held our baby girl, Lily Rebekah Johnson a little tighter and kissed her a few more times than normal. The love that we have for Lily is unlike anything we have felt before. She is the answer to countless prayers, she is the goal at the end of a long and brutal journey, she is the fleshly reminder of the love and sovereignty of God.

We were feeling hopeless and lost, drowning in darkness and doubt. What we needed was the end of the story. God had changed my heart and called us to be willing to life a Pro-life ethic knowing that Lily was already alive and waiting for us. All that needed to change was me. God lifted the fog of the painful suffering and revealed that the whole time He was guiding us in a perfectly straight line from the first infertility treatment to our baby girl.

We couldn’t see anything, but God saw us.
We felt hopeless, but God had hope in store for us.
We were careening out of control, but God was in control.
All we were missing was the end of the story.
Healed hearts and a beautiful baby girl named Lily, our reminder that God brings life out of valleys.

Psa. 118:23 the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

An eighteen year old girl that had been through a lot in her life already considered giving her baby up for adoption before she gave birth, but decided to keep her. For the first few weeks everything was going well, but in the last week or so, some poor decisions had been made on behalf of the baby. Child Protective Services had been called in to investigate the situation.

That has to be one of the scariest sentences in the world for a parent.

The Deane’s had taken in a couple of older foster girls, ones that were nearly done with high school. Things didn’t work out with the girls as Timari had hoped, but she did get to know some of the Social Workers through the process and had met several of the girls’ friends. On Tuesday, August 18th a Social Worker that knew Timari Deane had gone to investigate a call of neglect and to remove an 11 week old little girl from the situation until a hearing could determine the baby’s fate the following Monday. A friend of Timari’s foster care girls placed a call to the only person she knew that could keep her baby until an adoptive family could be found. This eighteen year old single mom called Timari Deane and asked if she could get to her house immediately and beg for the Social Workers to allow this baby to go to the Deane’s until an adoptive family could be found.

When Timari arrived, Child Protective Services was waiting in the driveway. The Social Worker remembered Timari, and bent the rules and allowed the baby to go home to the Deane’s until the hearing on Monday. They had five days to find an adoptive home for this baby girl, or she would be placed in the protection of the state in foster care.

We set up a time to meet the birth mom a few hours after we met and held the baby for the first time. We made some calls, set up an appointment with an adoption attorney and an adoption agency (one call covered both, the lawyer is married to the adoption agent) for the next morning, and headed to the meeting place. Starbucks, my homefield. As we were gazing into each others eyes at a stoplight marveling at God’s handiwork, our car was slammed into from behind by a teenage boy driving his mom’s minivan with his driver’s permit. I can’t print what I yelled at him. Just kidding – I simply informed him that ramming into someone from behind that had been sitting at a stoplight for over five seconds does not bode well for your future insurance rates.

We were late for our appointment. Thankfully, so was she. I nervously asked if she wanted anything from Starbucks since I was about to order a drink with enough caffeine to paralyze a rhino. We all sat and chatted about her giving us her baby. Forever. We told her bits and pieces of our story. I tried to make her smile with some dry humor. The gravity and tension of the situation was tangible. She asked us a few question that we did our best to answer honestly.

We didn’t just want to give answers that we knew she would want to hear. We shared our true hearts with her and prayed that God would give her peace about us. She shared some of her story, and we realized that she had truly experienced things that no child should have to go through. Feeling unloved and rejected. Wishing she had been given up for adoption rather than have her upbringing. We all felt the irony of that statement, and Angela gently said, “It’s amazing that you want to give your daughter something that you never had.”

She looked at us and said she wanted us to raise her baby.

We got in our damaged car and floated home.

We met with our adoption attorney the next day in Dearborn, searching in vain for his office for ten minutes when we were already a few minutes late. His name was Herb and he had a white beard and wore madras shorts. We filled him in on the situation and quickly realized that he was truly an expert in the adoption field. He suggested a power of attorney for Timari granting her decision making power on behalf of the baby until we could complete the adoption approval process. Herb stepped out to talk to his Adoption Agent wife, Kristine, and I seized the opportunity to read his plaques that were decorating his walls. “Sweet mercy babe! Herb was the President of the Association of Adoption Attorneys for a few years!”

We were in good hands.

Woodside Bible Church was in the middle of a series called “Becoming Generous” in which we were being challenged to give sacrificially to help others in our church and in our community. A church wide garage sale with all proceeds going to Detroit non-profits was a huge part of this campaign, and Timari was in charge of this massive effort. Take the stuff at your last garage sale and multiply it by 1,000 and you’ll get the scope of this project. She couldn’t possibly have this little baby girl around the clock and run the garage sale. So Angela volunteered to watch the baby from 9am to 10pm everyday. Gladly. The bonding process began immediately. I joked that it was like we were dating her. At a Christian college. We picked her up first thing in the morning, were inseparable all day, then said tearful goodbyes late at night. Repeat.

We had a checklist a mile long to complete before our adoption home study would be completed. Background checks, physicals, personal references, financial statements, tax records, and a housing floor plan. Then the home study. We cleaned all day long, not wanting a stray cobweb or dirty dish or chirping fire alarm to cost us a lifetime of memories and love. The agent sat down on our couch and asked us questions for 95 minutes and looked around our house for less than 5. We were asked about our parents, philosophy of parenting, strengths and weaknesses of each other, and about 27 other personal and piercing questions.

Then we waited for the results of the home study while still hanging out with the baby during the day. Except Labor Day weekend. The Deane’s went out of town for the extended weekend. That was when I saw how much we loved this little baby. Ange was constantly thinking about her, and asking me about her. I was also daydreaming about our sweet little smiley baby, even while sitting in Row 11 at the Michigan / Western Michigan game (a bright spot this year for Michigan).

An expert in nautical research did a study on Acts 27-28. He took into consideration the time of year of the voyage, the strength of the storm, the size of the ship, the duration, the starting point, and the final destination as he sought to plot the path of the ship before it crashed onto the shore of the tiny island of Malta. Most theologians and historians have always assumed that the ship would have zig-zagged in a truly chaotic and random journey that luckily ran aground on the front doorstep of Malta. This is an incorrect assumption.

The researcher took all of these factors into account and concluded that the ship traveled in a perfectly straight line from Fair Havens to Malta. It arrived at Malta as if that was the intended destination all along. In spite of no way to navigate or steer, this ship arrived at an island that is 1/10th the size of Rhode Island. Upon their arrival, Paul and Luke were used by God to heal the sick on the island and to bring the love of Christ to these people.

In spite of darkness, hopelessness, mutiny, anger, fear, depression, and deep pain and anguish on that ship, God had hidden hope on board for the people of Malta. There was healing on that ship. As the prisoners and soldiers felt like they were drifting aimlessly, God was directing them with purpose straight to where He wanted them to be.

This shocking email stated matter of factly a situation in which there was “a need to find a home for a 3 month old blue-eyed, blonde-haired, baby girl that we received quite suddenly yesterday afternoon”. My eyes bulged and my heart raced. I forwarded the email to Angela, then called her to tell her to read it. She didn’t know I was on the line because she had just hung up with our infertility nurse to tell her that we were going to pursue other options and had accidentally answered my call.
“Check your email right now, and I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

I called Timari Deane, the name of the woman who sent the original email. “Hi, this is Cliff Johnson. I just read your email and want to tell you that we are very interested. My wife will be calling you in five minutes.” She told us later that day that she knew it would be us calling when she sent the email even though she knew nothing of our journey.

“Ange, what do you think?”
“Baby, I can’t believe it. Is this for real?”
“Yes it is. Can you call Timari right now?”
“Ok – love you.”

Twenty minutes later, Ange picked me up at church and we drove to go meet this baby girl that had been born the day after our 9th Wedding Anniversary and a week before I preached about Malta. Our car-ride conversation was nervous and scattershot. “I wonder what she looks like? What in the world is happening? Is this for real?”

Nick Deane, Timari’s husband is not a small man. He is a mountain of a man that has been a football coach for many years. For every inch and pound of his frame that could be intimidating, his smile and tender heart for serving God quickly melt away any fears. Nick came down the stairs holding an 11 week old bundle of sleeping baby. Her face was covered by the blanket. Nick pulled back the blanket and unveiled her face. Ange just sobbed. “She’s beautiful” Ange said as she wept. I stood in muted awe.

She had giant blue eyes and looked strangely like I did as a baby. We both held her and talked to the Deane’s about what had happened. Timari explained the sense she had that we would be the couple to adopt this baby girl.

We all got goosebumps and cried some more.

We had talked about adoption very briefly during this entire process. Angela had brought it up as an option, but I had quickly cited the expense (we believed it to be a $40,000 cost) and the waiting list (we had heard up to 7 years) as reasons to pursue our other options until those doors were permanently shut. Our discussions had never really gotten beyond those initial (mis)informed reasons. I had never really viewed adoption as the ideal for us, partly because we both wanted to settle the age-old question of what our kids would look like.

The summer came upon us quickly, and with that, we reached the end of a nine month sermon series at Lighthouse, our Sunday Night Young Adult Service, going through the book of Acts verse by verse. The second to last message in that series that I preached was on Acts 27 – 28:10 and was called “Shipwrecked”. I’m sure you are familiar with the story of Paul’s transport to Rome by ship where he was to stand trial before the emperor at the end of Acts. Against Paul’s warnings, the captain decides to sail during the storm season to get the prisoners to their final destination. Along the way, they ran into a brutal storm, so bad in fact, that the text tells us that the ship dropped anchor and was being driven along by the whims of the storm. It was so bad that “when neither sun or stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved (Acts 27:20).” Two weeks with darkness and zero control of a ship that held 276 passengers. No one was eating or sleeping. Imagine the fear and tension upon that boat. It got so bad that hope was given up. They were going to die.

They had no idea where they were and no chance of being saved.
They couldn’t see anything, but God could see them.
They were hopeless, but God had hidden hope on that ship.
They were careening out of control, but God was in control.
All they were missing was the end of the story.

I preached this text to a group of young adults that resonated with this situation. Why am I here? Why did I lose my job? What am I supposed to do with my life? Why does my mom have cancer? Why did he break up with me? Feeling out of control, drowning in darkness, being driven along toward a future we cannot see is a hopeless situation. When you don’t know how the story ends.

At the end of June, Ange and I went our separate ways for a few weeks. I was able to go to England and Scotland with my seminary for a semester’s worth of credits in 20 days. She went to see her family and some friends in Minneapolis where we served in ministry for about five years. While in England, we were able to visit many of the historic sites of the Reformation and encounter the biographies of the Reformers in their historical and cultural context. One such reformer was a man by the name of William Wilberforce. You are probably familiar with him because of the movie about his life called Amazing Grace (without which we wouldn’t have the Chris Tomlin version of Amazing Grace – My Chains are Gone). As I came face to face with the story of a young adult that used his wealth and political career to fight evil, one principle that drove his passion to reform shook me. He fought the massive Slave Trade Industry and the power that it held because he simply believed it to be “The Greatest Evil of Our Time”. He vowed to give his life for the cause of abolition. His tireless zealotry and brilliant political maneuvering brought the slave trade to an end, with the final Slavery Abolition Act being passed just three days before his death in 1833. He championed the cause of abolition for 52 years.

Several of us were talking about what we had learned and I asked the question, “When historians look back at our time and judge us for our achievements and contributions to the world, what do you think will be seen the greatest evil of our time?” All of us agreed. Abortion.We are all Pro-Life already, right? I vote for the right candidates, attended a rally in eighth grade, and have argued for the reversal of Roe v. Wade. What more can I do?

It was during this time that God began to impress some things upon my heart. What does it look like to live out a Pro-Life ethic? Not just checking a ballot, but truly putting my views into action. He impressed upon my heart that if we claimed to be truly Pro-Life, then we need to be willing to invite a pregnant teenage girl to stay in our home if she has nowhere to go. We also need to be willing to adopt a baby that has nowhere else to go.

This was more than a newfound political talking point for me. This was a calling. When Ange picked me up from the airport, I unraveled this crazy tale and when I got to the part about adoption we were both sobbing like schoolgirls. I told her that I believe this is what God is calling us to do. “I don’t know when or how, but I know we need to be ready and willing.”This was a seismic shift for us. God was now calling us to something much bigger than infertility doctors, basal thermometers, sleepless nights, and staggering financial debt. He broke our hearts for something that breaks His. Orphans. Widows. The oppression of the innocent. Murder. Greed. Apathy. Easy paths out of consequences.

A few days later, Angela took a call from a girl that used to attend Lighthouse a year before. She now found herself living in a homeless shelter, and at 19 years old, was pregnant. Angela called me at church asking what we should do. Whoa – that was fast, God! Without hesitation, we decided to have her move into our house. She stayed with us for about a month, and we grew to love her deeply. She went her own way later in the summer, but we love her and her family and pray for her often as she nears motherhood.

Then I received an email at my desk at 11:28am on Wednesday, August 19th.

There was a time when I didn’t want a baby. I remember having “scares” when Angela thought she might be pregnant. I remember one time in particular when she came out of the bathroom holding the magic wand and excitedly screaming the results, and I feigned serious enthusiasm to cover the feeling of massive blood loss to my head and the dizziness that was enveloping me. I staggered into the bathroom and looked closer at the instruction box. My heart calmed down, then felt sad for my wife. “Babe, come here. See this symbol? I’m sorry.”

Those days seem so long ago, a time when the fear I felt toward pregnancy was associated with being pregnant. Far too real and recent are the feelings of hopelessness and desperation associated with the realization that no matter what we tried, we couldn’t have a baby. We tried and prayed. We tried and paid. We tried and wept. We tried and tried. Four years and thousands of dollars later, we sat stunned at the latest disappointment. We were assured that it would work this time, even told with a wink and a smile that “these will be twins”.

We needed to get out of town. We needed to anesthetize this searing and crushing pain. My heart was defiant and angry, then sad and hurting, and finally dark, bitter, and entitled. I was having conversations with young adults that were dating and they confessed that they had been impure physically and were really scared of getting pregnant. Hmmmm… Interesting how that works.

Angela and I were sitting quietly in the car one day, driving somewhere with both of our heads a million different places, when she broke the awkward silence by saying, “Baby, maybe we aren’t meant to have children. Maybe these young adults that we love so much are supposed to be like children to us.”

“Are you okay with that?” I asked, very much wanting her to retrace her mental stream of consciousness that had led her to that realization.

“Well, I just need you to know that you are enough for me. We don’t need a baby to fix our relationship, it isn’t broken. We don’t need a baby to make us happy, we are already happy. And I just sort of thought that maybe God has created us to just have an amazing marriage and ministry and to not have children. And if that is true, then I want you to know that you are enough.”

I was shocked silent for a little while, then retorted something that echoed the sentiment as we continued to drive. Her honesty and the price each of those words cost her in hope made my eyes well up. My mind was racing in the wake of her epiphany… Is this really it? Is this over? Did God allow us to go through this painful process just to reinforce how much we love each other?

There was a time when I didn’t want a baby. I remember having “scares” when Angela thought she might be pregnant. I remember one time in particular when she came out of the bathroom holding the magic wand and excitedly screaming the results, and I feigned serious enthusiasm to cover the feeling of massive blood loss to my head and the dizziness that was enveloping me. I staggered into the bathroom and looked closer at the instruction box. My heart calmed down, then felt sad for my wife. “Babe, come here. See this symbol? I’m sorry.”

Those days seem so long ago, a time when the fear I felt toward pregnancy was associated with being pregnant. Far too real and recent are the feelings of hopelessness and desperation associated with the realization that no matter what we tried, we couldn’t have a baby. We tried and prayed. We tried and paid. We tried and wept. We tried and tried. Four years and thousands of dollars later, we sat stunned at the latest disappointment. We were assured that it would work this time, even told with a wink and a smile that “these will be twins”.
We needed to get out of town. We needed to anesthetize this searing and crushing pain. My heart was defiant and angry, then sad and hurting, and finally dark, bitter, and entitled. I was having conversations with young adults that were dating and they confessed that they had been impure physically and were really scared of getting pregnant. Hmmmm… Interesting how that works.

Angela and I were sitting quietly in the car one day, driving somewhere with both of our heads a million different places, when she broke the awkward silence by saying, “Baby, maybe we aren’t meant to have children. Maybe these young adults that we love so much are supposed to be like children to us.”

“Are you okay with that?” I asked, very much wanting her to retrace her mental stream of consciousness that had led her to that realization.

“Well, I just need you to know that you are enough for me. We don’t need a baby to fix our relationship, it isn’t broken. We don’t need a baby to make us happy, we are already happy. And I just sort of thought that maybe God has created us to just have an amazing marriage and ministry and to not have children. And if that is true, then I want you to know that you are enough.”

I was shocked silent for a little while, then retorted something that echoed the sentiment as we continued to drive. Her honesty and the price each of those words cost her in hope made my eyes well up. My mind was racing in the wake of her epiphany… Is this really it? Is this over? Did God allow us to go through this painful process just to reinforce how much we love each other?

We had talked about adoption very briefly during this entire process. Angela had brought it up as an option, but I had quickly cited the expense (we believed it to be a $40,000 cost) and the waiting list (we had heard up to 7 years) as reasons to pursue our other options until those doors were permanently shut. Our discussions had never really gotten beyond those initial (mis)informed reasons. I had never really viewed adoption as the ideal for us, partly because we both wanted to settle the age-old question of what our kids would look like.

The summer came upon us quickly, and with that, we reached the end of a nine month sermon series at Lighthouse, our Sunday Night Young Adult Service, going through the book of Acts verse by verse. The second to last message in that series that I preached was on Acts 27 – 28:10 and was called “Shipwrecked”. I’m sure you are familiar with the story of Paul’s transport to Rome by ship where he was to stand trial before the emperor at the end of Acts. Against Paul’s warnings, the captain decides to sail during the storm season to get the prisoners to their final destination. Along the way, they ran into a brutal storm, so bad in fact, that the text tells us that the ship dropped anchor and was being driven along by the whims of the storm. It was so bad that “when neither sun or stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved (Acts 27:20).” Two weeks with darkness and zero control of a ship that held 276 passengers. No one was eating or sleeping. Imagine the fear and tension upon that boat. It got so bad that hope was given up. They were going to die. They had no idea where they were and no chance of being saved.

They couldn’t see anything, but God could see them.
They were hopeless, but God had hidden hope on that ship.
They were careening out of control, but God was in control.
All they were missing was the end of the story.

I preached this text to a group of young adults that resonated with this situation. Why am I here? Why did I lose my job? What am I supposed to do with my life? Why does my mom have cancer? Why did he break up with me? Feeling out of control, drowning in darkness, being driven along toward a future we cannot see is a hopeless situation. When you don’t know how the story ends.

At the end of June, Ange and I went our separate ways for a few weeks. I was able to go to England and Scotland with my seminary for a semester’s worth of credits in 20 days. She went to see her family and some friends in Minneapolis where we served in ministry for about five years. While in England, we were able to visit many of the historic sites of the Reformation and encounter the biographies of the Reformers in their historical and cultural context. One such reformer was a man by the name of William Wilberforce. You are probably familiar with him because of the movie about his life called Amazing Grace (without which we wouldn’t have the Chris Tomlin version of Amazing Grace – My Chains are Gone). As I came face to face with the story of a young adult that used his wealth and political career to fight evil, one principle that drove his passion to reform shook me. He fought the massive Slave Trade Industry and the power that it held because he simply believed it to be “The Greatest Evil of Our Time”. He vowed to give his life for the cause of abolition. His tireless zealotry and brilliant political maneuvering brought the slave trade to an end, with the final Slavery Abolition Act being passed just three days before his death in 1833. He championed the cause of abolition for 52 years.

Several of us were talking about what we had learned and I asked the question, “When historians look back at our time and judge us for our achievements and contributions to the world, what do you think will be seen the greatest evil of our time?” All of us agreed. Abortion.

We are all Pro-Life already, right? I vote for the right candidates, attended a rally in eighth grade, and have argued for the reversal of Roe v. Wade. What more can I do?

It was during this time that God began to impress some things upon my heart. What does it look like to live out a Pro-Life ethic? Not just checking a ballot, but truly putting my views into action. He impressed upon my heart that if we claimed to be truly Pro-Life, then we need to be willing to invite a pregnant teenage girl to stay in our home if she has nowhere to go. We also need to be willing to adopt a baby that has nowhere else to go.

This was more than a newfound political talking point for me. This was a calling. When Ange picked me up from the airport, I unraveled this crazy tale and when I got to the part about adoption we were both sobbing like schoolgirls. I told her that I believe this is what God is calling us to do. “I don’t know when or how, but I know we need to be ready and willing.”

This was a seismic shift for us. God was now calling us to something much bigger than infertility doctors, basal thermometers, sleepless nights, and staggering financial debt. He broke our hearts for something that breaks His. Orphans. Widows. The oppression of the innocent. Murder. Greed. Apathy. Easy paths out of consequences.

A few days later, Angela took a call from a girl that used to attend Lighthouse a year before. She now found herself living in a homeless shelter, and at 19 years old, was pregnant. Angela called me at church asking what we should do. Whoa – that was fast, God! Without hesitation, we decided to have her move into our house. She stayed with us for about a month, and we grew to love her deeply. She went her own way later in the summer, but we love her and her family and pray for her often as she nears motherhood.

Then I received an email at my desk at 11:28am on Wednesday, August 19th.

An expert in nautical research did a study on Acts 27-28. He took into consideration the time of year of the voyage, the strength of the storm, the size of the ship, the duration, the starting point, and the final destination as he sought to plot the path of the ship before it crashed onto the shore of the tiny island of Malta. Most theologians and historians have always assumed that the ship would have zig-zagged in a truly chaotic and random journey that luckily ran aground on the front doorstep of Malta. This is an incorrect assumption.

The researcher took all of these factors into account and concluded that the ship traveled in a perfectly straight line from Fair Havens to Malta. It arrived at Malta as if that was the intended destination all along. In spite of no way to navigate or steer, this ship arrived at an island that is 1/10th the size of Rhode Island. Upon their arrival, Paul and Luke were used by God to heal the sick on the island and to bring the love of Christ to these people.

In spite of darkness, hopelessness, mutiny, anger, fear, depression, and deep pain and anguish on that ship, God had hidden hope on board for the people of Malta. There was healing on that ship. As the prisoners and soldiers felt like they were drifting aimlessly, God was directing them with purpose straight to where He wanted them to be.

This shocking email stated matter of factly a situation in which there was “a need to find a home for a 3 month old blue-eyed, blonde-haired, baby girl that we received quite suddenly yesterday afternoon”. My eyes bulged and my heart raced. I forwarded the email to Angela, then called her to tell her to read it. She didn’t know I was on the line because she had just hung up with our infertility nurse to tell her that we were going to pursue other options and had accidentally answered my call.

“Check your email right now, and I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

I called Timari Deane, the name of the woman who sent the original email. “Hi, this is Cliff Johnson. I just read your email and want to tell you that we are very interested. My wife will be calling you in five minutes.” She told us later that day that she knew it would be us calling when she sent the email even though she knew nothing of our journey.

“Ange, what do you think?”
“Baby, I can’t believe it. Is this for real?”
“Yes it is. Can you call Timari right now?”
“Ok – love you.”

Twenty minutes later, Ange picked me up at church and we drove to go meet this baby girl that had been born the day after our 9th Wedding Anniversary and a week before I preached about Malta. Our car-ride conversation was nervous and scattershot. “I wonder what she looks like? What in the world is happening? Is this for real?”

Nick Deane, Timari’s husband is not a small man. He is a mountain of a man that has been a football coach for many years. For every inch and pound of his frame that could be intimidating, his smile and tender heart for serving God quickly melt away any fears. Nick came down the stairs holding an 11 week old bundle of sleeping baby. Her face was covered by the blanket. Nick pulled back the blanket and unveiled her face. Ange just sobbed. “She’s beautiful” Ange said as she wept. I stood in muted awe.

She had giant blue eyes and looked strangely like I did as a baby. We both held her and talked to the Deane’s about what had happened. Timari explained the sense she had that we would be the couple to adopt this baby girl. We all got goosebumps and cried some more.

An eighteen year old girl that had been through a lot in her life already considered giving her baby up for adoption before she gave birth, but decided to keep her. For the first few weeks everything was going well, but in the last week or so, some poor decisions had been made on behalf of the baby. Child Protective Services had been called in to investigate the situation. That has to be one of the scariest sentences in the world for a parent.

The Deane’s had taken in a couple of older foster girls, ones that were nearly done with high school. Things didn’t work out with the girls as Timari had hoped, but she did get to know some of the Social Workers through the process and had met several of the girls’ friends. On Tuesday, August 18th a Social Worker that knew Timari Deane had gone to investigate a call of neglect and to remove an 11 week old little girl from the situation until a hearing could determine the baby’s fate the following Monday. A friend of Timari’s foster care girls placed a call to the only person she knew that could keep her baby until an adoptive family could be found. This eighteen year old single mom called Timari Deane and asked if she could get to her house immediately and beg for the Social Workers to allow this baby to go to the Deane’s until an adoptive family could be found.

When Timari arrived, Child Protective Services was waiting in the driveway. The Social Worker remembered Timari, and bent the rules and allowed the baby to go home to the Deane’s until the hearing on Monday. They had five days to find an adoptive home for this baby girl, or she would be placed in the protection of the state in foster care.

We set up a time to meet the birth mom a few hours after we met and held the baby for the first time. We made some calls, set up an appointment with an adoption attorney and an adoption agency (one call covered both, the lawyer is married to the adoption agent) for the next morning, and headed to the meeting place. Starbucks, my homefield. As we were gazing into each others eyes at a stoplight marveling at God’s handiwork, our car was slammed into from behind by a teenage boy driving his mom’s minivan with his driver’s permit. I can’t print what I yelled at him. Just kidding – I simply informed him that ramming into someone from behind that had been sitting at a stoplight for over five seconds does not bode well for your future insurance rates.

We were late for our appointment. Thankfully, so was she. I nervously asked if she wanted anything from Starbucks since I was about to order a drink with enough caffeine to paralyze a rhino. We all sat and chatted about her giving us her baby. Forever. We told her bits and pieces of our story. I tried to make her smile with some dry humor. The gravity and tension of the situation was tangible. She asked us a few question that we did our best to answer honestly. We didn’t just want to give answers that we knew she would want to hear. We shared our true hearts with her and prayed that God would give her peace about us. She shared some of her story, and we realized that she had truly experienced things that no child should have to go through. Feeling unloved and rejected. Wishing she had been given up for adoption rather than have her upbringing. We all felt the irony of that statement, and Angela gently said, “It’s amazing that you want to give your daughter something that you never had.”

She looked at us and said she wanted us to raise her baby.
We got in our damaged car and floated home.

We met with our adoption attorney the next day in Dearborn, searching in vain for his office for ten minutes when we were already a few minutes late. His name was Herb and he had a white beard and wore madras shorts. We filled him in on the situation and quickly realized that he was truly an expert in the adoption field. He suggested a power of attorney for Timari granting her decision making power on behalf of the baby until we could complete the adoption approval process. Herb stepped out to talk to his Adoption Agent wife, Kristine, and I seized the opportunity to read his plaques that were decorating his walls. “Sweet mercy babe! Herb was the President of the Association of Adoption Attorneys for a few years!” We were in good hands.

Woodside Bible Church was in the middle of a series called “Becoming Generous” in which we were being challenged to give sacrificially to help others in our church and in our community. A church wide garage sale with all proceeds going to Detroit non-profits was a huge part of this campaign, and Timari was in charge of this massive effort. Take the stuff at your last garage sale and multiply it by 1,000 and you’ll get the scope of this project. She couldn’t possibly have this little baby girl around the clock and run the garage sale. So Angela volunteered to watch the baby from 9am to 10pm everyday. Gladly. The bonding process began immediately. I joked that it was like we were dating her. At a Christian college. We picked her up first thing in the morning, were inseparable all day, then said tearful goodbyes late at night. Repeat.

We had a checklist a mile long to complete before our adoption home study would be completed. Background checks, physicals, personal references, financial statements, tax records, and a housing floor plan. Then the home study. We cleaned all day long, not wanting a stray cobweb or dirty dish or chirping fire alarm to cost us a lifetime of memories and love. The agent sat down on our couch and asked us questions for 95 minutes and looked around our house for less than 5. We were asked about our parents, philosophy of parenting, strengths and weaknesses of each other, and about 27 other personal and piercing questions.

Then we waited for the results of the home study while still hanging out with the baby during the day. Except Labor Day weekend. The Deane’s went out of town for the extended weekend. That was when I saw how much we loved this little baby. Ange was constantly thinking about her, and asking me about her. I was also daydreaming about our sweet little smiley baby, even while sitting in Row 11 at the Michigan / Western Michigan game (a bright spot this year for Michigan).

September 11th, a day that lives in infamy in our country for good reason was given a new significance for us, for it was the day that the birth mom signed the paperwork giving us a Temporary Placement. This may not sound like much, but it is the same right that adoptive parents have when leaving the hospital with a pre-arranged adoption of a newborn. We were one step closer to the adoption being official. Now she could stay with us overnight. No more dating!

We braced ourselves for how little she was going to sleep at night. We had heard the horror stories of babies that wake up every 3 minutes all night every night for its first 12 years of life. We worked out the plan of who was going to get up with her first, and went to sleep. With one eye and both ears open. She slept ten hours the first night. Then ten and a half. Then ten. Eleven hours. Nine hours. Over twelve hours! We stopped telling people because they were getting mad at us.

The date for the final step was set for October 1st. This was the signing away of parental rights by the parents. Since the identified birth father had not been responding to repeated attempts to contact, his rights would be taken away as long as he was served papers and didn’t show up. We prayed for God’s will. We prayed for God’s will to be that he didn’t show up.

We gave the birth mom a ride down to the courthouse. I once again resorted to trying to lighten up the situation for her and her boyfriend by doing some old material. I lamented the consequences of beeping your horn at someone in Michigan. They kind of chuckled at my statement that if you use your horn to alert someone to the green light that they are texting through, they will wave a special finger at you to thank you and yell out their appreciation while offering you an air-fist pump. I try to be funny when tense and monumental moments are happening. You should see me when Ange is scared in the Emergency Room.

The birth mom went in without us to appear before the judge to sign away her parental rights. Forever. Michigan should have the parents chisel their names into stone, because that is how firm and unchangeable it is. She was in there for thirty minutes, but every minute was a white-knuckled stress fest for me. I was obsessed with looking for the birth father, who could have shown up and contested it. His appearance would have changed everything. His appearance was exactly what was making me sweat. I had no idea what he looked like. So every young looking male that came down the hallway got my heart racing with anxiety. It didn’t help that we were standing next to the juvenile detention center intake office. Every two minutes another punk would come down the hall to face the music, while my emotional state was rising and falling like a dinner cruise on the ocean that is making you sick.

Meanwhile, Ange was humming and singing and praying and joyful. She was living the dream during my near anxiety attack. She was reading Psalms and smiling while my chest was careening towards cardiac arrhythmia. I prayed 32 foxhole prayers in a row. “Please God, don’t let this be him! I’ll get in shape. I’ll stop drinking Diet Coke with Lime. I’ll stop wasting time playing video games.”

Finally, they emerged from the courtroom. Tears had been shed. Lots of them. I offered a half-hug and a nervous smile. Angela gave a long, loving, firm hug for several minutes as she spoke truth and encouragement into her ear. Later we found out that the birth mom went back and forth and delayed and asked questions. We heard that she cried and said she couldn’t do it. Then she had a moment of clarity, grabbed the pen, dried her tears and said “I have to do this for her.”

We left the courthouse together and I stopped to buy everyone ice cream. The sound of suction filled the awkward silence as we all strained to get the ice cream through the thin straws. We arrived at the boyfriend’s home, listened to a song of her favorite band, then said goodbye. As we left, we saw her crying on his shoulder.

Ange and I were pretty pensive and quiet as we pulled away. When we arrived at the church, the weight of what our baby girl’s mom had done for her kept us from cheering or dancing in delight. In fact, if you had been watching from the window as we walked into the church, it would have appeared that it didn’t go through.

We went home that night and held our baby girl, Lily Rebekah Johnson a little tighter and kissed her a few more times than normal. The love that we have for Lily is unlike anything we have felt before. She is the answer to countless prayers, she is the goal at the end of a long and brutal journey, she is the fleshly reminder of the love and sovereignty of God.

We were feeling hopeless and lost, drowning in darkness and doubt. What we needed was the end of the story. God had changed my heart and called us to be willing to life a Pro-life ethic knowing that Lily was already alive and waiting for us. All that needed to change was me. God lifted the fog of the painful suffering and revealed that the whole time He was guiding us in a perfectly straight line from the first infertility treatment to our baby girl.

We couldn’t see anything, but God saw us.
We felt hopeless, but God had hope in store for us.
We were careening out of control, but God was in control.
All we were missing was the end of the story.

Healed hearts and a beautiful baby girl named Lily, our reminder that God brings life out of valleys.

Psa. 118:23 the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

A few days in London…

I have been in London since this past Saturday morning taking some classes toward my Master’s Degree (9 credits actually), and I have a few observations to share about myself, this city, this group I’m with, and then some miscellaneous.

1. My ankles click a lot when I walk. Normally this isn’t a big deal, but when you are spending a lot of time in museums, old cathedrals, and libraries the clicking is a little embarrassing. I would say they click on average every 1.5 steps. Especially the right one. The bizarre thing is that now that I’m thinking about it, I can actually hear it when I am walking in crowded noisy places. Somehow I can just hear it – like my ankle is on speakerphone.

2. When there is a lack of strong leadership, time is wasted. We have nice leaders. They are all teachers at Southern Seminary, all very educated with their doctorates. Each has a combination of wit and approachability which is actually quite refreshing in the ivory towers of academia. However, each of them defers to the other and to the group for big decisions. Instead of making a command decision and letting us deal with it, they ask for a show of hands for how many want to do something, how many don’t want to do something, and even for who is unsure. Rather than say “We are leaving at 2pm for Wimbledon, if you want to come be there early.” The semi-democratic / consensus method is used which ends up costing us 15 minutes.

3. America is quite young. While looking for houses in Michigan a few years ago, Ange and I were debating if a house built in the 1950’s but fully renovated in 2004 was too old. Today I attended a worship service at Westminster Abbey, which has been standing for nearly 1400 years. Which is of course, peanuts compared to Middle Eastern historical sites, but that was a different trip for me with a leader who had no problems asserting authority.

4. There is no separation of Church and State here. I suppose I had always taken that for granted in America, but here a Bishop has a seat in the House of Lords in Parliament. I couldn’t even get on a city committee in Rochester Hills.

5. God is moving here. Contrary to widespread reports that the UK is dead spiritually, there is much life here. Churches are growing, people are coming to Christ, and the tough times have driven many in the UK to God. I spent Sunday morning at Hillsong London and was absolutely amazed at how many: people attend weekly (8000), volunteers it takes to make church happen (950 per Sunday), and nationalities are involved in the life of the church (dozens). As we sang together, I looked around and saw Asians, Indians, South Africans, whites, blacks, and others worshipping God with one voice. It was beautiful and inspiring.

6. London is hot in the summer. People keep telling me that I’m crazy, that London has a similar climate to Seattle, but my experience has it more in the Miami neighborhood. It has been 85 – 95 degrees here each day since we’ve arrived. I have been sweating since I stepped off the plane in Heathrow and even as I write this late at night, my room is still smokin’ hot. Did I mention that air conditioning and lots of ice in drinks is an American thing? I was in London one other time, for two weeks in the summer of 2003, which as it turns out, was the last heatwave that was this bad. I rest my case.

7. The British are quite kind and friendly. I don’t mess around if I’m lost, I’ll ask the first person that I see to help me get to my destination. In America, this tactic has been met with some less than cordial responses, but here I have experienced genuine kindness and sympathy to my plight. Also, we were in Hyde Park (as the Dave Matthews concert was happening) looking to engage people in conversations about God (one of my courses is Personal Evangelism). There was such an openness and honesty with the British people that we encountered that we were really surprised. I expected some of the same hostility that this drive-by shooting approach to evanglism can provide, but they were genuinely engaging us.

8. I really miss my wife. I am not really sure who I am when she isn’t with me. I try to introduce myself to others on the trip, but they are only getting half the story – and it isn’t even the best half! I find myself thinking about Angela all the time, at meals, on trains, in museums… Something has happened to me, I used to be pretty independent and have a strong individual identity. But now, I don’t even WANT people to know me apart from my wife. It is such an untrue picture of my life to just see me in it. Video iChat is great, but it isn’t the same. I miss her so much. What a gift she is to me.

9. I fell down today. It was a little embarrassing. I twisted the ankle that doesn’t click as much. It was right in front of a huge gathering of businessman standing outside the pub we were heading towards for dinner. I stepped off a curb not knowing it was there and actually went down to the ground. It has been a long time since I actually tripped and fell down. My ankles already look weird and puffy but I think they are getting puffier. I may need to take a day off tomorrow to rest my ankles.

See you soon…

Cliff

Recently, I went back to Minnesota to do a wedding for one of my former students. We are extremely close to him and his family, so it was a very special event for all of us. I had a very interesting conversation with Dan, the groom, two nights before the wedding, and it made me think about deeper things.

Our conversation was about the fact that Dan had “changed” a lot since he started dating Kristin. In order for you to understand the gravity of that last sentence, you need to realize the before and after. The Dan that was in my youth group was a good times guy, loved to eat fast food, wasn’t especially fond of exercising, watched movies late into the night, then slept in past 2pm. He wasn’t a particularly good student, he just did enough to get by. His walk with God was up and down – up after a missions trip, down during the winter doldrums.

Now don’t get me wrong. He is one of my best friends in the world. He has always been a great listener, a friend that would drop everything to help. We laugh like little schoolboys when we hang out. We went ATVing together, shot things together, took road trips together, took air trips together, took missions trips together, and became like brothers.

But something else happened right before Dan met Kristin. He fell asleep driving his truck on a rainy Saturday morning and flipped it five times. The damage to the truck was breathtaking. He walked away with only cuts and bruises. I saw him later that day, and pulled him aside from the crowd to see how he really was doing. He told me that there had to be a reason for him to be alive. God must have something in store for him, something great for him to do. He realized that he shouldn’t still be here.

A few months later, Dan met Kristin, a beautiful girl from a small town in Nebraska. She loved to laugh, hated fast food, was very fond of exercising, was a Pre-Med and a brilliant student, and a passionate committed follower of Jesus Christ. You can obviously see why they were drawn to each other. The term “polar opposites” still doesn’t seem to cover it. Dan was completely smitten by this Cornhusker.

Okay, now back to the conversation I had with him on Thursday night. Dan was sharing with me that some of his friends were having trouble with the changes he had made over the past year. “I don’t know, I guess I have trouble explaining it to them,” as he looked out over the rainy landscape and took a sip from his Chai latte. “She just makes me want to be a better man.”

Those words seemed to hang in the air as we both realized the power that they contained. Have you ever struggled to describe what’s in your head, then you say it so perfectly that you are in a state of lyrical shock? Amazed at yourself, not in a proud way, just sort of surprised that you were capable of stringing together a line that belongs in a movie? (That line was in a movie, it was declared by Jack Nicholson to Helen Hunt in “As Good As It Gets” but anyway…)

Dan had spoken such truth in that moment, that my only response was a wide eyed “Wow”. He went on to say that Kristin didn’t force him to change things, she wasn’t like that. She was just authentic in who she was, her identity was sure. Dan wanted to make changes in order to be the man that he knew she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. It was his choice. And he chose her. He chose her love. Her love spurred him on to change, the changes stuck and led to growth, and the growth matured and led him to a new identity. She made him WANT to be a better man.

Who would have thought that Dan and his bride would organize a 2 mile run on the morning of their wedding? Or that Dan and Kristin would recite a long scripture passage from memory during the service? Or that they would request three worship songs for the attenders and wedding party to have a corporate and private worship experience during the wedding ceremony?

Her love made him want to be a better man.

What a beautiful picture of Christ. His perfect love should inspire us to live for him. Not by force, or mandate, or because we have to. But because we WANT TO! It’s delight versus duty. It’s a bride versus a slave. It’s a choice versus an obligation. We make a few changes for Him, which over time lead to growth, and eventually people will say to us “You are like a different person!” We are.

His love made us want to be passionate followers of Jesus.

As this group continues to grow, I realize that I don’t know as many of you personally as I would like to. I don’t know what music you listen to, what movies inspire you, what you are reading, or what God is doing in your life right now.

So, as a step in that direction, I have decided to share with you some of my current vices… This is by no means a best of list, just more of a sampling of what art is moving me these days.

Music
This weekend, I was introduced to the latest project to have the indie superstar Sufjan Stevens attached to it, The Welcome Wagon. I am smitten. If you dig Sufjan’s style and love to hear a lot about Jesus, check them out. Kristian Stanfill, former worship leader at Young Adults gathering 7:22, just released his second EP Attention this week. He is unbelievably gifted at crafting electric guitar driven worship songs – and when you combine this 6 song EP with his first 5 song EP, Hello, you have one of the most stunning full worship albums by anyone. Beautiful Jesus, Spring of Life, Jesus Paid it All, Lord of All and more put him at the top of the Lighthouse Sunday night setlist count. I have been listening to the Fleet Foxes as well, and my gut description is that if the Beach Boys had beards, flannel shirts, and drank strong coffee instead of Sunkist, they would have sounded like this. I have been following a small indie band from the Athen GA music scene for a few years now called The Modern Skirts. Their first album, Catalogue of Generous Men, is one of my all time favorite albums, so my expectations were sky high for their second album, All of Us in Our Night which dropped last week. Big disappointment. I keep listening to it, hoping that it will “grow” on me. No dice.

Movies
I have seen a lot of movies lately, most of them very good (Defiance, Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino among others), but there is only one that has continued to haunt me and impact me deeply. Slumdog Millionaire moved me so deeply at my first viewing that I had to physically leave the theater and go splash water on my face at the Main Art Theater in Royal Oak. I was so stirred, so pierced by the story that I could barely contain my emotion. I wasn’t afraid of a tear gently trickling down my cheek, I was trying to hold in an uncontrollable explosion of broken blood vessel weeping. I felt it coming up from the very depths of my heart. Watching the story unfold, watching the unstoppable love of Jamal toward Latika, and then watching the final moment of “the kiss”… Even now my heart starts to get dizzy and forgets how to beat properly… Let’s talk more about it after you’ve seen it… If I write more I will spoil a lot.

Books
I am finishing up Malcolm Gladwell’s latest offering, Outliers, which although infinitely interesting, I found to be a little uneven. It is definitely the weakest of the Gladwell trilogy, (The Tipping Point and Blink) but yet still full of facts that can dazzle your friends at a party. While sputtering to the finish of Outliers, I grabbed a copy of Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover. Now on a literary scale, this rates somewhere on the level of an athlete memoir (translation: poor), but in regards to content, it is revolutionary. It is profound in its simplicity, yet if I follow Dave’s sage financial advice, I have no doubt that what he promises will come true. What he suggests is only innovative because it is so outdated in our credit obsessed culture. Dave tells us to pay cash. For everything. No credit cards. No 36 months financing on a flat panel television. Save. Deny yourself. His credo “Live like no one else so that you can live like no one else” will be etched into your cerebral cortex by the time you finish the book. It worked for me. I have stopped spending like a Hilton and started living like a Ramsey.

What I’m up to…
I am gearing up to begin another Lighthouse Collective book project in time for this summer, as well as dreaming about what the future looks like for all of us… Pray that we can risk and reach and dream dreams as big as God, so far out of our reach that only He can make them happen.

Thanks for listening,

Cliff