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My Sacrifice Fly

My congregation loves to make fun of how little I know about sports.

“Hey Pastor, it’s baseball season now! How many touchdowns do you think your team will make next game?”

Snickering ensues, and I usually play along.

“Baseball, huh?” I ask. “Is that the big orangy ball or the brown ovally one?”

My limited knowledge of the game includes one play I find interesting – the sacrifice fly. All my sportsy friends tell me this happens when a batter hits a fly ball he knows will most likely be caught for an out. But he does so in order for another player to score a run.

Impressed? If you knew me, you would be!

I would think the batter would have at least a bit of disappointment that his opportunity to shine has actually been traded for someone else’s moment of glory. But to not try to give your team a win would make you an incredible jerk, right?

We take on life so differently.

My email box is filled with invitations for seminars, webcast, and online courses all focused on making me a “winner”. Every one promises me a sure-fire way to “get the most out of life”.

Almost none of them give me the opportunity to “give the most of myself away”. I’d love to see how many people sign up for that webcast!

I remember a time in my life I was frustrated with my job and ministry (OK, that’s honestly been most of my life). I argued against the place God had put me by saying, “But Lord, I want to do something GREAT for you, not this small-time stuff!” I know, pastors are not supposed to think like this, much less pray like it. But the truth is we have just as much ambition as anyone, sometimes more.

As I continued praying, something completely unexpected happened…God answered me! From deep in the depths of my soul, I heard God’s answer ringing back to me…

“Son, I know you want to do something great for me. But what if I want you to do something small?”

I’m pretty sure I didn’t ask God anything else for quite some time.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but God may one day allow you to be humiliated in order to bring Himself glory. I realize this sounds like the opposite of the prosperity most TV preachers teach today. And that’s because it is.

Of all the things I’d ever thought God would ask me to do, I never expected being fired would give Him the most glory…

I was called as worship pastor to a prestigious church in order to “turn things around”. Their services were a little sleepy, and they thought my contemporary style of worship would help them gain more members. For me, it was my ministerial “ticket to the big time”. The prominence of the church would get me noticed by my peers, and there also would be a big pay raise in it as well.

But after two years there, my senior pastor decided he was tired of dealing with the criticism my less-traditional music was creating. I was suddenly called into his office and told that I was either being fired that day or could resign with a nice severance package.  I had not been immoral or unethical in any way – what I’d been was inconvenient. It was stipulated that if I wanted to keep my severance, I was to leave the church immediately. Attempting to see my church friends would only “cause trouble”.

So in one short meeting, I lost my job, my church, and my whole support system.

I’d never considered I would ever be fired. In my mind, ministers were fired for running off with the church secretary, not for too much electric guitar in the mix! I was stunned, and my wife and kids were devastated.

But worse than that, when I looked around for help, I found that most of my minister friends abandoned me. Several of them had jumped on the news and were thrilled to pass it along to others who knew me.  With mock sadness, they asked folks to “pray for me”, since being fired probably meant my ministry was over.

I found myself now hiding at home with my family, wondering how I didn’t see that Mack Truck heading right at me.

But then, out of nowhere came God’s big plot twist. It arrived in the form of a middle-aged Jewish man named Lewis with a rather corny sense of humor. He was the husband of one of my choir members at my now former church. We’d gone out to eat together a couple of times, my motive being to get him into the church and then to faith in Christ. Unfortunately, he didn’t really like our church and found it rather fake. He only shows up for our special productions or on the occasional Easter service to make his wife happy.

Lewis & Jill Rudolph
Lewis & Jill Rudolph

The day after I was fired, the phone rang and it was Lewis. He said he wanted to help me clean out my church office and then move the boxes back to my house. I was wallowing in self-pity and didn’t want to talk to anyone. So I thanks him but told him no thanks, I could handle it myself.

Lewis countered, saying that wouldn’t be smart. I should have a witness around while cleaning out my office, just in case. I could tell from his insistent tone he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. So since no one else was lining up to help, I took him up on his offer.

The oddness of this circumstance didn’t hit me until later. Here I was, a Christian minister who had led a major ministry in a large church. I’d been abruptly fired, and had my ministry and my family’s whole support system yanked out from under me. I had no prospects, no idea what to do. And worst of all, I had little support from my Christian friends. Most of them quickly went on with life, walking past me on the other side of the road….

…most of them, except one – my new best friend, Lewis. Who wasn’t even a Christian. The one I had been reaching out to help was now reaching out to help me.

I guess God really loves irony.

During the next couple of months, my wife and I spent a lot of time with this couple, partly because few others wanted to be around us anymore. Eventually, we moved to another city to help start a new church. When we got there, this Jewish non-Christian actually contributed money to help buy some greatly needed equipment for me to use.

Over time, we developed an online email “bromance” of sorts.

Occasionally, his emails would include comments or questions about Christianity. Some questions were awkward at first, like “Why do so many Christians seem to hate Jews?” He had experienced enough to keep anyone else at a safe distance from church people, and yet he stayed open to what I had to say. Later, I heard from his wife he was reading the Bible quite often. As his questions increased, it became clear he was now in fact studying the Bible, including the New Testament.

Then one beautiful day just a few years later, I got to return to that town I’d left in disgrace and participate in Lewis’ baptismal service. What I’d set out to do up front – lead Lewis to Christ – had indeed happened. But God didn’t do it by putting me on a pedestal to condescend to Lewis. He dropped me unceremoniously onto the ground so that when Lewis came to Christ, it wouldn’t be coming from just one more Christian with all the answers talking down to him.

My termination was the “sacrifice fly” God used so Lewis could win the game.

No, I can’t take any credit for Lewis coming to Christ. I guess you could say my life going up in flames was the “burning bush” that caught Lewis’ attention. Then God drew Lewis to Himself, while I managed not to screw it up along the way. When you think of it, I was just the real-life “train wreck” God used to get his attention.

Today, Lewis teaches an in-depth Bible class on a weekly basis. In fact, I’m the one who asks him questions now – he has immersed himself in the Word to that extent, and has an incredible mind for theology. I am in awe of how God works, and how one of the worst times in my life led to finding such a great friend in such an unlikely way.

ARE YOU WILLING TO GO TO THE BACK OF THE LINE?

Are you willing for God to put you in a position of weakness if it will bring Him glory? What if your humiliation brings someone to Christ as mine did? Will you let Him do His refining work within you even if it means taking you down a peg in the eyes of others?

If you demand God use you in convenient, easy ways, you may be missing His perfect plan. But if you’re willing for your life to hit the sacrifice fly for someone else, you’ll find out that, in the end, you both win.

1 Comment

  • Deborah Gillespie
    Posted March 21, 2016 at 10:53 am

    Wow! What a wonderful testimony of God’s working in the lives of His children. Although I thought I knew most of the story of your being fired, I did not know about Lewis. Just another affirmation that when we surrender to our Father, we “get to” be a part of His Kingdom-growing plan. Thanks for sharing, Dave.

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Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.

Our dream house was a 120-year old 3-story Victorian home. It was just a few blocks away from one of the loveliest parks in the city and the same distance from the church I pastored. I could literally walk to work, and did so on many mornings. How convenient!

Unlike the other brick houses that lined the streets nearby, this one was painted light yellow and stood apart from the rest. Plaster reliefs of baby angels wrapped around the base of the house. They represented the children of the original owners, making the structure even more unique. It also had a three-car garage at the back of it. Few houses in this older section of town had one as large, and many people resorted to parking on the street. But not us! On just an average salary, we had bought one of the nicest places to live in the area. 

I had always dreamed of owning a Victorian home. I had performed the role of Prof. Henry Higgins from the musical My Fair Lady right before we moved to our new city. So I was primed to live the life of the English gentleman, sipping tea in my beautiful old house. I loved the old wood, the stained glass windows, and our “penthouse suite” for my wife and me on the top floor. We’d be sequestered away from the noise of our little girls playing below us. It all seemed so ideal.

But it turned out to be anything but ideal. Our “Golden House”, as our little girls came to call it, was not so golden. In fact, our dream house almost killed us, quite literally. 

One afternoon I got a call at the church. It was Dawn, my wife, and she was sobbing hysterically. Finally I was able to make out enough of her words to understand what was happening.

“I fell…come home!”

Almost 20 years ago, my wife had been in a bad car accident that crushed her right leg. That ankle couldn’t turn at all. So as I ran the 5 blocks to my home, I knew what had happened.

When I got to the house, I found Dawn in the basement. She was headed to the washer and drier there, and had misjudged a step going down. She hit the concrete floor hard.

After getting her to the hospital, thankfully we learned nothing had been broken. However, that would be just the first of several falls for Dawn down those steps. We eventually moved the washer and drier up to the second floor, which helped a little. But the bottom line was a three-story house with narrow stairways were not meant for a woman who had challenges with mobility.

I also learned having your bedroom on the third-floor is not a good idea for a chubby guy in his mid-50s. There were a few days I wondered if I’d still be alive by the time I reached the top floor. Though I began on the stairway to the bedroom, I might end up on the stairway to heaven…

Then there was the city. Dawn and I always loved culture, restaurants, theater and all the things a great city has to offer. So living there, we felt like kids in a candy store. There was always some new restaurant to explore, always a show playing somewhere, and interesting people living all around us. It seemed ideal.

Except for crime. And taxes. Many cities are big on those, and ours was no exception. We had both in abundance.

One of our regular nightly diversions was watching the notifications on our community’s “Next Door App” alert us to all the recent shootings and hold-ups around us. One of us would hear gunshots, and I’d watch for the posts to pop up. I’d then calculate how close it was to our home. Many were within just a few blocks, some just down the street. 

We would occasionally get notices of some tax we hadn’t paid. Usually, we neglected to pay because the city had neglected to ever send a bill. Then one day, you get a notice you’re being sent to a collections agency, even though you still hadn’t received a bill yourself. 

Once we got a bill for trash pick-up. We were confused because we paid a refuse bill on time every month. But a lady on the phone informed us what we had paid was in fact only the garbage bill. There was completely different bill that was a tax for just having trash pick up available to us in the city. This bill was paying for the “possibility” our trash might be picked up. No kidding.

I’m sure they’re still probably working on a way to collect a tax on our taxes. 

All of this added together was a painful lesson on the difference between perception and reality. After we first moved to that city and were still living in an apartment, I walked down those very streets and fantasized about how wonderful living there would be. When we found the Golden House, we rejoiced and basically cried out, “Here, take our money” to the realtor. 

But the view from the outside of a situation is always much different from the inside. Nothing is ever quite what you expect…with houses, or with life.

The problem with so many of the things we want is it’s too often based on an illusion. We think a thing, a person, or a situation will bring happiness. But happiness is never found in those things outside of us.

Real happiness only happens from the inside out.

There’s an old fashioned Bible word for this foolishness: covetousness. The prohibition against coveting is actually the 10th and final commandment. It’s easily skimmed over in favor of the more R-rated commandments against murder or adultery. Simply wanting your neighbors stuff as opposed to stealing it or killing for it seems like no big deal in comparison.

But coveting is like a powerful drug. The addict never gets enough. Once he gets that one thing he’s obsessed over, he’s disappointed to realize it doesn’t fulfill his needs and he moves on to something more. The new car he’d wanted all his life now sits in the garage most days. She can’t even remember why she bought that purse now. That’s how coveting works: whatever you get, it’s never enough. You’re always left wanting something else, and even more addicted to your desires.

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 2:10-11

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. - Luke 12:15

There was nothing wrong with us wanting a house. But it was very wrong of me to think that it would bring us so much happiness on its own. The ideal life and fulfillment I was expecting from a house was unreasonable. 

That kind of happiness only comes from God’s address, not mine.

Inevitably, we become like kids on the day after Christmas. We’ve opened every package, played with every toy, and we’re already bored with them. The newness wore off in a day, all because we were expecting too much from them to begin with.

Most homes stop being dream houses the minute we walk into them. Reality inevitably sets in, and the “house porn” on the realtor’s website is now just a bunch of plaster and dry wall. 

We finally made it out of our dream house before it killed us. No, we didn't run screaming from it in the middle of the night like in the Shining or the Amityville Horror. When we left, it did take quite a bite out of our finances, and we had to sell for quite a bit less than we'd paid. But the wound was worth it for the lesson we learned.

We’re in a new place now, in a much smaller city. We’re renting a little one-story house we’re hoping to buy soon. We're in a little neighborhood where we hardly ever lock our front door. It's pretty boring compared to city life, but that’s just fine with me.

I’ve discovered what really makes a “dream house”. The dream is not the house, it’s the people you put in it. Regardless of the size or location, those people are what makes life worthwhile. 

Everything else is just a dream. And all that glitters is not a golden house.