Gary & Dennis share stories and insights from following God together for over 50 years.
Ministry, yeah, doing ministry together for 55 years now. Started in 1970. I don't know how much ministry I was doing in 1970, but by 71, you were doing ministry.
Yeah. Well, it's varied. I mean, when we were living in the ministry house, we took all our classes together and worked together every day, doing different meetings.
Worked at the same restaurant. Yeah, just did life together. Went on trips.
A quarter break, we would take off for trips together. He had a car, which I did not have, so there was a reason to hang out more, go to the same Bible studies. Well, we were pretty good, awfully good friends before we started walking with Christ.
So that was just, it was there from the beginning. I don't know, we just enjoyed doing stuff together. And I think I always realized we were super complementary.
We were different, but our differences made both of us more effective as a rule. Den has more leadership instincts than I do. It's not that I'm not a leader, but he's got more visionary ability and stuff like that.
And I don't know how I temper you, but I know that's good for stirring me up. I need people poking at me. That's good for me.
I find that he urges and is able to help me be more patient. I'm an impatient person, so I need that. And he's always been really strong on personal time with God, and it will encourage me there, too.
We basically talk on the phone together every Monday for an hour or so, kind of catch up on our lives and on what's going on in the church, and what we're learning, and pray together. That's how we keep in touch these days. Before that, for many, many, many years, we just got together every week, first at McDonald's and then in our office, every week to catch up.
I'm a big believer in having long-term friends that really know you well and are in a position to set you straight on things or just be grounded in another person who had the same life experience with me, and really knows what I'm talking about. I think everyone should have a couple or three intimate friends like that.
I remember talking with some younger leaders several years ago. I think I'd given a teaching at Summer Institute, and one of the points was just what Den said, you need long-term friends. They were talking to me afterwards, saying, we're growing and splitting, we can't afford that. I basically told them, you can't afford not to.
It's a stewardship responsibility if you're going to go the whole distance. It's not a luxury, it's a responsibility. Him and I have never been in the same home church, unless you count the original fish house as a home church.
But you make time for it, because it keeps you going. I think in addition to key challenges that we've received from each other, there's a key encouragement during time. I can think of several times when I was just wiped out, ready to quit or whatever, and Den would give me a word of encouragement that would keep me going.
It's super important, because he's in a position to know what encouragement is needed. Encouragement from a close friend counts for more than someone who doesn't know you that well. I've been studying the Psalms a lot.
I never got into them when I was younger. I think it takes experiencing suffering, at least for me, to appreciate the Psalms. But I've been especially struck by the metaphor of God as a refuge.
It starts at the end of Psalm 2, where he says, How blessed is he who takes refuge in Him. And then the next dozen Psalms seem to be intentionally arranged that way, because they kind of unpack what God as our refuge is. Then I realized it's maybe the major theme in the Psalms.
That's been especially helpful for me over the last couple of years when I've been sick, just to ponder that. Another source that I hope older people in our church take advantage of is Oswald Sanders' book, Enjoying Your Best Years. That is such an encouraging and just an awesome book.
He points out that for people, as you get older and start feeling sorry for yourself, that we're called in Romans 12 to give ourselves over completely to God, and that proves his perfect and good will. Sanders points out that God's will, which we should rejoice in, includes us aging. It's something that has its own blessings that being young doesn't have, and we should be thankful for it.
The other thing that I've found is that I need, in order to finish the race, I need to continue not only to minister in general, but to use the gifts God's given me. In 1 Timothy 1, he says to Timothy, he refers to the prophecy that had been uttered over him that involved naming where he was gifted, and he said, it's by them that you'll be able to fight the good fight. So I think there's a certain vitality and vigor that comes from continuing, especially to exercise the gifts that you have.
So over the last couple of years, I haven't been able to do hardly any teaching, but I've been able to write, which is an outlet for that gift that keeps you vigorous. It's a crisis that I found myself really challenged, that I've got to go deeper in my convictions about God's sovereignty and God's wisdom, that he knows what he's doing, that this did not come to me except through his hands. And I think landing on the right place about things like health crises is pretty important because otherwise you're going to get resentful or you're going to get mistrustful of God, and that sends your whole life off course.
And the other thing is that my wife pointed out to me that we were prepared for, I was prepared for this period of my life. And as I look back, I can see how through other trials along the way, he was kind of preparing me and giving me endurance to go through this stage of my life. The other thing that Paul says to Timothy that's going to enable him to fight the good fight of faith in 1 Timothy 1 is to keep a good conscience, or as he says in Hebrews, to lay aside every encumbrance.
I think it's important, if you're going to go the whole distance, to have a responsiveness to God's conviction in your life. When he puts his finger on something just to get used to responding to him, that's the way we wind up not grieving the Spirit's work in our lives. There's a bunch of examples of good friends that have walked away, didn't make it.
And when you track what happens in their lives, it's not good. And so I think, you know, we have to persevere in faith, even if we're suffering, or things aren't going as well as we'd hoped. There's a lot to be said for just staying in there.
And God eventually, you look back and realize how cool it's been, and God will bring you into a place of fruitfulness. And the relationships you develop with people are lasting. We really are in a very, very unique church.
And God caused certain streams of teaching to come together. We know now how people gave us books, and the doctrinal slant and also our belief and practice of every member of ministry, and the eagerness with which people seek to grow and replicate their house churches. It's just really unusual and pretty unique, actually, in America anyway.
So we should all feel really gratified and blessed by God in that regard. I think that as you age, it becomes even more important to cultivate thankfulness. I think that's, you see people, life is a sifter, and it'll beat you down and take your joy and make you cynical or resentful, which is so toxic to your spirit.
And the way to counteract that is by really cultivating thankfulness. I remember, Dan, years ago, going through a pretty long period of depression. And we would talk about it when we got together, and as we talked about it, he just said that's the thing that God had spoken to him about, that he needed to work hard to be thankful.
Because you realize how we're pretty negative, and when you indulge that, then it just begins to poison your spirit. So gratitude, that's key. Well, he talks about the parable of the, what is it, that grows overnight.
What kind of plant was it? Seed, it's just a seed. Oh, that's the one, the parable that's not in the other gospels, yeah. The parable of the seed.
The farmer plants the seed. And then he says, you know, it begins to grow on its own. How he does not know.
He doesn't know how it grows or why. And when he notices it's ready, he puts in the sickle. So I think it's a, he says the kingdom of God is like this.
So it's on ministry. A lot of what happens, we don't understand why. And we didn't make it happen.
And certainly, you know, God has blessed our church over the years. There's thousands of people in it now, and many thousands more that came to Christ here or in other churches. So it's an honor to be used by God.
And you have to remember that he's the one that's bringing it all to pass. It's a cool parable.