It may puzzle us as to why a God-inspired ambition would be left to die. But it happens. In fact, in speaking to youth back in the 70’s, Bill Gothard named it the death of a vision. The Lord confirms its truth to our family, again and again.

For example, from my conversion in my youth, I experienced an ever-growing curiosity to understand the unfolding revelation in Scripture as well as Christian doctrine. They marveled me as nothing else. I walked four miles to work with one eye on a book and another on traffic! At a midlife point, I accepted a call to ministry and signed up at a local Bible College. An architect with whom I was working at the time remarked that, from that day forward, I walked with a lighter step. The classes were for me a piece of heaven, delicious beyond telling. Standing in the library stacks before theological works, my insides trembled, devoured with desire to digest it all.

Then came seminary. Then the pastorate. Then the call to the mission field, learning French, and cross-cultural ministry in Chad. All the while, the drive of the study of truth never abated. But I came to realize two things: One, study can spark ideas without imparting the spiritual reality; that which excites the mind does not always penetrate to the heart. The distance between the two, the French thinker Pascal observed, is infinite. Two, healthy desire can quickly become an idolatrous compulsion. Pascal wrote: “We make an idol of the truth itself, for truth apart from charity is not God.”

Thus, it became very desirable to desire contentment. To LIVE in the present moment – happy and grateful with what God had already graced me. So, one definitive day in a termite-infested study, I prayed: this is it, Lord. I’m done with all desire for further, formal education. I will be content with what you’ve given me: by your help I will prepare it on my knees, seek to be transformed by it, and then minister it, wherever you so lead...

A death transpired in me. A peace set in.

Sometime later, Teresa and our son Philip were evacuated to France for medical reasons. Our mission director visited them and dropped a bomb: “So Teresa, why don’t you go to France on your next furlough, to a university where Paul can hear theology expressed in good French?” For, in fact, a French theologian had remarked: “Paul, you’re speaking French, but it’s coming from an English head (!)” Furthermore, the Mission was looking to the future continuing education needs of church leaders, missionaries and new believers in Chad.

The rest is an astonishing narrative of doors swinging open and connections falling into place in Strasbourg – all beyond our own wits and resources. And now, the weightiest labor of my life is completed. I read, pondered and reformulated, day and night, some of the most precious treasures of Christian truth I’ve ever encountered. The studies were also well-suited to the root issues we faced in African ministry, and carried out with a profound, calming sense of the Holy Spirit’s guidance and blessing. Now, we return to Chad, renewed in vision and waiting to be shown His ways and works.

There’s a lesson in this for us all. Capacities, ambitions, bents, education and zeal of any sort, these are all good alive IF they are dead to us – killed and consecrated in perpetual offering to God’s will. To be useful to the Master, they must die. Really die. Painfully die. Only then will they be resurrected with the Son to be the Father’s work by the Spirit – the very energy and movement of God clothed in human personality. In Christ, death yields life, both in personal life and in public service. Once what has become ours is slain, He entrusts us again with what is His.

Paul