Having just recently read again Romans 12:3-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 about the importance of body life and how Christians so very much need one another, I have been reminded once more how much I do depend on others. It is too easy for me to be a loner and think that I am sufficient in myself. But I desperately need the rest of the body of Christ.
And this reliance on others comes in various forms. One thing I have often said is that next to the regular reading of Scripture, one of the most important things the believer can read are Christian biographies and autobiographies. They can challenge, inspire, inform, and rebuke us.
Regular readers of this site know that my last few articles have dealt with a Christian biography that appeared back in 2014. I refer to the biography Gary Wilkerson penned on his famous father David. For more info, see these previous pieces:
I want to do one last article on him and this biography by looking at a few other areas of his life that have spoken to me, convicted me, and moved me to keep on for Christ even more than before. As I said in my pieces, I have been changing over the years, both in terms of some theology, but also in terms of how I live as a believer and treat others.
For example, I just reread the “love chapter” (1 Corinthians 13). While I might have sailed over that passage years ago, now it really hits me. I find it to be one of the most difficult and challenging chapters in the entire Bible. It leaves me thinking that I am a million miles from where I should be. I seem to know nothing of love – for God or others. I have such a looong way to go here…
Related to this is another thing I have been grappling with of late: I have a problem in being soft on myself while being hard on others. It should be the opposite for all believers: being hard on yourself (in terms of discipline, taking sin seriously, etc) and soft on others (in terms of extending grace and love, etc).
Some sections of the book on how David Wilkerson made various changes ties in here. For example, after a long time doing crusade work and evangelism, he went back to ministering as a pastor. As his son puts it:
Being a pastor again changed my father. “David not only told me that personally; He said it publicly in my church,” Jim Cymbala says. “He said he could be harsh and judgmental, but when he became a pastor, all that had to go out the window.”
Dad told Jim the change began when he had a particular encounter on the street. He was on his way to church when he saw a woman from the congregation and they began talking. She had bought the subway token to get to church but couldn’t afford one to get home. “But God is faithful,” she said with a smile. “I know being in church tonight will help me.”
Dad immediately grew convicted. The message he had prepared to preach that night was a hard one. He told Jim, “How could I possibly lambast her in a sermon? How can I show her everything she’s doing wrong, every area where she’s failing God? You can’t build a church on that.”
He spoke about it with his friend Barry Megular. “He talked openly about how he preached judgement during his crusades and it filled the altars,” Berry says. “But he said, ‘As a pastor you have to live with people the next day and the next week and the next month, and you realise they’re on a journey.’ It became clear to him that their problems didn’t go away just because he preached a judgement message. The next week they would have the same problems, the day-to-day struggles of living. Dave said, ‘I was wrong. I have no right to preach judgement until I understand the grace of God.’ That was a profound change for him.”
At one point, Dad refused to listen to tapes of his past sermons. If someone in the office was playing one, he would say “Please turn that off. I’m screaming there.”
Nikki Cruz visited the church often and saw the change taking place in Dad. “Dave was hard on himself, and as a pastor you can’t bring that to the people, he says. You can’t put doubts on obedient children, and at times he was hurting people more than helping. But because he was a man of prayer, he listened to the Holy Spirit, and he said, ‘I’m going to change that.’” (pp. 267-268)
And then there is a problem many folks in ministry experience, that of being a workaholic for Christ. He had to learn that sometimes less is more:
The first half of my dad’s life had been all zeal, a consuming passion for souls. Now, as he looked to the second half, he seemed to realise, “I’m still consumed, still called a minister to the lost and hurting, but I know I’m not going to win the world. It’s not up to me.” It dawned on him that he could actually be more effective by striving less. He had always trusted God, but now that trust included resting in Christ’s finished work. Of course, the nagging question, “Am I doing enough?” would always be with my dad, like a low-grade fever. It would come back for a season, at times making him soul-sick. But he had gained the wherewithal to respond, “No that’s not who I am in Christ. He has brought me into a place of rest.” (p. 247)
David Wilkerson: The Cross, the Switchblade, and the Man Who Believedby Wilkerson, Gary (Author), Sawyer, R. S. B. (Primary Contributor)
In my previous pieces on the man and his mission, I mentioned how he often struggled with whether God really loved him, and how a large pile of books given to him by his friend Leonard Ravenhill really turned his life around. The sackful of volumes by Puritan writers was a real turning point for him. Here is a bit more on that:
Further immersion in the Puritans continued to help him, which is something we discussed in one of our last conversations. Dad had a sly grin as he pulled out a book and told me, “I’m even reading John Calvin. I want to get as much of a sense of God’s peace as I can.” Dad would have been uncomfortable with people knowing he read Calvin, but for any Christian seeking a deep, inner knowing of God’s grace, Calvin’s writing on the subject engages it beautifully.
Dad told me he didn’t believe “once saved always saved,” a tenet ascribed to Calvin. Instead, he read Calvin for his profound understanding of the extent of grace in the sureness of Christ’s work for us. Dad was consciously trying to rid himself of the inner voice that said, “I’m not good enough. God doesn’t love me, and I’ve got to do more.” He had always been able to escape that battle through more confidence, more sacrifice, more boldness, more abandonment to God’s purposes on earth, but now those escape routes no longer existed for him. He had to find true grace, something that was beyond his mind and emotions to grasp.
I believe God’s grace landed mercifully with Dad one day when his strength was failing. Roger Hayslip had to take him to a hospital, and my father had forgotten his shoes. As he padded around in his socks, a patient walking by stopped and said kindly, “Here, sir, take my shoes. I can get another pair.”
Dad had given his whole life to helping others, which famously included giving up his shoes to a poor kid on the streets of New York City. Now, when Dad needed to hear it most, God seemed to be asking him to receive the same loving grace. (pp. 288-289)
One last thing that has stood out for me has to do with the type of ministry I have had for so many years now. It is nothing like Wilkerson’s and I am nowhere near in his league. And while I have always said that I am not a prophet, I think I have a prophetic-sort of ministry. This is what his son wrote about Wilkerson:
In truth, I was never fully comfortable with my dad’s prophetic role; he never was either. I’m very different from my father in many ways — in temperament, gifts, and personality — but the prophetic role my dad played is one I came to respect. He himself never wanted to be a prophet. “No true prophet ever does,” says church historian Dr. Stanley Burgess, who encountered my dad in his earliest days of ministry.
When my father saw evil in the world, he never questioned why it existed. Instead, he did something about it. “You can’t do everything,” he always told us, “but you can do something.” He did more than his share. He went to every area of crisis he could — ghettos, prisons, poverty-stricken countries that few evangelists visited — and started works there. “Find the poor,” he advised every young minister who sought his counsel. “Help those who can do nothing for you. Then watch God bless you.” (p. 27)
And this:
Complicating Dad’s struggle was his prophetic burden. “He felt the heartbreak of God,” Bob Phillips says. “He didn’t like having to carry the burden of the prophetic message. It was not something he chose; It was God’s choice for him. And David did it faithfully and at great cost. He hurt deeply when people called him a false prophet, but I never saw him defend himself.” What Dad’s critics didn’t see was that when he prophesied things that didn’t come to pass, he agonized over it – sometimes to friends, always to God, and without fail, to himself.
“A lot of people saw him as hard because of his message,” Bob says. But David didn’t like having to carry that message. He had a tremendous love for people, and he came into a stronger message of love at Times Square Church. But that was not a new revelation to him; it’s who he already was.”
Mostly my father was struggling to learn grace for himself – slowly, gradually, from the outside in. “I don’t know how many times we heard him say, ‘I never knew God until now,’” Roger Hayslip says. “I finally told him, ‘Dad, please stop saying that. You’ve always walked with God! You’ve never not known him.’” My father laughed because he knew it was true. (p. 268)
In so many ways I am so very different from someone like Wilkerson. But I can learn a lot from him, even while not fully agreeing with everything he said and did. He grew and matured as a believer over the decades, always wanting more of Christ and less of himself. That is a goal all Christians should have. I know that is my great need.
