Careening through Life

 A Sunday School teacher once said, “God smiles when you invite your friends to church.” So, with quaking limbs I crossed the street to talk with my neighbor Michael. He was a cool older kid that always showed us his latest and greatest Lego sets. I knocked on the door and said, “Michael, would you like to come to church with me Wednesda
y night?” 

“Sure,” he said.

I was elated. My success was so exhilarating that I continued to march across the street and beat upon his door every week. It felt like God was sending me to save my friend Michael. But I thank God for my Mom. She quietly corrected me and said, “At some point, Michael will have to make a personal decision that he wants to come to church and that he wants to follow Jesus. Michael is coming because he doesn’t want to tell you no.”

My weekly trips across the street came to a halt. Michael quit coming. I was crushed.

But God kept calling out from the back seat of the car, “Keep going. Trust me with your life. Put the pedal to the metal.” So at the age of 12, I started praying for my sister to know Jesus. I sensed that God was about to do a great work in her life. About a month later, my sister accepted Jesus into her heart and was baptized in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son and in the name of the Holy Spirit. 

I remember skipping through aisles that evening as Dad shut off the lights in the church building. I squirmed with delight as I told Dad, “Isn’t this so cool. God answers prayers. I asked him to help my sister know Him and she made a decision to follow Him!” Chills traveled up my spine. 

“Yes!” said Dad. “God does indeed answers prayers.”

It was as if God in that moment tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is my work not yours.” So I pressed the pedal down and the car kept rolling. 

Eventually, I was a burdened for my friend Chance in Boy Scouts who did not know Jesus. God gave me the courage to invite him to church. I dressed up nice that Sunday and when we dropped by to pick him up He was not dressed quite as nice as I was. I wished silently I could go home and change my clothes so he felt more comfortable. To make matters worse, I took him to an adult Sunday School Class, because my home church did not have a class for middle schoolers. And then, as we were walking through the door, an elder in my church mistook him for my girlfriend due to his long hair. Let me tell you, that was embarrassing for both of us.

Thankfully, my church started a youth group so I invited a different friend from Boy Scouts, James, to come. He brought his girlfriend with him and it felt like a huge win for the Kingdom of God. 

However, my desire to share the good news with Chance grew. This led to a couple of awkward invites over to our house to play pool. At one point, I quoted a significant portion of Scripture about the church to my friend. Not my finest hour. Nobody wants a Bible thumper at their front door, but I am confident that God used my feeble attempts at obedience.

During high school, I was hired by Valant Aerostructures to deburr airplane parts. I was surrounded by men and women who did not know Jesus. Foul language flowed like no one even knew the meaning of the words. Thankfully, my heart was not hardened by this, but rather softened. I began to see how God sees us. On one occasion, I remember a guy named Josh sharing a country song with me about a Mom drinking coffee with her son in the kitchen. In that moment, I knew that I was not surrounded by heathens. I was surrounded by lost sheep, by real people in need of a real Savior. Every desire within me to call anyone a heathen fled to the farthest corners of my heart.

Dare I mention how much I cared for Edgar who, despite living with searing back pain, dragged himself to work every day. Sometimes he would say, “I’m not sure life is worth living anymore.” And my heart would be burdened, because I knew that his pain would not end after death if he did not know Jesus. Or Sonny, whose poor choices left him with consequences he could not control. Even the flirtatious janitor who could not see that she was a daughter of the King. God was calling me to make disciples of lost sheep, though at the time, I did not know where to begin.

God knew exactly where to begin. My Mom has a sign above her sink that says, “As far you know, we are a nice normal family.” And as far as I knew, my family was perfect. So, God started with my false assumption and turned my world upside down. He said, “You think you are nice and normal, let me show you how to bring some chaos into your normality. Let me show you how to embrace grace and truth. We are about to get messy. It’s Miller time!”

Who Is In the Driver's Seat?

 While in college, I was convicted by God to do my internship in the northeastern corner of the United States. And so, I set out with a few phone calls and emails. However, the one lead that I had resulted in a dead end. My conclusion? Maybe God doesn’t want me to go northeast after all. I’ll just look closer to home.

So, I found what sounded like the next best possibility, email a large church in Joplin, Missouri that had a heart for church planting. Promptly, this church emailed me back and referred me back to the northeast corner of the United States and a church that they knew of who was accepting interns. That was when I was reminded that God can indeed be trusted when he convicts us to do what seems uncomfortable or impossible. After all, I gave up on going northeast and he pushed me back that direction by His providence and not by my faith. 

I reached out to The Mountain Christian Church near Baltimore, Maryland and asked if there was any possibility that I could intern with them. They typed back, “We would love to have you as an intern, but because of your heart for church planting we think that you would be a better fit for The Foundry in the heart of Baltimore.”

This had my heart pumping a hundred miles an hour. I could not believe my ears. Quickly, I emailed The Foundry Church and had a good conversation with the minister. He loved my heart for ministry, but he said, “I can’t provide you with housing or the income to find housing. And you do not have enough time to raise funds to make this internship.”

My heart dropped. How could God mislead me? I gave up on the internship. Maybe it would work out a different year. And then at Chapel the following week, my church planting professor, Mike Ackerman, asked me how my internship search was going. I said, “Well, it was a dead end. They could not provide housing, income or even a side gig for an income.” 

Mike then wisely said, “Did they say no?”

“Well, no...” I replied.

“Ryan, don’t you think it’s easier for God to direct a moving car rather than a parked one?”

I was cut to the heart by my lack of faith and immediately emailed The Mountain Christian Church and explained the situation with their hope that I could intern with The Foundry Church as they desired. When they emailed me back, I was shocked by the reply:

“If money is an obstacle, I could maybe find you housing and a job up here and you could work down in the city.”

God had provided at just the right time and reminded me once again that He can indeed be trusted to direct my life. He can be trusted in the driver’s seat. “God can be trusted. You can only trust Him. You must trust Him.”

Can God Be Trusted?

This was when I came face to face with the beaten pulp of my broken self. I was a young man with a trust problem. My desire was to earn the favor of God and be a better person than everybody else. I wanted to be perfect. But the Spirit of God was saying, “You must trust me. You are a fellow struggler not a superhero here to save the world. I saved the world. You cannot.”

I wasn’t able to pin-point the source of my life’s problems until God led me to Ozark Christian College. A man named Travis Hurley gave his personal testimony during chapel insisting that we must, “Rip open the floorboards of your life. Hide your old self no longer. You died to sin. How can you hide it any longer?” You can watch the sermon at https://youtu.be/tt-QxpO0w-E.

Not more than a couple of weeks later, I drove home and made two life changing decisions. First, I completely opened up about the battles in my mind to keep lustful thoughts at bay. Second, I took one of my brothers out for a Sonic drink and apologized for the frustration and dissension that I had held over him for 3 to 4 years. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I dared to rip off the floor boards and allow Jesus to work on the parts of my life I had been keeping secret. He removed the seed of potential from my beaten flesh and planted my life in His life.

This was the start of my journey to freedom in Christ! It was an invaluable turning point for me that allowed me to move from doubting God to trusting God. And as if a switch had been flipped, it also benefited my friendships with others. Why? Because I was willing to speak with raw honesty about my failures and successes, others were willing to share their lives with me.