What Am I Doing?

I received the following questions: “All I am asking is where are you going. It is 2025 and where is it you are limping to.”

Starting at the conceptual beginning, a couple of years ago I heard a snippet of a sermon by Mark Driscoll in which he talked about brothers and sisters in Christ who, as a result of being hurt by the church, walk with Jesus but walk with a limp. Given my own spiritual emaciation at the time, it inspired me to title my enterprise “Limping with Jesus”. I am still limping, but perhaps for different reasons than when I first started out.

I have stage 4 prostate cancer that has spread to my spine and skeleton. As far as I know, there is no cure. As far as I know, despite treatments being currently applied, there will be no moment in which my doctor proudly proclaims that I am in remission. As far as I know, I am limping toward the grave. I don’t know how long the journey will be, but I have read accounts of men who were better athletes, men who climbed mountains and competed in endurance races, who died in 7 to 9 years. The 10 year data is not particularly encouraging. I have just crossed the halfway mark on 5 year survival, and I feel pretty good about it, but this journey has already had more than its share of highs and lows.

I dealt with my mortality in the writing of my book, also titled “Limping with Jesus”. Most days I don’t think about it. At present, my focus is on living the most God-honoring life that I can in whatever time I have left. I am certainly open to God performing a miracle and granting me a Hezekiah-like extension of years. I have prayed for it, as have others, but God is on His own timing and I have accepted that whatever happens is the best thing that could happen because God knows what’s best for all of us. As a dear friend recently said, I could die tomorrow in a car wreck and look mighty foolish fussing over all this cancer business. Or God could miraculously beat the odds for me and let me live into my 70’s or 80’s.

I still write, obviously, but the focus has changed. In the writing of my book, I was processing the feelings of having been given a death sentence, while simultaneously trying to build the life of faith that I should have had for the previous 40 years. Today, my focus is not on death but on life and living out that faith. That’s why when people ask if I’ll write another book like “Limping with Jesus”, I say it’s up to God. Right now, it doesn’t feel like another collection of these essays would have an encapsulated reason for being or even a logical ending. That’s why I’m trying my hand at fiction even as I continue to write here.

I write to think. Writing forces me to organize the jumble of emotions, impressions, and ideas that constantly swirls in my head. It is primarily for me and for God, secondarily for any who care to read it. It documents my thought journey as I attempt to walk out the primary aims of my faith: to become more like Christ and to make disciples.

“Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.”
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
— Matthew 28:19-20 (NIV)

Even with this, it’s important to remember that I’m just a man. I will do this imperfectly, and I will make mistakes. My understanding of the Bible and therefore my personal doctrine is no doubt flawed. That’s why I am under the authority of my pastor and elders, and have invited them to correct me in all things where necessary. I attend a Bible-believing church, and Scripture is our highest authority. We test things against the Word, and ignore or rebuke that which fails. As I wrote in the very beginning, my God is a mountain, not a swamp, and I will gladly break myself apart throwing myself against Him. The Old Testament is replete with warnings against syncretism and false gods and the consequences of turning from the Lord. Even so, like Judah my past sins are written on my heart with an iron pen, and though I rest in forgiveness, I work daily to separate myself from them.

In the end, I write to make my new life in Christ visible. I am washed in the blood of the Lamb; I have faith that I will one day step from this world into the next, and join those rejoicing around the Throne. Though by medical expectations I will not survive to retirement, my life is immeasurably better since I made the decision April 1, 2023 to wholeheartedly pursue God. I invite all those who read my words to join me. Today is the day to believe in Jesus Christ and join the Kingdom of God.