Denver Seminary accepted me as a Master of Divinity, No Concentration, student today, August 25, 2008. The semester started today. Tomorrow I need to get in touch with the registrar. I hope to register for three classes for the semester: the first semester of Greek, the basic Bible interpretation class, and the introduction to ministry in multicultural contexts. They are on Wednesday and Thursday nights. They will get me started on what would be a three year program if I was able to go full time, but will take an unknown amount of time (less than or equal to ten years ) since I’m going to continue working at HP at least part time. It may not come across as I write this, but I’m extremely excited.

In some ways, this is the culmination of thirteen years of God working on my heart. In other ways, it is the beginning of fulfilling destiny. In yet other ways, it doesn’t matter, since the only thing that is important is relationship with the holy, infinite, awesome, God who loves us so much that He gave His Son to reconcile us to Himself so He could lavish His love on, in and through us. In the last six months, this call has finally grown to the point where my choice is either to pursue it or deny God’s voice, so I am pursuing it.

Below is the text of the essay that I included in the application material. It explains where I’ve come from and why I’m doing this, but more than that, I believe it is a story about God – what He’s done, what He’s doing, and the hope and vision for what He’s going to do in the future. In the end, this isn’t about me and Laure at all, it’s all about Him.

Anyway, I’m posting this because I want everyone that I know to know what I’m doing so they can question it, test it, and pray. Those of you who are brothers and sisters in Christ, please pray for Laure and I as this adventure begins that we would continue to keep God central in our lives (everything revolves around Him), that our relationship with each other would be in such close orbit around God that it would blossom and be the beautiful picture of Christ and His Church that He wants it to be, that I would honor God by being faithful at work and school, and that we would let God work through the gifts and talents that He has put in us. Sorry for the patchwork quotation, but as Paul says in Romans 11:29, 33-36, “…the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. … Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to Him again? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”

Here’s the essay. Enjoy!

My story, like most, begins with my parents. They met at a Nazarene congregation, and my mother took me and my sisters to the same church every week until I was 7. I said my VBS prayer when I was less than 5. When we left the Nazarene congregation, we went to a Bible church where I stayed until I went to college. I learned a lot about God and about myself during that time. My older sister’s baptism made me think about my own commitment, and eventually I knew that I had not really given Jesus my heart and life. While doing Bible study and scripture memorization for a scholarship program for summer camp when I was sixteen, God kept calling me, telling me that I had to deal with my soul and spirit by submitting to Him. As part of the program I had to memorize, “For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:25-26 NASB) As I read that, I realized that my choice was to have the world, or to have Jesus, and His identification with me depended on my identification with Him. So, I accepted Christ as Lord and Savior in my parent’s basement in June or July of 1993. The evidences of the veracity of this conversion were that a lot of pride went away, that I became kinder and more considerate, and that my desires changed from being satisfied knowing about God to wanting to know Him and serve Him out of love for Him. Baptism wasn’t emphasized in the church I was in, but I felt God’s call for obedience and to follow Jesus’ example, so I was eventually baptized at Community Bible Church in Cedar Lake, IN in April of 1995.
While I was still in high school, I encouraged our youth leader to start a new meeting that would be an in-depth Bible study. That eventually grew into a youth leadership team. I helped with the teaching of the youth group from the end of my junior year of high school through the time I went to college in fall of 1995. During that time I learned the difference between when I was trying to teach and when I allowed God to teach through me. That time period also serves as the primary experience from which I draw an assessment of my spiritual gifts. From the results of a survey taken when I was in college, the dominant gifts are teaching, helps, and knowledge; the subordinate gifts are service, pastor, and wisdom. These match up with my heart’s desire to take Scripture and expose it to people in such a way that they are drawn into worship of the awesome, infinite, powerful God who loves us, to disciple people into the likeness of Christ, and to help people deal with the confusion of life in our broken world. Recently I was reading 1 Timothy, and was struck by verse 1:5 – “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” Love of God is the goal, and we are to be “faithfully administering God’s grace” (1 Peter 4:10 NIV) to develop the pure heart, good conscience, and sincere faith. This verse in 1 Timothy is exactly my heart.
When I graduated high school, I knew that I had two options. One was to do what I had been planning to do for a while – to become a professional computer programmer. Of course, what I wanted to do was video game programming; everyone goes into programming to work on video games. So, I had made plans to attend Purdue University to study Computer Engineering. The other option was to be trained and equipped for teaching and pastoring. I felt the call to do that, but I didn’t accept it. The fear of man was still a big motivator, so I had a desire to satisfy the expectations of those around me. A desire for financial security, the ability to control the “big picture”, the comfort of relying on my own natural abilities, and the ability to determine where I would live were all also present, and since the illusion of that security and control is easier to maintain in a technical career, I chose that path.
Except for when I have dulled my senses through entertainment, companionship, and other worldly means, there has not been a day that has gone by in the last thirteen years where that call hasn’t come up in my mind. I have denied it, avoided it, and avoided God because of it, but it has always been there. He has always been there, patiently waiting for me to listen to His heart and take up the call.
God was trying to get a hold of me in my early college career, trying to get me to see that my heart was not in it. He was also very patient with me, letting me kick against the goads as long as I wanted to. The lack of a heart interest can be seen in my transcripts, especially the first two years of my undergraduate education, which are “colorful.” Eventually, though, I did graduate with a BS in Computer Science and was hired by Hewlett-Packard, my employer since January 2001.
Since then, God has blessed me with success and favor at work, a beautiful wife, and a wonderful church. My wife and I started working with the high schoolers at our church in early 2005, moved to helping the college group in fall of 2005, and have recently been connecting with the new batch of high schoolers that have been coming in. We have mostly taken on the role of “being there” – befriending students and being available to help when we can. I have also been leading the technology aspect of our weekly meeting for college students and 20-somethings.
In the last year I have been drawing closer to God. The last six months, especially, have been moving quickly. In February we received prayer wherein I was told to spend time with Father, getting to know Him and His heart better, and to buckle my seatbelt because things would happen quickly when I did so. They did, and my eyes have been opened to the vanity of my career, my continuing education (I have been working on an MS in Computer Science), and my own plans. Our first few days in July were spent at a software engineering conference near San Francisco, where I presented a small research project I had done in class. The presentation went well, but I’ve described the overall experience as “wonderfully miserable.” God used that time to make it clear to me just how much I was not built to be in that worldly value system. A couple weeks after that, my wife and I were going for a walk. I asked if she wanted to know what I want to do. Of course she said, “yes,” so I told her that I wanted to leave the MS in CS behind, start working part time, and go to Bible school. Since we both feel that we are not yet done at our local church, we looked at the options in Colorado, and Denver Seminary with its self-contained Master of Divinity program seems like a good match. Since that conversation, things have been accelerating and building like an avalanche, but we are guided by faith in God to take care of us as we place ourselves in His hands.