In the year 2000, the Lord called my family to pack up our lives and move nearly 2500 miles to the spiritual frontier of the Great Northwest to serve as a country pastor in the foothills of the northern Cascades.
Within two years of arriving there I was exhausted and bankrupt in my personal storehouse of strength, finances, spirituality, ideas, and leadership. It was there that God met me in an early morning prayer to reveal that I was not the man to lead that church. I was crushed. My grand dreams, my up-rooted family, my wounded pride, all shattered against the firm words of God and the candor of reality. In the few long weeks that followed I feared the silent future while struggling to find the words that would communicate my failure to my family and to the church.
Then, in a quiet morning prayer, God whispered to my soul, “But I will make you into that man if you will let Me.” I simply replied, “I’m yours.” Each ensuing day since that surrender has been excruciatingly joyous.
In His relentless grace and merciful tenacity, God continues to direct a profusion of relationships, circumstances, teachings, and resources to slowly yet steadfastly mold me more and more into His new creation. Though I have failed and rebelled and betrayed and slacked and withdrawn and even at times just quit, He calls me back daily to the crucible of fellowship with Him.
These writings that follow amount to little more than a few theological burps churned from the intestinal fires of God’s faithful regeneration. I pray that these thoughts might be a small catalyst toward conversation, encouragement, challenge, growth, and maybe even transformation.
O Lord, let us be nothing more and nothing less than Yours.
- Tim Walker, Pastor Emeritus
