A New Beginning (12 page)

The pause which followed the singing was lengthy. Christopher closed his eyes for a moment. I knew he was breathing a last-minute prayer, asking God to do his will and accomplish his purposes through the words Christopher was about to say.

When he opened his eyes and drew in a deep breath, there was such purpose, such a keen look of intensity and vision on his face, that my heart swelled up in pride and gratitude to God all over again for the man he had given me to share life with.

I thought again as Christopher spoke, about the first days and weeks of our meeting at Mrs. Timms' farm. Even though he was the same person now, there had been such a discouragement evident then, even a sense of failure which now I understood more fully. He honestly hadn't known whether he would ever be in a position to speak to people through a church again.

Yet here he was, standing before the people of Miracle Springs, brave to say what he believed without apology, with such light in his wonderful eyes and such strength in his voice.

I was so happy for him, happy that the Lord was giving him the desire of his heart in this new place, in a new way, with new friends. I was happy that he was my husband and that the Lord had blessed me to be able to share this ministry with him. And I was very happy we weren't on that ship bound for New York!

“Over the next weeks, as I said,” Christopher began, “I would like to tell you what I believe. I would like to share the principles that will form the cornerstones of my ministry among you because they form the cornerstones of my life. These are not principles I learned at the Bible Institute or from some book or from a sermon I once heard, but truths I have come to discover as central to the Christian faith in my years of walking with God. Some of them have come from my first pastorate in Richmond. Others came during my years alone as foreman of a farm. Some emerged out of long lonely walks when my heart and mind were full of questions. What I am saying is that these truths have come to me slowly, over many years.

“They comprise three chief areas. The first has to do with the character and nature of God himself—who God actually
is
.

“We say we worship and seek to obey God. But do we know what kind of God he is? Do we know what he is
like
, if I may say it . . . as a person? Too often, I fear, we do not. I certainly did not in my younger years. I have had to learn and discover who God is. This is why I believe knowing what God is like is such an important aspect of what it means to be a Christian. This is what I will talk about with you this morning.”

Suddenly a little voice from somewhere in the congregation sounded.

“God's like my daddy!” it said.

The high-pitched comment from the five- or six-year-old girl was so unexpected that Christopher burst into laughter, followed by all the rest of us.

“Sally, you are exactly right!” Christopher said. “You've been paying attention better than anyone! I'm going to talk about that very thing this morning.”

Christopher waited for the laughter to gradually die down, his along with everyone else's. Then he returned to his sermon.

“The second area,” he said, “which I will discuss next week, is this: What is the nature of faith? Once we know who God is, what does it mean to believe in him, to have faith in him?

“And the third area will concern itself with the question, What is God's purpose in our lives? When we know God and have faith in him, then what does God want to accomplish with us? What is the work he wants to do within your heart and mine?

“When I say the words,
I, Christopher Braxton, am a Christian
, what I mean is based upon my answers to these three questions: Who is God? What is faith? What is God's purpose in my life? I hope our discussion of them will help you clarify what
you
mean when you say that you are a Christian.”

Christopher paused and took a breath.

“All right,” he said with a smile, “any questions so far?”

He paused and waited.

“Sally's shown she's not afraid to speak up. How about the rest of you?”

But no one said anything. The congregation just took the opportunity to shuffle themselves about again in their seats.

“Well then, let's begin, shall we?” Christopher went on. “This morning let us look at the first of these three questions:
Who is God?

“I said at the beginning that I want to try to explain to you what I believe. At the very core of my faith, I believe that the central truth in all the universe is simply this:
God is our good and loving Father.

“Now, we know that God is love. We have been taught and have heard those words all our lives. But what else is he?

“He is our Father.

“If there is one thing I will undoubtedly speak to you over and over about it is this one foundational fact of existence—God's Fatherhood.

“So I would answer the question,
Who is God?
by saying that he is our eternal heavenly Father, our loving Creator.

“Discovering this personal loving Fatherhood within each of our own hearts is the mountaintop of Christianity. There is nothing else the Christian faith is about. By his own admission, this was the reason Jesus came, the reason he taught, the reason he shed his blood—to show us what the Father is like and how to live as sons and daughters of the Father and how to enter into his presence. Jesus came to take our hands and lead us on an upward quest into the high mountains of faith where Fatherhood dwells.

“You see,
God is love
can remain a little abstract for us, mainly because the words are so familiar. Even the word
God
is a high and abstract word. But
father
 . . . there is a down-to-earth word that is anything but abstract.

“Now, as I explained to you last week, coming into this realization that God is a good and loving Father was extremely difficult for me. These things I say about God's goodness are no mere platitudes, but truths I have had to fight and struggle to make my own. That is why I now believe them with such passion. For the majority of my life, as I told you, the word
father
conveyed anything
but
goodness. I equated the word with
tyrant
.

“Now I know otherwise. Now I know that it is the tenderest and most loving word in all the world. And this is exactly what we must discover about Fatherhood, whatever has been our response to the word
father
in the past.

“God is not merely our Father in the abstract, as I said, but in very practical and personal ways. We are to be his children. We are to look up to him and call him
Father
—the most intimate and personal and warm address that the human tongue can whisper.

“Do you want to know this Father who is more father to you than you yet have any idea? Do you want to learn how to look up and call him
Father
?

“It takes spending time with him. Call it prayer, call it dialogue—I wish you all could have heard old Alkali Jones talk to God, simply, just like he talked to any of us. Call this sort of conversation anything you wish. I call it just this—talking to him, developing my relationship with my Father just like a growing child does with his parents, talking things over, telling him my struggles and frustrations, sharing with him my doubts and confusions. Who better to tell than my Father? As I told you last week, just learning to say the word was difficult for me at first. It is no different than a child learning to say
mama
or
papa
. It takes practice. We must
learn
to address God in this father-child intimacy.”

Christopher paused, then a smile spread over his face.

“Sally,” he said, “would you come up here please?”

The dark-headed little girl who had spoken earlier was obviously surprised to hear her name called in the middle of the sermon. Her boldness turned to bashfulness, and now she tried to melt into her seat. Her mother leaned over and whispered to her, urging her to go on up and stand by Christopher. Slowly she stood and walked forward. When she got up beside Christopher, she turned around, saw the congregation, and giggled. Everybody else started to laugh a little too.

Christopher got down on one knee beside the little girl and put his arm around her.

“Sally,” he said, “where's your daddy?”

She looked at him with a puzzled expression.

“Where is he, Sally?” he repeated.

“You can see him,” she said finally, “—he's right there!” She pointed as she spoke, then started to laugh.

The whole church was enjoying this!

“Bill,” said Christopher, glancing in the direction of Sally's finger, “would you come up here and get your daughter?”

The bearded young man looked over at his wife, then smiled, stood, and walked forward. He reached out his arms, and little Sally ran forward and grabbed on to him. Her father clutched her and picked her up in his arms.

“Folks,” said Christopher, motioning toward them, “this young girl now feels safe in her father's embrace. And this is exactly the Father-child intimacy I am speaking of when I say
this
is what God desires with each one of us.

“Thank you, Bill—and thank you too, Sally,” he added. “You may sit down again.”

As they returned to their seats, most eyes followed them, and not many missed the smile on Sally's face as she climbed into her daddy's lap.

Christopher took a couple of breaths and waited a few seconds to allow the mood to grow thoughtful once more.

“If I am to know the Father,” he went on at length, “I need to spend just as much time
listening
to him as I do talking to him. That's how to get to know him. That's how we acquaint ourselves with what kind of Father he is . . . by listening to hear his still small voice as it speaks to our minds and hearts.

“Teaching you how to call him Father, as I myself will all my life long be learning more and more intimately to call him Father, taking hands, you and me, as we make this pilgrimage together up the mountain—such will be the purpose of my ministry among you. If you have no interest in becoming sons and daughters to a God who wants us to call him Father, then I fear we will not be able to do much spiritual business together. Because to this and no other purpose is my life dedicated.

“Now along with the fact that God is our Father, I believe that there are certain attributes which define his character. The foundational of these are love, goodness, and trustworthiness. None of these will sound new or radical in your ears. I am sure you are all very familiar with these words.

“However, we do not customarily go very far in truly believing these things about God. Most of us, if we admit it, are
afraid
of God, afraid of his punishment, afraid of his anger. Furthermore, we don't trust him when things go wrong in our lives, and we question his goodness when difficulties arise.

“Why? Because we have not deeply considered what it means that the Father is, in fact,
completely
loving,
completely
good, and
completely
trustworthy.

“This, then, will be another aspect toward which I will attempt continually to point—that there are no circumstances in which God is not fully
loving
, fully
good
, and fully
to be trusted
.

“It may sound at the outset as though this will not be so taxing a truth upon the intellect. But believe me, before we are through considering the implications of the words I have just spoken, you will find many of your previous notions about God shaken to their very depths.

“When your crops fail, when the gold in your mine runs out, when your cattle all take sick and mysteriously die, when illness comes to your family and children, when a loved one is taken from you in death, when your wife dies in childbirth . . . what will you
then
look for from your minister? If at such times you want only dour-faced condolences, then do not look to this pulpit for them.

“I will sympathize in your grief. I will pray with you. I will offer what comfort I am able. I offered myself earlier as a man willing to be employed as a laborer in your community to put bread on my table. I will go ever further. If you cannot afford to hire my time but have work for me to do, I beg you to give me the opportunity to work for and beside you with my own hands without pay in order to put bread on
your
table. Truly I will seek to be your servant. But through all adversity, no matter how severe, I will always remind you that God's goodness reigns supreme. After praying with you in your loss, therefore, I will make you look up into the face of your Father, and say to him,
‘Thank you, Father, that you are
good . . . that you love me . . . and that I may trust
you!'

“The natural human tendency is just the opposite. The first one upon whom we usually vent the anger of our weakness is God himself. He to whom we should immediately run in the midst of our trouble is the one we instead blame for our circumstances.

“What small-minded creatures we are.
Curse God and die
is the cry of unbelief in the midst of adversity. Yet there may come times when you will want to curse me, your pastor, for continually saying, ‘God is good and we may trust him in
all
things.' We would often rather wallow in our sorrows than stand up, cast our eyes toward heaven, and thank him for being a good, loving, and trustworthy Father.

“It is not easy to believe such truths in the anguish of bitter heartache and disappointment. But believe them we
must
if we are to grow into intimacy with him. Believe them we
must
if we are to become his mature sons and daughters.