If I were to pick a favorite verse from the Bible to describe the special relationship that I have with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, it would be, “O taste and see the Lord is good!” taken from Psalm 34.

Last year was a difficult year for me in many ways, with the loss of my wife, Dedra, who battled blood cancer for her last 6 years. She was a special lady that God placed in my life and was my best friend for more than 27 years. (Admittedly, there were times when we did not act like best friends, and those who counseled Dedra and I in our early years of marriage would testify to this.)

I would equate the period since this loss to a desert time, but God has been with me in my loneliness. I am grateful to the close friends that have come alongside me this year, particularly to my pastor and his wife, my children, my parents, a close friend, and many others who ministered to me or just listened. Dedra’s soul is now in that special place in the throne room of heaven.

I chose this particular verse to share because I sampled many other things in life before I finally made a firm commitment to the Lord. Don’t we all want to sample the peripheral stuff in life and get sidetracked by sin, rather than be obedient to God and take daily what He has to offer and calls us to? I still have to confess my sins daily to the Lord, but I have the confidence that He is perfecting me through a long process.

I grew up north of Clay Center, Kan., on a farm where we had a variety of tame and wild animals. They included coyotes, snakes, horses, a cat, and my favorite dog, Tuffy. More important, my Dad led us in family devotions and prayer daily in our home. I credit my parents’ faithfulness in this area as one of the strongest and most consistent influences in my life to seek the Lord. I can remember praying to receive Jesus into my heart around age 12 at a church camp in Topeka, Kan., when my Aunt Edna Hatfield was teaching the junior group.

My family moved to Hays, Kan., where I started the sixth grade. I completed high school, followed by my brother, Paul, and sister, Debby, who are younger but wiser. My high school years were enjoyable, but I was not very committed to the Lord. During my senior year, I became involved with some friends who thought it was cool to drink beer and just have a good time. Any testimony for the Lord was nonexistent that year and through my first year of college at Fort Hays State University. I was a hypocrite at that stage, living a different life with my college buddies than when I was around friends at church or my parents. As a result of these bad choices, my studies suffered in my first year of college. I enrolled in a pre-engineering program with good entrance scores, but I ended up on probation due to my study habits and a tough time with calculus.

Eventually, I opted to go to an architectural drafting school in Pittsburgh, Pa. I was privileged to stay with my dad’s first cousin, Dr. Clark Copeland, and his family. In this setting, I had exposure to the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary and became acquainted with many of the students and faculty. This was a good experience that God used in my life, because I began to see examples of many men who were giving themselves to full-time service to the Lord’s calling, and I got to know them as I played table tennis with them.

However, it was not in God’s plan for me to finish school in Pittsburgh, because I received a letter from the draft board in Kansas. The letter stated that I had been selected for a travel opportunity in Uncle Sam’s army, with only about three months to complete my schooling. Reluctantly, I enlisted in the service because I didn’t particularly want to be drafted and serve in the infantry in Vietnam, which was the most likely location to be sent at the time. When I was eventually called to serve in Vietnam, the Lord watched over me closely. This experience matured me to the extent that I was better prepared to take a more responsible role in my educational process and to begin to live somewhat more responsibly before the Lord.

About two years after my time in the service, I attended a summer training program sponsored by our church. We talked a lot about our life experiences with counselors and mentors like Rev. Ken Smith and Karl Cunningham. Some of my peers and mentors gave life-changing testimonies of what their life had been without Christ and how God had worked in their lives. It was sometime during this summer that I realized I didn’t have the consistent commitment to Christ most of these kids had, that I hadn’t given my heart fully to Jesus. I remember praying with Karl, confessing my sins, and asking the Lord to cleanse me from my past lifestyle. It was a very joyful, liberating, and exciting summer for me to deepen my relationship with God and to help in one of the Pittsburgh churches with Bible school.

When I returned from the service and Vietnam in 1969, I had received an early discharge for college, where I attended Fort Hays State University and eventually completed both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. After completing my degree in art education, I was accepted for a teaching position in Perth, West Australia, which was another enjoyable experience in my life where God blessed me.

I could go on about past experiences, but I believe the important part of my testimony should be what the Lord is doing in my life presently, and the spiritual progression that I have seen of the Holy Spirit’s gracious work. First, for me it has been a healing process this past year, where I have called on God in some of my loneliest moments at night with silent tears. He has answered my prayers as I reflected on different verses of comfort and has taken me through the night with sleep, given me a better perspective and a more joyful next day. He has continued to do so as I pray and meditate on His Word.

For the past 14 weeks I have been in enrolled in a course called “Perspectives,” which is a missions overview of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, showing how God is a missionary God. Missionary speakers, or people involved in missions work at some level, present each lesson or topic for 3-hour sessions. It has been a rich, spiritual, educational, and convicting experience, and I would recommend this course, even to those not considering mission work. Simultaneously, we have been going through another class in our church, a video series called Changing Hearts, Changing Lives, published by the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation, ably led with passion by Jonathan Parnell of the Topeka, Kan., RPC. We have examined how to enter another person’s life on a deeper level than what we ordinarily attain in our casual daily (sometimes wasted) conversation and how to be effective counselors by building relationships. We have recently looked at the “nuts and bolts” of how to do this, showing love and sacrificial involvement. It has been challenging and exciting to learn about implementation and allowing God to refine us as opportunity comes to be His instruments of change.

This is where I need prayer. This series has again helped me to look outward, in spite of my past year’s experience, realizing what a calling God has for me and each one of us as we seek to do His will. I am praying and looking forward to taking a well-organized short-term mission trip to Mexico with a group of our youth, a few adults from our church, and other people from evangelical churches in Lawrence, Kan., and Texas. Life is becoming a clearer picture of a race to run as I mature into my 60s. There are so many analogies in Scripture to racing, especially about finishing, not becoming weary, and running with steady patience. I am thankful that the Holy Spirit, in His Providence, has stimulated my praying, meditating, thinking, and planning this year in the very avenues He wants me to take.

I ran a half marathon with my friend and pastor, John McFarland, this past year. I keep thinking about the initial description of the run, which was to be moderately hilly. Moderately was a deceptive understatement, and the last seven-tenths of mile 13 was all uphill! Thinking analogously of the run, life is full of unexpected or difficult hills and these can be trials allowed by God for our refinement: temptations, nagging sins, difficult people, people that cut in front of us in rush hour, difficult relationships, moments of low self-esteem, sickness, loneliness, and more, but the key is how we react on the course of this race. Reactions could include seeking to encourage, minister, or counsel others, or it could include offending, ignoring, or blaming. More importantly, whon do we have our eyes fixed on through the length of the course and at the end? It must be Jesus, who has already run the race of life perfectly for us. My prayer is that you will join me in the challenge of Isaiah 40:31 and Psalm 27:16.

I have been working for the federal government in the General Services Administration for the past 10 years and would ask for your prayers as I have contacts with many people in my job throughout the 4-state heartland region, that God would continue to use me in my church, family, work and life in general. Today, I was looking at the beautiful framed verses of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 that Dedra acquired a few months before she died. They speak about the “times and seasons” of this present life starting with the “beginning” and the “end,” but there is much in these eight verses for all of us to be doing for the Lord.