Garland Bare is a friend of mine and he has been for twenty-five years. I first met Garland at Rock Lake Christian Assembly. We were faculty members for High School Week. Over the years we have connected in a variety of settings. I don’t know if God blessed him with great faith or his great faith was learned in the “trenches.” He is a former missionary, a retired medical doctor, and faithful follower of Jesus.
When we had Garland speak at campus ministry retreats, we would have him begin on Friday evening by giving his testimony. It was powerful! He would share how he grew up as a missionary kid, how he walked away from God for a while, and how God brought him back. He would speak of the phenomenal things God has done in his life. Things like:
- by faith not asking for financial support and how God provided
- by faith obtaining a medical degree when it totally impossible
- by faith choosing to be a surgeon even though his hands shook
- by faith picking up a scalpel for the first time and his hands stopped shaking immediately
- by faith obeying God’s prompting to stop his car going up a hill only to discover a water buffalo standing in the road on the other side of the hill
- by faith leaving the mission field because his daughter needed help not available there
and many other examples.
He would end his presentation with this statement: “Our God does not lead through open doors; He leads through stone walls.”
Garland’s example of great faith has impacted my faith tremendously. Isaiah 22:22 says:
I will place on his shoulder the key to the house of David; what he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.
This passage is repeated to the Church in Philadelphia in Revelation 3:7. We derive from this passage that God can open and close doors for us. He most definitely can, but it stirs my faith to picture God leading through stone walls.
Jesus said to the father of the demon possessed son in Mark 9,
“Everything is possible for him who believes.”
He also said after the rich young ruler left in Mark 10,
“With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God”
There are at least three benefits to living as if we have a God who leads through stone walls.
1. God has the freedom to use us in broader ways for His purposes
2. other Christians will be inspired to live with greater faith
3. unbelievers will want our God
God receives glory in every case. Wow! Our God is big and He is powerful!
Here is the application.
What stone wall is sitting in front of you?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Dean,
It was at one of those weeks of camp at Rock Lake when you and Garland were sharing that I felt the call to ministry. I thank the Lord for your friendship and your faithfulness in the journey! Totally enjoyed hanging out last week. Be blessed, my friend!
2. Christians must be taught how to argue for their faith and ndefed their faith. Christians need to be taught why they believe what they believe.I think this more succinctly than most anything I’ve ever read explains why I cannot adopt religious belief. The reason for belief should always precede the adoption of belief. For me, a belief doesn’t have value unless it proceeds directly from the the reasons to believe. If they are to be supplied after the fact, then the belief is, to me, worthless. If knowledge “puffs up”, the solution is not IGNORANCE. The solution is HUMILITY.A very good quote from Eliezar Yudkowsky on humility:The eighth virtue is humility. To be humble is to take specific actions in anticipation of your own errors. To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty. Who are most humble? Those who most skillfully prepare for the deepest and most catastrophic errors in their own beliefs and plans. Because this world contains many whose grasp of rationality is abysmal, beginning students of rationality win arguments and acquire an exaggerated view of their own abilities. But it is useless to be superior: Life is not graded on a curve. The best physicist in ancient Greece could not calculate the path of a falling apple. There is no guarantee that adequacy is possible given your hardest effort; therefore spare no thought for whether others are doing worse. If you compare yourself to others you will not see the biases that all humans share. To be human is to make ten thousand errors. No one in this world achieves perfection.