Call Your Dad!

The sound of my leg breaking was so loud that I imagined the ball had zinged in from the outfield and smacked it. Fire exploded in my shin and ankle. I fell to my back, contracted into a fetal position, and pulled my knee up to my belly.

—HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, 8

Todd

Life was good for the Burpos. Sonja and I had two healthy children, a comfortable home, and jobs we enjoyed. Sonja was a schoolteacher, and I pastored a small but growing church in a town we were happy to call home.

Then, in a coed softball tournament, I slid down the baseline while stealing third base and broke my leg—and also snapped the bones in my ankle in two different places.

While my pastoring work and Sonja’s job with the school brought in some money, our primary source of income was the garage door company I owned. But it’s pretty hard to climb ladders to install garage doors with a knee that won’t bend while you’re wearing a heavy cast the length of your leg. No surprise, our bank balance took a sudden and rapid nosedive.

While recovering from the broken leg and the plunging finances, I was hit with a severe attack of kidney stones. Right after that, I was diagnosed with the precursor to—get this—breast cancer. Hyperplasia was the word the doctor used.

Other pastors in our district started calling me “Pastor Job” after the Bible character who was struck with a series of increasingly severe setbacks. Like Job, I struggled to deal with life as one crisis after another struck my family.

Then, just as my own health problems were resolving, Colton suffered the ruptured appendix that almost killed him.

What we learned during those challenges was that we learn more during challenges than while life is good!

One thing I noticed was that, in the middle of all those problems, I was never too busy to pray. Isn’t it amazing that in the midst of our problems we seem to have plenty of time to pray, but when things are going smoothly we are often “too busy”?

Here I was a pastor, someone who had prayer ingrained into every part of my life, yet it was my problems that caused my prayer time to increase and become more fervent. I’d often noticed how people never took the time to pray until they had a problem—and now I was noticing that my problems were having that same effect on my life too.

As a pastor, I pray a lot. But during that time I realized that I could pray a lot more—because I did.

The only time God even shows up on some people’s radar is when they’re in the midst of a crisis. It’s like the situation some parents of college kids have with their children: they don’t hear from the kids except when they need money. Aren’t we the perfect example of that ourselves with our heavenly Father? He only hears from us when we need help.

If we take time to think about it, we realize that not only do we grow as people when we go through hard times but our understanding of God grows at the same time. Many people wander away during the good times and stray from God. But when hard times hit, they come running back to him. How much better it is if we stay close to God through the bad times and the good.

I remember a young man, I’ll call him John, who came to me a few years ago, very upset because of what his family was going through. One family member had been found guilty of abusing his wife, another had been arrested for stealing, and another arrested for doing drugs. This man asked angrily, “Why does God let this happen to my family?”

He must have caught me in bad mood, because I wasn’t having any of it that day. I said, “John, how can you lie like that?”

He was stunned. “What do you mean? It’s the truth,” he insisted.

I said, “You’re asking me why God lets this happen. Well, let me ask you something: which person in your family is living for God? Which person in your family has Jesus in his heart? Which one is trying to follow Christ?”

John’s demeanor changed. He dropped his head and said very slowly but honestly, “None of us.”

“So how can you blame God for your problems?” I asked. “It sounds to me like all the trouble you’re telling me about is because God is not there—yet you’re blaming him for what you did to yourselves? How can you do that?”

John got my point, and he took my words to heart. The next day, he made a change and committed to put Jesus first in his life.

I’d like to say John’s family’s situation immediately changed for the better, but of course that’s not what happened. Still, it was a starting point, and I have no doubt that John is having a strong impact on his family as they see the change that’s happening in him.

It’s a lesson we all can learn right now. (It turns out you don’t have to be going through a challenging time to learn something!) If we put God front and center in our lives, if we give him more attention throughout each and every day, we may just find that the challenging times, when they come, are a little less challenging.

Maybe this moment—right now—is a good time for you to think about what God has done for you. Maybe you can change your priorities. Maybe instead of only praying when you’re in trouble you can resolve to “phone home” to heaven more often and say, “Thank you, Father” instead of only calling when you’re in trouble and begging, “God, help me!”

Just like parents of college kids want to hear from their kids when they don’t need money, God likes to hear from us when we don’t need something. When was the last time you prayed only to “check in” with God and say, “Thanks, Dad”?

Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day—but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.

—2 Peter 3:11–13 MSG