Daddy and "the Doctor"



Daddy's Lloyd-Jones book:
Romans, pp. 118-119,
content below

Daddy's favorite author was hands down, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. "The Doctor" didn't talk about church growth strategy, proven methodology, interpersonal psychology or religious moralism. Daddy liked him because he went back to emphasizing the basics and, well, sometimes he'd be telling me about something he read in his book and get all excited and lose himself. That's how I started asking if I could borrow and read some of those books myself. And I began reading Martyn Lloyd-Jones. And I know what Daddy's talking about. And I get flustered now too, knowing I know in my head and heart what I mean but can't get it out in words...well, people like "the Doctor" (that was Lloyd-Jones' nickname) will just have to do it for us. Just look at how many times Daddy read this chapter! And since it speaks of the moment one goes to Glory, I guess it fits neatly--right here!


"Keep on dwelling upon these things until they all become real to you. How real to you is this other realm? How real is this 'blessed hope'? Make it real by reading, meditating, praying, asking the Lord to make it clear. The Spirit has been sent in order to do such a work. Keep on doing all these things until you are so 'conscious' of that other realm that it becomes the greatest thing in your lives.

 

  I read a remarkable statement this very week as I was preparing these matters. I was reading an extract from an autobiography of an old Welsh preacher whom I had the privilege of knowing. He died in 1929. He says that after his mother died he was looking through her papers and various belongings. In a very old book he came across a little sheet of paper on which he found that one of his sisters had written certain words. She was then quite young, I suppose somewhere between ten and twelve years old. Her father had died, and evidently, on the day of his death, the little girl had written these words on the piece of paper, and had put it in the old book. This is what she had written: 'Today Dada has left us. He has gone into the glorious liberty of the children of God.' A little girl of ten or twelve, in the 'sixties of the last century could write in that way. Why? Because those were the terms in which she thought, the climate in which her family lived.

 

How many of us think in that way? How many of us could write like that? Is that our view of our own ultimate departure? Do we think instinctively in that way when our loved ones who are Christians leave us and go to be with Christ? This is true Christianity. I ask again, what is the value of all our head knowledge if it does not bring us to this? This is triumphing. It transforms everything. Life, death, and everything else becomes different. 'If we hope for that we see not, then through patience do we with eager expectation wait for it.' What a poor generation of Christians we are! What has gone wrong, I wonder, during the last hundred years or so? The answer, I fear, is that we are all so subjective, always looking at ourselves and our happiness, instead of thinking and meditating on the truth of the Scriptures and setting our affection on things above. Look at Christ, consider Him and what He is preparing for us. It transforms everything. That is the way in which, it seems to me, we 'through patience should eagerly wait for' this blessed hope that is set before us."



 

"Behold, I will do a new thing: now it shall spring forth: shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert."

(Isaiah 43:19)

 

There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.

Job 14:7

found in my cellphone

Today, I came across something I 'd texted August 2013, in a hospital in Okinawa.

Daddy strengthening his arms

I talked with Daddy about aiming for "wheelchair ministry" lifestyle, and he seemed real positive about it, starting to exercise his arms, turning them around and around in the motion of operating a wheelchair. He'd been told (I may be all wrong, but this is what I told him) he'd have to eat more and gain muscle-strength in his arms and hands to get wheelchair mobility, and he wanted to ask rehab to help him start doing whatever was necessary to go in that direction. "LIVING sacrifice" was what God would be pleased with, and altho' it would be hard on pride for athletes to sit in a wheelchair, I believed Daddy could have an unstoppable ministry if he were willing to let himself be limited in this way.


Daddy was friends with everyone

By "ministry", we weren't talking about a pastorate, a church, or a pulpit. We were talking about reaching people and addressing spiritual needs.

 

Daddy used to say, "People need cheer every day." As a patient, he could be the first one to reach out and shake the hand of a medical worker, saying, "You folks know that we, who don't know anything, are completely dependent on people like you to help us, don't you?" He would never miss the orderly or housecleaner to give a word of appreciation for how pleasant and comfortable they were making his stay. Nurses, caretakers, hospital personnel were seen as people, not paid servants--Daddy always asked to know their names.

Daddy at rehabilitation

He didn't seem satisfied to smile himself but wanted to see others smile too. When learning to maneuver his wheelchair, he wore his "first year driver" (for the automobile!) symbol around his neck for all in the rehabilitation center to see and chuckle at.

"But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today" (Heb. 3:13)  Many of us are guilty of the sin of omission. Daddy didn't want to be guilty of it, at least during the end of his earthly life. Christians may speak of making sacrifices for God, serving Christ, giving their lives for the Kingdom...but what about simply walking today as Jesus walked: (I Jn 2:6), daily giving a word of encouragement here, a word of cheer there...or is "wheelchair ministry" beneath the dignity of most of us, and we'd rather do something more exciting, demanding, impressive, praiseworthy?


smiling patient