Author: dannrobertjohnson

Thoughts of an evening on this Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday 2019 is just about over. Did you like it? That answer will vary as wildly, I imagine, as the answers to whether or not people “liked” Black Friday. Some get into such things, to be sure.

Some get fatigued.

Our culture can be… so much. Soooo much. We buy a lot, we say a lot, we post a lot. We compete for so many pieces of so many pies. Sometimes we’re the pie itself.

On Giving Tuesday last year (the Johnson family’s very first with “raising our support” as our daily reality), we skipped out. Totally.

Well, at least we skipped out on the side of Giving Tuesday you wouldn’t expect people like us to skip: the getting side. But I realized I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Couldn’t force myself to want to become part of the noise. So I decided to take a hard pass on The Ask. 

Yet this year––you’ve gotten our letter in the mail, read the previous ask emails before this one––was different, wasn’t it? I don’t know exactly why, but I didn’t feel right about last year, though I wasn’t sure why. Had I been… 

Prideful? (What do we need to ask for? We trust in the Lord, don’t we?) 

Presumptuous? (I’m sure there’ll always continue to be just enough in our account…)

Condescending? (Wow, these people are wearing me out with this asking! Thank goodness for me not beating my own drum like that…)

Passive? (I’m not one of these “Christian marketers” and I’m sure not about to spend any time learning how to become one…)

Or was I simply regretful come this year? (Yikes, I didn’t expect our account to bottom out like that and not be able to fund _________…)

Whatever it was, this year we participated. 

Prayed. 

Trusted.  

And…asked. 

Were our goals unrealistic? Ha! We won’t have any idea until after Dec 31, I suppose. 

But already the Lord has brought in more than what came in as extra funds  around this time last year. (Um, zero.) Because last year we didn’t ask. We didn’t shout out (or even whisper) to anyone that the Dann and Tammy Johnson family serving refugees in Clarkston, Georgia was a really worthy Kingdom endeavor. 

And––this is where I’m currently doing my deep thinking–– is it possible that what I didn’t see last year is that God (who frankly can make money drop into a mailbox from across the globe without my ever asking, and we’ve seen that more than once) might just be glorified in the asking?

I pray He is.

For our part, we rookies found the learning to Ask taking a level of humility and maturity that we have to work towards, or at least pray towards, perhaps grow towards. 

But for sure He knew what He was talking about when he said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (We learned that one eons ago.)

So of course today we kept up the Giving Tuesday habit that we never skip, the fun one: picking a few friends and giving away a few sizable chunks of change that we can’t exactly afford but at the same time choose to not care about cause that’s a minor detail the Lord can totally be trusted with. 

But, I mused, why did we give to them?

Because they’d asked. 

And so, now, have we. And I literally have no idea if we’ll even come within waving distance of our goal:*

-$8,000 from our monthly givers

-$8000 from other previous givers

-$8000 from first-time givers

That’s a lot of money. Yet it’s completely appropriate in light of our ministry budget, which happens to require quite a few a-lotsa-monies. 

For you, whether today or some other time before year-end, I hope that you give away more––to anyone, really––than you ever have. There are so many deserving ministries you already know. Some won’t be very good at making their voice heard. Don’t forget them. Some will. Don’t judge them. 

And may all your 2019 giving do what it was designed to do: connect you ever closer to your Father who Gave the Most. He loves you. And he loves the cheerful giver. 

*I did hit one of my financial goals right on the nose: my goal for our share of the $7 million Facebook frenzy matching giveaway pie this morning. 0%. I know, aim high and all that jazz.

His Goodness Is Running After Me

Totaled.

Who likes hearing that word? No one.

My sister, in a wreck last month, had to hear it from her insurance company. 

A friend of mine was in a wreck, and heard the same.

And a friend of yours, I’ll wager, was in one, too. “It’s totaled.”

After our wreck, I kinda wished we could hear it. 

Cause that would’ve meant there’d be some money to help replace it. But, alas, with our old habit of only carrying liability insurance on our oldest cars––I supposed we’ve saved a lot over the years––this one came back to bite us. Hindsight is 20/20.

Our car was totaled, just not in the insurance sense of the word. No way it was fixable for less than its 17 year old self was worth. 

No one was hurt. That’s the most important part. Both Enoch and his best friend, as well as the driver from the other car, were all fine. It was sort of a freak accident where the legal blame––or at least a majority portion of it––fell on our side, but where I could clearly see I couldn’t really blame our boys all that much, either. In reality, the person with the most blame was probably a third guy who had left a space in front of his stopped vehicle for our boys to come through into the center turning lane. He looked over his shoulder and waved them the “all-clear, come on through.” 

Only to have them barely get their nose into the center lane before wham! Someone at full speed eager for the left turn lane up ahead.

How fast was he going? Who knows. And what Mr. Wavethru thinking? Or looking at? Naught but a whole lot of neither, I guess.

Perhaps (my original assumption, but remember I wasn’t there) our car hadn’t crept out slowly enough? But what are you supposed to think when you’ve got a friendly face waving you through?

Life changes in a flash. 

Life changes in a crash. 

And we’re blessed. For much, much more could have been changed. Loss of much more than a vehicle. How torturous it must be to have the same kinds of trivial explanations of exactly “how” it came about (this turn, that wave, this what-I-originally-assumed-inconsequential detail…) all juxtaposed to ever-widening ripples of tremendous consequence. I can’t imagine.

So we’re grateful. 

But, good-bye, wonderful 2002 Accord, we’re so sad to lose you after only a year. 

100,000 had just turned over the week of the accident. Barely half the mileage of most of those cars that age. Really the only complaint Enoch had ever had about using it was wishing it was a mini-van. He’s discipling four refugee boys from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and whenever he brings them to church or youth group, they fill the car. No room for another curious guest. Or one of his siblings. Our family SUV is a poor fit because––and we may lend it to him for the odd cargo trip––it’s almost always needed by, well, the family. The Accord was such a blessing car. It benefitted lots of Envision folks, and we’ll always be extremely grateful to the friends who gave it to us.

But the story didn’t end with the crash. The very moment my phone had rung––Enoch with the bad news––I was putting the finishing touches on a return email to some new friends. I’d met them at the beginning of last month while preaching at their Port Chester, NY church. (It was the church Tammy and I had attended during our year at Alliance Theological Seminary, the year that somewhere a 2002 white and tan Honda Accord had rolled off an assembly line and been sold as new.) 

Anyway, the story in my sermon of that car coming to us had really blessed them, they said. They loved hearing how the Lord had led me to purchase a one-way flight to a conference, and how he’d provided that car only a day before my trip, a gift from friends awaiting my arrival in Texas. I would have no need of a return ticket as I now had something to drive back. Now a year later these new friends were asking: “We also have an old Honda our family no longer uses. Do you know anyone there with Envision Atlanta who could use a free vehicle?”

An accident is a horrible way to lose a possession as valuable as a car (not to mention the horror of losing far worse, as many have). We wish we could have been spared its loss.

But God’s faithfulness, to be moving on our behalf before we’d even experienced the loss…We don’t deserve it.

Yet here again He provides for us from his bounty. We had to endure hardly a month of extra drop-offs and pick-ups and vehicle scheduling snafus. And already the new Honda is here. (Funnily, as a 2003, it also was manufactured at some point during that one year of seminary when we attended that NY church.) Our new friend even amazed us further by offering to drive it down to us. After a quick tour of Clarkston, I dropped him off at the train station for his 17-hour ride home. So, once again, Enoch and his boys have some wheels when they need them. And there’s room for a sibling, or a guest. Or both. For this time the Honda is a mini-van. 

Praise you, Lord. 

Just arrived home from the South Atlantic District of the C&MA’s
Middle School Beach Retreat.

I’ve Arrived

My pastor was preaching. 

His text and his sermon title I’ve already forgotten. But it will be a long time before I forget this. 

His words were about buy-in and the Great Kingdom and meaning and God. About sacrifice and worship. About  purpose and dying to self and wanting more of Him, less of me… 

Well, at least some of those things were in there. It maddens me how quickly the mind blurs specifics sometimes. I’m sure he was clear in the moment. All the words going somewhere and making excellent points. I’m confident that whatever he said, he was organized and we were all tracking along. But I would soon go on to miss whatever would be said next because of this: 

“I’ve arrived!” 

What on earth kind of absurd deduction is THAT, mister?”

It was not my pastor speaking. Far from it. For he doesn’t in the least live, act, or act like he thinks that. C’mon, who are we kidding? No one––not the haughty, not the grossly self-unaware, not even my long, long ago pastor who very much acted like he believed he’d “arrived” somewhere important––would dare commit the social suicide of saying “I’ve arrived” out loud. 

It’s clearly against our rules. So no, I hadn’t heard it. 

I’d thought it. 

In my own head. About myself.

Somewhere along the dividing line between my pastor’s words and my thought train about giving up my own life and being willing to hang on to the adventure that is life with God, it came to me. I had: the thought. 

“I’ve arrived.” 

“I have that life.”

Believe me, had you been there to hear me think it, your jaw would have dropped, but it would not have dropped faster than mine. I was more aghast than you would have been.

Oh, my, Dann.

How could you?

You can’t think that! It’s forbidden. It doesn’t matter what “good” deeds you think you may have done, you know as well as everybody. WE NEVER ARRIVE. You will never “arrive.” 

OK, Ok, I know, I know! I don’t know what happened! I didn’t actually intend to think it.

Like excuses can ever stand in for truly satisfactory analyzation of mortifying mental no-nos.

I knew exactly the roots of where the thought had come from. It was coming out of our last three years. I had laid down my life. I had learned to be content in whatever circumstance. I had placed free time, my career, my finances, sanity, my spouse, and my other children at the foot of the cross. I’d let Him determine the course of my life and I’d held on for every subsequent by-product since, pleasant or not. 

And I’d come out on the other side of wilderness, while not unscathed, more committed than ever to submission.

And before my eyes I saw that wilderness path in a Kingdom way with 20/20 hindsight. He’d accomplished so much. In me. In our family. I was living a type of life that in years prior I could easily remember only longing for. My very existence now was different than it had been.

I’d “arrived.” But that was too far.  

How to deal with the embarrassment of consciously thinking it? Everyone knows you can’t say THAT. “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24 NASB). I figured I’d just gotten in line for some of the same kind of sinful-nature wrestling I’d engaged, like Paul, a thousand times over. 

What came instead was unexpected. 

The mental tape of self-flagellation had barely started spinning up in my head before it got stopped abruptly. (I know, some of you have digital files that play in your head. Others maybe vinyl. Mine plays tapes.)

Instead…

“What if, my son, you thought of it as arriving in some place? Instead of to some place?” 

Wait, what! 

God?

“If you’ve arrived in a place, rather than to a place, might it not actually be okay to think what you just thought?”

Whoa.

Like into a river. A stream. A place where I was knowing and understanding and experiencing both Him and a way of living that previously I had not known. 

That’s not what I’d expected. And wow, maybe there really hadn’t been any pride in my heart. I’d had the thought and God wasn’t in the least taken aback by it. It just was. 

OK, God!

I bought it immediately. And saw that my greatest transgression was probably the knee-jerk reaction. That was my flesh. The old nature. He never fails to tithe on his mint and, doggonit, he was going to call a spade a spade: 

“That phrase is evil. Thou shalt not ‘arrive.’ Thou shalt not say it, nor think it, nor permit it within thy hearing if spoken by thy neighbor.”

I myself was so aghast at its outward appearance (weren’t you when you first read it?) that it never even crossed my mind to look any further into my heart. 

I’m so glad God does. 

I have arrived. I’ve been walking in places where my spirit hadn’t come previously. And there are more places, still, where he wants to take us all. Let’s let him decide. It’s weird to think that when I do arrive in those places, I might be saying so. 

The unspiritual self, just as it is by nature, can’t receive the gifts of God’s Spirit. There’s no capacity for them. They seem like so much silliness. Spirit can be known only by spirit—God’s Spirit and our spirits in open communion. Spiritually alive, we have access to everything God’s Spirit is doing, and can’t be judged by unspiritual critics. Isaiah’s question, “Is there anyone around who knows God’s Spirit, anyone who knows what he is doing?” has been answered: Christ knows, and we have Christ’s Spirit.

I Corinthians 2:14-16 MSG