Danny Tice

Karen and I have been married for 35 years this August.

I often tell people sincerely, “I married way over my head”.   She is the most spectacular person I have ever met. She is loving and kind, as well as beautiful.

I am …..

well….. lets not go into that!

For marriage to be good, it has to be made up of people giving to each other.

What kills most marriages is what I call the “taking disease”.

When we look at our spouse as a glorified vending machine to meet our needs – we are in serious trouble. Often people subconsciously get married to satisfy their own agenda. Ironically, God designed marriage to teach us to give – not to take.

When we view our spouse as existing to make us happy and to serve all our needs, we have turned our spouse into a butler or waitress to give us what we want. Karen has always been a giver. I have had to work at being “Karen focused,” while she has always been focused on meeting my needs. I am not sure if giving comes more naturally to wives than husbands, but in our case she was way ahead of me on the giving scale.

Ironically, what I have learned over the years is:

when I give to Karen sacrificially, it makes me happy.

When I do things for her that make her smile, it makes me smile too. It may be something as simple as getting up to get her something to drink or eat while we are watching TV. It may be helping her in the kitchen when she is very tired and needs to rest. Being tuned into her needs and watching for opportunities to do something for her makes her respond back with such love and tenderness.

I am not sure if all women are like Karen – she is the only wife I have ever had (thank God!) But she always is appreciative of my acts of kindness toward her. When we got married, I was 19 and Karen was 20. My misguided belief at that time was that I was the center of the universe. My “me-ness” made our early years of marriage very precarious. I was misinformed. Marriage was not about her giving me what I wanted, but it was about me learning that real life and fulfillment in marriage was found is making her more important than myself.

Ironically, the Bible had already made that abundantly clear (imagine that!). God said through his servant Paul in Ephesians5:25:

“Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

I found out it not only works, and is the right thing to do… but that giving away happiness is the best way to get happiness back.

Am I ok?  This may be the deepest question that resides in the mind and heart of every person. The question “Am I ok?” is a silent question.  Never spoken so others can hear the question but these words reverberate in the mind of every human being.  I think we all wonder if we are “ok”.  Maybe everyone else is “ok” and we are not “ok”.  So we pretend to be “ok” but inside we really wonder if we are “ok”.  What does it mean to be “ok”?  Well that is another problem.  We don’t know if we are “ok” because we don’t even know what being “ok” is.   I think for many of us to be “ok” is being the same as everyone else.  Sheer numbers of people that are homogeneous must determine what “ok” is.  Someone once said that people in the adolescent stage of life want to be a zebra in a herd of zebras.  Honesty this blending in desire is not limited to teenagers.  Housewives, business executives, athletes, college professors, barbers, dentists, young people, old people, middle age people, conservatives, liberals, rich people, poor people and every imaginable kind of people want to be like everyone in their group.  Being like everyone in our group makes us feel briefly that we are “ok”.  We nod our head with things we don’t really believe to be “ok” with the people that we think are already “ok”.  But deep down inside we still wonder if we are “ok”.  The pursuit of the “ok” feeling can be a life long quest; chasing “ok” can become a way of life.  Looking for “ok” feels like you are trying to find a unicorn.  You think the “ok” feeling is somewhere but where is it?  Why can’t we capture it and savor the ultimate feeling of being “ok”?  Maybe it is because we are not “ok”.  If we are not “ok” how can we get “ok”?  I wonder if we can ever convince ourselves we are “ok”.  Someone greater and more important than us has to show us and tell us we are “ok”.  The painful truth is we really are not “ok”.  Here is what being “ok” really is.  Being “ok” is a sense of being home.  When we are on a trip and living in motels and out of a suitcase we are not settled.  When we come home and lay the suitcase down and sit in our own chair and sleep in our own bed we feel good and that uncomfortable feeling goes away.  Without using a bunch of Christian jargon what it means to be away from the Lord is that we are away from home.  We are made to hold the hand of God and walk with him as we go through life.  When we do squeeze the divine hand we feel we are home; we feel we are “ok”.  When we don’t hold his hand and fly solo we have that nagging and unexplainable feeling of not being “ok”.  We have that not “ok” feeling because we are not home.  To be home is to be “ok” and to be “ok” is to hold God’s hand and He hold yours.  When that happens you don’t have to be like anybody else to be “ok”.  The “ok” feeling never stays with you if you win an academy award or if thousands applaud you.  You hear the roar of their approval for you but you still wonder am I “ok”?  It is only when He walks with you and holds your hand that you can truly be yourself because then you are “ok”.

     Can I be 100% sure God is speaking to me?  I think hearing God speak to us is an art form filled with grace.  People that desire to hear the Lord speak to them are a special and beloved breed of people.  Good for you if you are hungry to hear the voice of God!  In our culture we think only lunatics are people that claim to hear God speak to them.  But God speaks to ordinary people in ordinary ways. There is a connection between God’s written word and his spoken word.  His spoken word never contradicts his written word.  When I say spoken word I am referring to God’s little shoulder taps.  I often refer to the Lord’s speaking to me as “divine shoulder taps.”  There are times when I seem to have the Lord just tap me on the shoulder (not literally but intuitively) for me to say something or to do something.  It may be something as simple as to say an encouraging word to someone.  It could be a little shoulder tap that says “call this person or that person” and “spend some time with them.”  Bill Hybels, Lead Pastor of the infamous Willow Creek Church in South Barrington Illinois, calls these God moments “whispers.”  I like that kind of terminology when talking about God speaking to us. “Shoulder taps” or “whispers” seem to label my experience pretty accurately.  I have been the recipient of people responding to their own “divine shoulder taps.”  When I had graduated from Liberty Bible College in 1981 I was stranded in Pensacola Florida.  No doors were opening for me and I was anxious to get into the ministry and lead a church.  Karen and I were attending Liberty Church in Pensacola; I was deacon in the church.  My job as a deacon was to set up the cassette tapes (remember cassette tapes?) of the speakers of the church we attended.  My job was to set up the tapes before services and sell them after the service and then pack them up after the service was over.  I remember one Sunday night packing up the tapes after the service.  I was a little discouraged but tried to be as cheerful as I could to fulfill my assignment.   The Senior Minister, Ken Sumrall, walked by my table on the way out the door and exited the building.  I continued to do my job and about a minute later I felt a hand on my shoulder.  It was our Brother Ken (as we used to affectionately call him).  He said these words to me “Hey Danny I want you to know you are doing a terrific job but this is not what you are ultimately called to do – God has a very special ministry and plan for you future.”  With those words he turned on his heels and walked out the door.  I have no doubt that on the way to his car Ken Sumrall felt “a shoulder tap” or a “divine whisper” to come back and say those words to me.  It is hard to explain what those words meant to me.  Good leaders encourage their team – regardless of the level of service but there is more here than a good leader seeing a diligent worker and giving them a pat on the back.  God used a nudge on one of his servants to greatly encourage someone that was wondering if he had any destiny at all (me).  Shoulder taps from God are often about someone else that needs to know that God has not forgotten them.

Jesus said it first.  “My sheep hear my voice” (John 10:16)  To be a sheep of Jesus means hearing the shepherd speak to you.  I recently felt like I heard the Lord speak a word of encouragement to me.  I was in San Antonio, Texas visiting a church with Karen. We had attended Max Lucado’s church the night before (a terrific experience) and now on Sunday morning we were in a church of a totally different style – Cornerstone Church pastored by John Hagee (a terrific experience too).  During worship I felt a strong impression in my heart and these words formed in my heart, “You have not preached your best sermons yet!”  I stood there feeling God’s peace as I pondered the phrase that was coursing through my mind and heart.  When I heard this impression I wasn’t thinking about preaching or my church back in Delaware – I was just engaged in worship and enjoying the worship of the church that morning.  As I heard these words I had a deep sense of peace and encouragement that filled my heart.  I am certain that this phrase was not produced by my imagination or my subconscious.  The phrase seemed to come out of the blue.  One of the characteristics of hearing God is “the sneak-up nature” of the voice of God.  True words from God seem to sneak up on us when we least expect it.  God likes to surprise us.  Like Moses in the wilderness tending sheep he suddenly saw a burning bush, from which God spoke to him significant things.  Notice the unexpected nature of God speaking to Moses.

Exodus 3:1-4  1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight — why the bush does not burn up.”  4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” NIV

 Moses was tending the flock.  His focus and attention were on something totally different when God invaded his consciousness with his presence and words of comfort.  My experience in hearing God has often happened when I least expected him to speak.  This is not to say that God may speak to you when you are seeking him and asking him for direction but ironically he often speaks when we least expect him to.  When God sneaks up on us with a word we realize it is him because our minds were elsewhere and we could not possibly be conjuring up ideas in our imagination.  One thing for sure when he speaks he puts a smile on your heart because you feel loved and you are filled with hope and positive expectation for the future. 

Life can get out of whack sometimes.

What I mean by that is we can get our focus all wrong.  We can worry way too much about things that really shouldn’t matter very much, while ignoring the things that should matter a great deal.

Tonight my granddaughter Willow Grace (2 1/2 years old) was over to our house.  She was having a great time running in the house and laughing.  She kept coming up to me saying, “Chase me Papa, chase me.”  I climbed down from the barstool and began to chase her around the house. I am sure I should have been scolding her for running in the house but she was having such a good time I couldn’t bring myself to spoil her fun.  She was totally in the moment.  All that mattered to her was laughing and trying to outrun her granddad.  After a good session of running, in which I caught her a few times, producing hysterical laughter from her, she climbed in my lap on the barstool.

Instantly she invented a new game where she tried to push against the bar with her little legs and put pressure against her Papa’s stomach.  I pretended she was knocking the wind out of me which made her laugh even more.  As she was laughing and I looked at her happy little face and I thought how simple life is for her.  I hope that she keeps her simple focus of loving life and enjoying the little things in life.  As adults, we rarely enjoy the moment.  We are either lamenting the past, with our failures and mistakes, or we are worried and are insecure about our future.  Children live in the moment while adults live in non-existent time. Non-existent time is the past which is over and the future which hasn’t happened yet. As I was chasing little Willow it occurred to me that I was still thinking about some things that tainted the moment.  I was thinking about mistakes I had made this week – things I am worried about in the immediate future and decisions that I still need to make.   While my mind was multi-tasking Willow was thinking about running and laughing.  She was teaching me that the best way to live is to enjoy every moment God gives you.  The past is out of my reach and the future is not here yet so what I have is now.  And now is a gift from God.

We can either seize it and love it- or squander it and lose it.

Willow’s laugh is a laugh of freedom. She is my teacher at two and half years old.  I want to become more like her.  Jesus held up little children in his ministry as our model for a reason.  Their minds have not become polluted and complicated by the world they live in.  They have just discovered it is really fun to outrun their granddad.