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Guest Blog Post by
Pastor Tim White:
From Broken to Blessed
* Tim
White is an author of moral fiction. He has completed four Sheriff Ted Kline
Adventure Novels. He is a pastor in North Central New Mexico with his wife. www.writerwhite.weebly.com
Something had to be wrong with
me. I had trusted Christ and loved God with all my heart. I had to be broken to
have received His forgiveness and love, and still be plagued by habits that
overwhelmed me. I hated them. I hated me. I hated sin, Satan, and the poison
handed to me by the world. Luke 4: 1-13 (Right: Ghost Ranch attributed and copyright permission granted by Pastor Tim White for this CRC Blog Post Only)
I determined that I had to
toughen up, tighten my belt, and try harder. Much harder. I struggled through
my teens and married in my early twenties.
Surely marriage would add stability. If not marriage, then parenthood, I
hoped.
The Lord knows I tried. I cried
tears of repentance. I resisted the temptation to lessen God’s demands upon my
life. Maybe sin wasn’t sin, holiness wasn’t holy, and righteousness wasn’t
always right. Hopefully God resumed winking at failure and sin. That was my
only hope.
No, I could never convince
myself of that. The Word of God was too clear. I was too wrong. I was too bad.
I was too broken.
Laura, my wife, and I lost our
first two children to stillbirths. My hope in parenting was delayed. Later,
when we had a child, he was disabled. Mentally, he was normal. Physically, it
would take God’s hand for him to walk.
Guilt was my unwelcomed
visitor. Our failure to have a healthy child had to be my fault. God is not
mocked. My sowing in sin and failure was harvested in the most painful way; a
child who had to endure more than thirty major surgeries in his first sixteen
years. My self-hatred grew. My sweet Laura saw it and it frightened her. She
stood by me and loved me. I don’t know how. (Left: Pastor Tim's son Ryan at age 16. Copyright permission granted by Tim White for this CRC Blog Post Only)
When our disable son reached
the age of nine, he became depressed and suicidal. He had well learned that he
was different. Not unique, but unequal. Less than, and his comparisons to
“normal children” resulted in his self-hatred. Life father, like son. (Right: Pastor Tim's son Ryan at age 9. Copyright permission granted by Tim White for this CRC Blog Post Only)
A ray of hope shined into my
life in a seminar featuring a Fort Worth Christian Psychologist, the late Dr.
Bill Gillham (Author of Lifetime Guarantee). I called him
later and shared with him the problems my son was having. I asked if he
counseled children. The wise man said he did not. But he recommended someone.
Me. Me? I was the one who messed
him up. I couldn’t help myself, more less, my son.
He pointed me back to the Bible,
the book I thought I knew so well. However, he explained to me another side
that I had ignored. The Judge had made proclamations over me that were
eternally true. They did not match my experience. But faith is belief in the
unseen. It’s trust in what God says when everything screams something
different. (Left: Pastor Tim in May of 2014. Copyright permission granted by Tim White for this CRC Blog Post Only)
Dr. Gillham gave us a game plan
for our son. It involved teaching him that he was not what his body demonstrated.
He, like all believers, is housed in imperfect jars of clay. His life, however,
is hidden in God through Jesus Christ. We carry in us this valuable treasure,
Christ in us, and no one can get any better than that.
In redemption, we are
proclaimed to be holy and blameless, accepted and acceptable, prophets,
prophetesses, royalty, more than conquerors. This by the Judge who created the
world with mere words. This change in us is immediate on our rebirth, and
complete. What is not complete is what we believe. If we don’t fully believe
God, we cannot live like what He has proclaimed is true.
My son’s problem was based on
what he believed about his value. My problem was what I believed about myself.
We had to learn together what God says about us. We had to slowly let that soak
into the deepest corners of our souls. It slowly began to show in how we lived…
like God meant it for us when He proclaimed it. (Right: photo CONTEMPLATION of Pastor Tim in San Diego in January of 2018) 
That is my love story with God.
From broken to blessed. From defeated to celebrating life. From doubt to faith.
I hope it blesses you. These truths, based upon what God says, saved my son. It
saved me and my marriage. It changed our lives and our view of our lives. It
will change anyone who believes. (Left: Pastor Tim's son Ryan and Ryan's wife today. Copyright permission granted by Tim White for this CRC Blog Post Only)
