Dear Johan, I appreciate your inquiry. You would not know me but I remember hearing you at our NWYM sessions and have appreciated your insights. Your topic is one I've thought about very much through the years and have had what for me have been many growing experiences.
By way of background I will submit a bit: I became a Christ follower at about nine years of age and prayerfully made the decision to follow that path while praying in the old outhouse of my family's farm. There have been many subsequent decisions involving turn arounds, commitment and recommitment as I faced new challenges.
Ultimately I learned to study hard, became a physician and had a private practice, taught in a medical school setting and now am primarily working as a Hospice Medical Director and periodically take trips with Northwest Medical Teams, the most recent ones being twice to Afghanistan and once to Iraq. I have great fun teaching a little Circle of Friends in SS - ages about 6 to 8. I am 72 years of age, am thankful for good health, and feel that I will never retire from my primary calling of following Christ.
One of the large privileges I began having early on in the practice of medicine, was that of being a wholistic helper, including their spiritual encourager. My early upbringing was fairly confrontational, though I had a most loving family. Hence as I started this path, I was feeling very responsible and had a high level of guilt if I seemed to have failed. I was familiar with such approaches as "The Four spiritual Laws" and out of this came some early stumblings. For one thing it seemed inappropriate to say, "And God has a wonderful plan for your life," to a dying person. (Even though I know such is true even at that time.) I felt like this approach just wasn't me. In time through many happenings and God's work in me, I came to some very real convincements:
1. God loves all people more intensely than I ever can.
2. God is already at work in their lives.
3. It doesn't all depend on me.
4. As we seek to stay close to God, He is faithful in giving us nudges.
These beliefs became realities in my life and have led to extremely happy adventures in telling what has become for me the "Good News of Christ." My life has been happy beyond any dreams as my approach to people became that of loving them and listening closely to the nudgings of God's Spirit.
I was early on impressed with God's faithfulness by events such as the following:
Standing by the bed of a man dying of myocardial infarction I knew by his shallow breathing and near-terminal cardiac monitor readings that he was near death's door. However, he abruptly sat up in bed and with open eyes said, "Tell my family that it's o.k. between me and God." He then lay back down and completed the dying process. Minutes later I was privileged to pass this word on to a grieving family.
I learned to ask people, when so nudged, questions like the following: "What is God teaching you lately?" or "What do you think has kept you alive?" At times I say, "Someday if you would like, I will tell you what has helped me in hard situations." Or I may say, "I just want to try to be with you as best I can through this time." These are only some of the gentle nudges that God uses to open doors.
I recall times when the nudges have been quite firm. One patient, an alcoholic, had been resuscitated after a cardiac arrest three different times. Always he was in a medical situation where this was possible. It recurred over several months. Finally I felt pushed to ask him, "What is keeping you alive." His response, "I had a mother who prayed for me." He turned around and became a Christ follower, though he ultimately died of his heart disease. I will see him again.
Allen had been a patient of mine for many years and was also a good friend. He loved to listen to the bay of hounds trailing a bear through the mountains just like myself. He moved away from my city but a few years later I got a call, "Ken I must talk with you. I have lung cancer." So we set a date a few days away. In the course of our talking he informed me that, "I have only a few months to live and I need to get right with God." I replied with God's nudging, "Allen, what would you like to tell God?" I wrote his prayer down and left a place for him to sign, which he did.
But then Allen went on to say, "But I have one one thing I can't yet get past." I didn't push him to tell me what it was but we made a time to talk again in a few days by phone.
When we next talked he said, "Me and God had a knock down fight, and God won."
In subsequent time he told me several times, "I wish I'd done this many years ago."
So Johan, this is just a little peek of the "evangelism" to which God has called me. Mostly it has been becoming aware of what He is already up to.
This page is moderated by Johan Maurer as part of the "Evangelism and the Friends Testimonies" project, supported during the academic year 2003-04 by the Ferguson Quaker Fellowship program of Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre. Johan has a minute of service from Reedwood Friends Church.
