Commuting With Christ

—Winter of 2017—

I only met Steve Lawson once, but the memory of our meeting has cast a long shadow in my memory—particularly in light of recent events. Though he does not know it, Lawson’s ministry left a deep impression on my understanding of the Lord and His Word. Indeed, Lawson was used by the Lord in the life of my family during some of our darkest days.

I had the opportunity to speak with Lawson after a sermon he gave at Redeemer University in the fleeting days of December 2017. A group of us men, myself at the front, had stood in line after the sermon to meet Lawson. However, upon getting to the front of the line I soon realized that I stood alone, looking down at a lone hand extended in my direction. The men I attended the event with had got caught up in some conversation of theirs some ways back, leaving Lawson and I on our own.

Given the line behind me had mysteriously disappeared, he and I had time to speak at some length. My father had already been diagnosed with cancer by this time,—only a few weeks prior—and so one of the things that Lawson and I touched on in our conversion was along this point. I won’t transcribe the exact words he said to me, but they were along these lines: “Keep the faith.”

Though I was largely unfamiliar with Lawson and his ministry up until that evening (at best, I saw him in a few videos from Ligonier Ministries), I was deeply encouraged by his sermon and the words he and I shared together. It wasn’t long before I began reading and listening to much more of his material in the coming weeks. As I mentioned, my father was in the midst of cancer treatment during this time, and in His wisdom the Lord saw it fit that Lawson’s The Attributes of God series came across my lap.

A few short weeks later, nestled somewhere between the wisdom and sovereignty of God,—both literally and within the span of the series—my father was called home to be with the Lord.

—Summer—

When I began my studies at the University of Western Ontario last fall, I did so with a sense of excitement and trepidation. I was eager to finish well the last leg of my education—a journey I had embarked on with breakneck speed several years earlier, taking time off for mine and Elaina’s wedding, and little else.

However, as my journey began upon the final chapter—with the very end in sight!—the dark clouds began to roll in. I was not unlike my dear friend Bilbo in The Hobbit who, upon seeing the end of his road, felt a similar way:

“All alone it rose and looked across the marshes to the forest. The Lonely Mountain! Bilbo had come far and through many adventures to see it, and now he did not like the look of it in the least.”

My faith in the Lord notwithstanding, I must admit I had a sense of foreboding as my time at Western approached. Some of my reservations were purely practical in nature: for instance, my commute to Western’s campus in London was about an hour and forty minutes each way, sans traffic or poor weather. To add insult to injury, the fact that the route between my home and London is called ‘The Snowbelt’ (appropriately named given the amount of snow the area receives during the winter months) was little comfort to my heart.

And as is so often the case, worry begets more worry: would I be safe during those dark and dreary winter commutes? Between commuting, classes, and studying, when would I have time to work? And between commuting, classes, studying, and work, when on earth would I have time to spend with my wife?

Coupled with these worries, I was gripped further by this ominous sense that I was about to intrude upon a place that was itself in the grip of some darkness—a spiritual darkness that hated the Lord and hated those who identified with Him. In spite of this weight in my soul, there was a zeal yet kindled within me.

I began devouring the book of Acts, studying the ever Christ-focused examples of Peter, Paul, and Silas, praying earnestly for my teachers and classmates, none of whom I had yet met, in expectation that the Lord would do some mighty work in them. In the days approaching the dawn of my new semester, the Lord in His kindness reminded my heart of this everlasting truth:

“‘Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!’ The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (Psalm 46:10-11).

Whatever stood in front of me in the coming days, weeks, or months, the Lord calmed my troubled heart with His promise to remain with me until the very end of the age. The Lord would glorify His name and magnify the gospel of Jesus Christ; I had only to be still and faithful.

—Fall—

I don’t care much for driving. Thus, the prospect of a three and a half hour daily commute to and from campus was not something I relished as my time began at Western. However, I sought to entrust this time to the Lord, desiring to make the most out of an unavoidable situation. It’s funny: as I reflect back on the last several months, I think my time of peace and quiet with the Lord along those daily commutes will be one of the things I miss most about this season in life.

Well, it wasn’t all peace and quiet. I wanted to fill my time on these long drives well, and so I began my commutes in September with the longest, beefiest series I could think of: R.C. Sproul’s fifty-seven part overview of the entire Bible, From Dust to Glory.

It was around this time, perhaps the second or third week of class, that I also began listening to sermons by Steve Lawson again. His sermons were long, as was my commute, so it worked out splendidly. During these commutes, my mind was immediately taken back to those dark and heavy days from many years earlier; when the grief of losing my father was so fresh, and the mighty presence of the Lord God ever so near. I soon began for the second time in my life Lawson’s series The Attributes of God, and was again deeply encouraged by the Biblical truth he brought to bear on this great God we serve; the faithful Friend and Father who had brought me and my family through many dangers, toils, and snares since I last listened to the series all those years ago in what seemed like a different life entirely.

Though I had only met Lawson that one evening, his books, sermons, and series were used by God in a mighty way that same winter as I wrestled in my soul with the death of my father. J.C. Ryle once observed that, “The best of men are only men at their very best.” Even as a newish Christian, I was under no illusion that Steve Lawson was faultless; like all men, he was a great sinner saved by a great Savior, just as I was. But I thank God all the same that He used an imperfect and weak man in Steve Lawson to point me to a Savior who is infinitely perfect and strong when my heart needed those truths most as a young man.

My appreciation for Lawson, and the Lord’s work through him, deepened all the more when my little sister came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ a short time ago through one of his sermons she ‘just so happened to stumble upon online.’ I am, of course, being somewhat facetious; the Lord does nothing without purpose. I praised God for His deep faithfulness to my family, and I praised Him yet again for the ministry of this man who had blessed me and my family ever so much, albeit from afar.

And then, like all of you, I heard the news in late September. Truly, “The best of men are only men at their very best.”

—Winter—

This was a hard winter. A man from church who ploughed our driveway during the heavy snowfalls (once while we were actually stuck in our car at the midway point of our driveway on route to the airport) remarked that Canada received more snow this winter than it had at any other time since 2001. With each new weather alert along the Snowbelt—signaling more flurries to come—my mind remembered the words of Richard III in Shakespeare’s play of the same name: “Now is the winter of our discontent.”

I say again, this was a hard winter. In the care of the Lord’s providence, I fell ill in early November with a nasty infection. Indeed, it was the sickest I had ever been in my entire life. What began as a minor cold mutated into a host of other symptoms, including two more infections compounded on the first, a severe fever coupled with body aches, an unceasing headache, shortness of breath that did not allow me to speak (never mind that my placement at a school began that same week), and a cough that persisted into the early weeks of January. All told, over the course of that first week I was in the emergency room twice, passed between four different doctors, lost a significant amount of weight for so short a time, and was left unable to speak more than a few words above a hushed whisper without breaking out into a violent coughing fit in placement for a profession that was largely based upon one’s ability to speak and interact with others.

Oh, and my wife and I were moving at the end of the month.

It was in and through these difficult and exhausting days that the faithfulness of the Lord stood strong. When we truly begin to sense our own weakness, it is only then that we come to see but the edges of His majesty, strength, and love towards us. When I began my commute with the Lord in this new season, I was assured by His promise to be with me—“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20), a promise He has upheld to me with unflinching faithfulness.

During this leg of my commute with Christ,—a stretch of road I shall call ‘The Sickbelt’—I found myself thinking often of Steve Lawson. Indeed, lying sick in bed left me with little else to do besides the ability to think and pray; something I tried to do, however imperfectly.

When the news about Lawson broke, it ripped through social media and Christian circles like a whirlwind. Even after many weeks of thinking and praying through what had happened, I was often left at a loss at how best to untangle this particular knot theologically, let alone emotionally. How could this happen?, I thought to myself. Why was it, after years of not reading or listening to Lawson, that such a terrible thing should happen only days after I took up listening to him again? If only I had opportunity to speak with him; if only I could encourage him with the same words he told me all those years ago—“Keep the faith.”

To my shame, I was all too easily caught up with the drama, scouring the internet for answers into a situation that had nothing to do with me when I should have been pleading before the Lord for my brother in the hour he needed it most. In light of this reality, it did not take long for the Lord to hit me over the head with this simple, yet firm, admonition: Mind. Your. Own. Business.

It was at this point I determined within myself that, as often as Steve Lawson’s name came across my mind, I would pray for him—not for his ministry, but for him: his relationship with the Lord, his marriage, his family, his church, that he would repent and trust in the Lord for forgiveness, who is our only hope in the fleeting spring that is life and bleak winter cold that is death.

—Spring—

Life is woven together with seasons. Seasons of weeping that give way to seasons of laughing; seasons of war and seasons of peace—seasons of sorrow that seem to rob all hope from tomorrow, only to be met with the sweetness of spring wherein joy finds rest and voice again to sing. As the writer of Ecclesiastes declares, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

As my time at the University of Western ebbs to a close, I draw comfort in looking back over all the road my feet have traveled. A few more months remain in my program, but my long commute is now over; this part of the journey is complete, and a new road stretches out before my feet. However, now standing at the latter end of this road I have just come to the end of, I feel as though an entire life has just been lived—indeed, what is a year but a dress rehearsal for that unending day of which we in Christ shall all take part? What is our daily commuting with Christ here below but a glorious shadow of the adventure yet to begin?

In the vast providence of God, it seems only fitting that Steve Lawson’s story over the past several months should bookend my own. After a long withdrawal from the very circles he once occupied, Lawson—only a few days ago—broke his silence and asked for forgiveness in the form of a widely circulated letter, confessing to a watching world that he had grievously sinned against his wife, his family, his church, his brothers and sisters, and above all, that he had brought reproach upon the name of Christ.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven... a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7).

As I reflect upon the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ over this past year, it is with fear and trembling that I consider not only His kindness to me, but to all of us—and to Steve Lawson as well. Without the steadfast love of the Lord, without the enduring security of His promises towards us, surely we would all have made shipwreck of our souls many times over in the past year—in the past hour, even. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord who gives us His promise that, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Wherever you may find yourself today along your commute with Christ—whether it be in a season of sorrow or one of joy—perhaps I can leave you with this encouragement: fight the good fight, finish the race, and, as a brother once said to me many years ago, “Keep the faith.”

“The Road goes ever on and on,

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.”

—Bilbo Baggins, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

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Photo by Clay Banks, Unsplash