Would You Know If God Died Yesterday?

Tiger Wood’s Bike and God’s Smuggler

These days Americans are reading fewer books than ever……………except in prison. Books are a treasure in prison. People who never read in the free world, relish it in prison. It helps pass the time. 

Like everybody, I read a crazy amount of books in prison but one that has always stuck with me was an autobiography of Tiger Woods. Not because of the plethora of interesting details of Tiger’s professional career but because of a story his dad, Earl, used to tell about Tiger when he was a child. It must have made quite an impression on Earl because he told it often. I think it made him proud and I don’t blame him.

I’m telling this from memory so if you read this Tiger, please forgive any errors. Like every kid, there came a time when Tiger wanted a bike. When he found one he wanted, he commenced to do what all red blooded kids in America are apt to do, he began begging his dad to buy it. In my kids' case, that meant asking repeatedly until finally I relented, hoping to get a moment's peace. Of course, once they got the commitment, it immediately transitioned into, “When can we go get it?” 

But Earl was made of stronger stuff and told Tiger not now. 

But kids are relentless and Tiger eventually wore him down. Earl agreed to buy the bike.

Only he didn’t. And apparently didn’t for several weeks. So to be clear, Earl agreed to buy the bike and then did absolutely nothing for several weeks. My kids couldn’t have drawn a breath in those weeks for asking me when we were going to get the bike. But Tiger’s reaction was different and the only reason Earl told the story.

Once Earl agreed to buy the bicycle, Tiger never asked about it again. Not once. 

Now I don’t know about yours, but my kids would never have given up on one of these relentless quests until they had achieved their goal. In the case of a new bike, their mother and I would have no peace until there was one in the driveway. Now clearly Tiger Woods isn’t your average guy and by all accounts, Earl Woods wasn’t your average dad, but I can’t help but wonder what in the world made Tiger so positive his father would keep his word? To nestle into the assurance of the promise in defiance of the reality of an empty driveway.

Undoubtedly, there was some history and had been times when Earl was faithful to a promise, but we all tend to develop bad memories and revert to, what have you done for me lately, in times of want. But Tiger didn’t, he simply believed what his dad had told him and trusted that the bike was his………despite the empty driveway. 

You can probably see where I’m going with this….how in the world can a little kid in his relationship with his earthly father, show so much more faith than I sometimes do with my Heavenly Father? 

I believe that Tiger's faith and my lack of faith are both rooted in the same thing, relationship. Earl and Tiger’s relationship was such that when the father said he would do something, Tiger believed him. Period. 

I think about how proud Earl was and I imagine how proud God must be when we step out and believe, with no bike in sight. But it's difficult to do without that relationship foundation to lean on, especially if God asks you to do something you don’t understand. 

Right before my last Christmas in prison and about two months before my release, I had one of my most interesting moments with the Holy Spirit. I sometimes hesitate to include some these personal experiences with God for fear that you might wonder why you haven’t had such experiences. I would say, be careful what you wish for. They say the hand of the gardener is never closer than when he’s pruning the vine but in my experience, those pruning sessions just plain suck. I wouldn’t recommend going to prison in search of an experience, but I’ll admit, I’ve never felt closer to God than in prison. 

At the time this happened I was really struggling. As to why, I’ll not dredge up the entire sorry affair because the complete story is in the previous post Hard Love. But in a nutshell, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) kept me in prison ten months longer than they were supposed to. This strange experience with the Holy Spirit happened about eight months into the ten. As I was praying one night, naturally about getting out of prison, and God impressed upon me that my prayer had been answered and to stop praying about it. 

Huh? Stop praying. That couldn’t be right. How could my prayer have been answered since, best I could tell, I was still sitting in prison! I really wasn’t sure what to do with this but a Christian friend suggested that maybe God just wanted to see if I believed Him. That maybe I should obey and stop asking, and instead start thanking Him for answering my prayer. I then proceeded to learn a valuable lesson about believing before seeing, and that is that things are going to look worse before they look better. It’s like the devil knows your stepping out on faith and will try anything to sow doubt in your mind. I had been praying for a change in the BOP’s policies and suddenly the changes that I had been hoping for started to unravel, the BOP reiterated that, right or wrong, the mechanism they had used to keep me in prison was not going to change in the foreseeable future.

To sit in the dark and wait on promised light is hard. But like all things with God, only when you jump off the faith cliff do your wings grow. And these times are irreplaceable for developing the one thing God really wants from us, a relationship. 

Brother Andrew was a Dutch missionary who smuggled Bibles into communist countries in the 1950’s. He died in 2022 after spending a lifetime in service to Christians in persecuted places including the Islamic world and most Communist countries. His story and faith were remarkable and I encourage you to read his books. Brother Andrew used to start some of his sermons off with a question, “Would you know if God died yesterday?” We all know God can’t die but that’s not the point of the exercise. It’s a hypothetical and quite interesting question, isn’t it? 

In truth, how do we know if anyone dies? Mostly we read about it on Facebook, someone tells us, or maybe we happen to see an obituary. 

Unless……..it’s someone close to us. Someone we spend time with and talk with every day. Someone we love. We immediately notice the hole someone like that leaves in our lives. Brother Andrew was asking if your relationship with God is such that His absence would create a crippling hole in your life. Because that’s what God wants, He wants to be the center and most important part of your life. It’s a pleasurable place to live, close to God, depending on Him to handle all the craziness that this life entails. But you can’t get there without spending time with Him and if you can’t imagine this better life then I beg you, simply give it a try. Unlike many in this crazy place, God always does what He says, and He says you’ll find Him if you seek Him.

Eight weeks after He told me to stop praying, they released me from prison. It was the most peaceful and contented time of my incarceration.