The Lord has often been pleased to use ordinary means to accomplish extraordinary purposes. He uses weak men to preach His Word, and quiet acts of faithfulness to strengthen His church. Looking back now, I can see that one of the ordinary means He chose to use in my own life was something I had scarcely considered before my conversion: writing.

I had never imagined myself becoming a writer. During the years I lived for myself, words had rarely been used for anything profitable. My conversations were often filled with foolishness, coarse joking, profanity, perversity, or whatever happened to entertain me in the moment. Even when I spoke about serious matters, the conversation almost always found its way back to me. My thoughts, my desires, my opinions, my experiences; I remained the center of my own universe.

After the Lord graciously saved me, that slowly began to change. The more I sat under faithful preaching, read the Scriptures, and sought to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ, the more I found myself wanting to encourage others with the same truths that had become so precious to me. I was not interested in becoming well known. The thought never entered my mind. I had no desire to build a platform, gather a following, or present myself as a teacher. I simply loved what the Lord was showing me through His Word, and I wanted others to see the beauty of Christ as well.

Many evenings, after work or once the children had settled down for the night, I would find myself thinking about passages of Scripture or some aspect of the Christian life that had been pressing upon my own heart. Sometimes it was the necessity of prayer. Other times it was the importance of holiness, the sweetness of God’s providence, the sufficiency of Scripture, the fight against remaining sin, or the ordinary means by which the Lord sanctifies His people. These were not abstract theological subjects to me. They were the very things the Lord was patiently teaching me, often through my own failures and weaknesses.

Eventually I began putting those thoughts into writing. Not because I believed they were profound, but because I hoped they might encourage another believer somewhere along the way. If the Lord had been pleased to use faithful men to strengthen me through their preaching and writing, perhaps He could also use the reflections of an ordinary husband and father who was still learning to walk with Christ himself.

That desire eventually led me to create my first blog. After much thought, I named it “The Potter’s Molded Clay”. The name came from a picture that had become deeply meaningful to me in the Scriptures. For nearly thirty years I had spent my life attempting to shape myself. Every decision, every ambition, every pleasure had been governed by my own wisdom and my own desires. The result was not freedom but ruin. Left to myself, I had become a marred vessel, useful only as another testimony to the misery of a heart curved inward upon itself. Yet the Lord had not discarded me.

Like the Potter described in the Scriptures, He had taken what was marred and begun reshaping it according to His own purpose. The glory did not belong to the clay. It never could. Every evidence of usefulness belonged entirely to the hands of the Potter. That was the heart behind the name. From the beginning, I wanted the focus to remain upon Christ rather than myself.

The articles I wrote were simple. They were not lengthy theological treatises or attempts to impress anyone with knowledge I did not possess. Instead, I wrote about the Christian life as I was learning to live it. I wrote about walking with Christ in ordinary days, the necessity of prayer, the beauty and authority of God’s Word, the pursuit of holiness, the importance of sound doctrine, the danger of worldliness, and the continual need to fix our eyes upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

If there was any consistent aim behind those early writings, it was this: to call my unbelieving audience to repentance and faith in Christ the Lord, encourage weary believers, exhort careless believers, and edify Christ’s church through the truth of His Word. Looking back now, I smile at many of those early articles. Some I would write differently today. Others I still believe expressed truths worth remembering. But in all of them I see the Lord’s patience. I was still a young believer. I had much zeal, much to learn, and very little experience. Yet the Lord was pleased to use even those early efforts as another means of teaching me.

Writing has a way of exposing a man’s heart. It reveals not only what he believes, but often how he believes it. It exposes his motives, his pride, his impatience, and sometimes even his immaturity. I did not understand that when I first began. I simply wanted to write faithfully. Before long, however, the Lord would begin using that very desire to uncover areas of my own heart that still needed much refining.

At first, I hardly noticed it. The more I wrote publicly, the more opportunities arose to discuss matters of doctrine with others. Some conversations were encouraging. Others quickly became contentious. I had spent years caring very little about truth. Now I cared deeply. In many ways that zeal was a gracious gift from God. But as I would soon discover, zeal itself is not enough. It must continually be governed by humility, grace, patience, and love, virtues that the Lord was only beginning to cultivate within me.

The Lord had graciously given me a growing love for His truth. That love naturally produced convictions as I continued reading the Scriptures and sitting under faithful preaching. There were doctrines that I had scarcely considered before my conversion which now seemed impossible to ignore. The authority of God’s Word, the sufficiency of Scripture, the holiness of God, the exclusivity of Christ, the necessity of sound doctrine; these were no longer abstract subjects discussed by theologians. They shaped how I understood the Christian life itself.

The more persuaded I became of the sufficiency of Scripture, the less willing I found myself to compromise where God’s Word had spoken plainly. That conviction occasionally found its way beyond my writing and into conversations with others, particularly through Facebook. Social media had once been another avenue through which I had wasted countless hours. After my conversion, however, many of those interactions became discussions concerning the Scriptures. Some were profitable. Others became lengthy debates that stretched on over days or even weeks.

One of those conversations was with a former coworker from VSC Fire & Security. He professed to be a Christian, yet our understanding of the authority of Scripture differed profoundly. Again and again our discussions returned to the same question: Is the Bible truly sufficient, or does it ultimately bend beneath the opinions and preferences of man?

One subject in particular surfaced repeatedly. He maintained that women could rightly serve as pastors over the church. I could not reconcile that position with what I found in the Scriptures. Passages such as 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 seemed plain enough to me. My concern was never that women were somehow less valuable than men. The Scriptures themselves honor women as made in the imago Dei, they are fellow heirs of the grace of life Rather, my conviction was that Christ Himself has the authority to order His church however He pleases, and His people demonstrate their love for Him by joyfully submitting to His Word, even when it conflicts with the spirit of the age.

Those exchanges were often lengthy. We would answer one another point by point, each attempting to persuade the other from the Scriptures. They forced me back to my Bible repeatedly. I quickly discovered that simply believing something was not enough. If I was going to defend a conviction publicly, I needed to understand why I believed it from the text itself. 

The Lord used those discussions to deepen my own study. Many evenings that began with a brief response on Facebook ended with an open Bible on my lap as I searched the Scriptures, praying that my conclusions would be governed by God’s Word rather than my own assumptions. I did not want to win arguments for the sake of winning them. I wanted to know what God had actually said.

Other conversations proved equally challenging. One discussion involved a woman who attended my mother’s church. During the course of our interaction she argued that a person could faithfully practice Freemasonry while also faithfully following Christ. Until then I had given little thought to Freemasonry. I knew little about its teachings beyond its public reputation. That conversation compelled me to investigate the matter more carefully.

As I studied both the claims of Freemasonry and the teaching of Scripture, I became convinced they were fundamentally incompatible. The religious oaths, the secret rituals, the spiritual symbolism, and the attempt to unite men of differing religions beneath a common spiritual framework appeared to stand in direct conflict with the exclusive claims of Jesus Christ. Scripture leaves no room for divided allegiance. Christ is not merely one way among many. He alone is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), and those who belong to Him are called to renounce every rival loyalty.

Once again, the discussion itself mattered less than what the Lord was accomplishing through it. Each debate drove me back to the Scriptures. Each disagreement reminded me that convictions must be formed from God’s Word rather than from tradition, emotion, or popular opinion. Looking back now, I can also see something else the Lord was exposing. My convictions were growing more quickly than my wisdom.

The Lord had delivered me from years of caring very little about truth. Now I cared deeply, perhaps more deeply than I had ever cared about anything before. Yet zeal, even when sincerely motivated, is not the same thing as maturity. It is possible to love truth while still needing to learn how to handle it with greater patience, humility, and discernment. I did not yet recognize that distinction.

In my mind, every issue seemed to demand immediate and vigorous defense. I often viewed compromise where none existed and failed to distinguish between doctrines that define the faith itself and matters where faithful believers, equally committed to the authority of Scripture, might reach different conclusions. My desire to honor Christ was genuine. So too was my immaturity.

The Lord, in His kindness, was about to teach me that conviction and humility are not enemies. They belong together. And He would do so through an article I wrote with every intention of defending what I believed to be the truth. It was an article that I look back upon now with gratitude, not because I believe everything I wrote was correct, but because the Lord used it to expose yet another corner of my own heart that still needed His patient hand.

The longer I walked with the Lord, the more I desired to see His people worship Him in spirit and in truth. Worship had become precious to me. Before my conversion I had scarcely given any thought to the lyrics I sang or the theology that shaped them. If the music sounded good and stirred my emotions, that was enough. But as the Lord renewed my mind through His Word, I began listening differently.

The words mattered, the doctrine behind the songs mattered, and the churches producing those songs mattered. I became increasingly convinced that worship is not merely about beautiful melodies or sincere emotions. It is the response of God’s redeemed people to the revelation of God Himself. If our understanding of Him is distorted, our worship will inevitably be affected as well. Because of that conviction, I found myself paying closer attention not only to what was being sung but also to those who were writing and promoting the music being used throughout so many churches.

Around that time, I learned that Shane & Shane had shared a stage with worship leaders and ministries connected to churches whose doctrine I believed to be seriously deficient, and in some cases plainly heretical. The more I looked into those associations, the more troubled I became. In my mind, public ministry carried public responsibility. I reasoned that if faithful men were willing to minister alongside those who consistently distorted the gospel or misrepresented God, they were lending credibility to error whether they intended to or not.

My concern was not manufactured. It was genuine. I loved many of Shane & Shane’s songs. Our family had listened to them often. We sang them in our home. We sang them with joy. Because of that, what I had learned grieved me all the more. I wrestled with it for some time before deciding to write about it publicly.

The article was direct. I urged Shane & Shane to repent of what I believed was sinful compromise. I explained why my family would no longer listen to their music or sing their songs in church. My desire, at least as I understood it then, was to call believers to greater discernment and to remind them that doctrine matters because truth matters. I believed every word I wrote.

I did not write the article to attract attention. Nor did I write it because I enjoyed controversy. In fact, publishing it made me somewhat uneasy. Yet I was persuaded that remaining silent would have been an act of compromise. I sincerely believed I was defending the honor of Christ. Not long afterward, a very dear brother approached me.

He had previously served as a pastor and was now a member of our congregation at Cornerstone. We were close in age, and over time I had grown to respect both his knowledge of Scripture and his evident humility. He was not a man who seemed eager to argue. Neither did he carry himself as someone looking for opportunities to correct others. That made what followed all the more memorable.

He spoke to me graciously. There was no harshness in his words, neither ridicule, and there was no impatience. He acknowledged my desire to guard the truth, and for that I remain thankful. He did not question my love for Christ or my concern for sound doctrine. Instead, he gently challenged the conclusions I had drawn and the way I had applied them. He encouraged me to think more carefully about the difference between affirming false doctrine and maintaining fellowship with believers who, though imperfect, had not themselves denied the gospel.

His questions forced me to think. Was every public association necessarily an endorsement? Could faithful Christians exercise discernment differently without abandoning their commitment to biblical truth? Had I allowed my zeal to carry me beyond what Scripture itself required?

At the time, I remained unconvinced. I listened respectfully, but I held firmly to my position. I believed I was standing where the Scriptures stood, and I was not prepared to move simply because someone I respected disagreed with me. Looking back, I do not regret wanting to honor Christ. I do not regret caring deeply about sound doctrine. Those desires were good gifts from the Lord.

What I lacked was wisdom. I had not yet learned that a man can be sincerely motivated and still mistaken in his conclusions. Nor had I fully appreciated the difference between guarding the gospel itself and drawing lines of separation where faithful believers, equally committed to Scripture, might in good conscience arrive at different applications.

The Lord was not finished teaching me. Years would pass before my understanding changed. Over time, as I continued to study the Scriptures, read faithful men from generations before me, thought deeply on my conversation with the brother who took the time to talk with me about it all, and observed the lives of mature believers whom I deeply respected, my convictions regarding these matters began to develop. I came to see that my earlier conclusions had been too rigid. While I still believed Christians must exercise discernment regarding the ministries they support and the doctrine they receive, I no longer believed I had handled that particular situation wisely.

My brother’s gentle correction returned to my mind often. The Lord had used him, not to weaken my convictions, but to refine them. That lesson has remained with me ever since. Conviction without humility easily becomes harshness. Humility without conviction quickly becomes compromise. The Christian is called to pursue both, and that balance is learned only through years of walking with Christ under the patient instruction of His Word.

The article, together with a number of other circumstances during that season, left me discouraged. I began questioning whether writing was truly a gift the Lord intended me to exercise. Rather than continuing to publish articles, I gradually laid my pen aside, metaphorically speaking. At the time, it felt like failure. Looking back now, I see something different. The Lord was not taking away the desire to write. He was teaching the writer before giving him more to say.