I've Got Nothing Left! - An Acts 26 Witness from my Dad

If you happened to attend my father’s funeral in Dec. of 2021, you heard me share dad’s testimony from the pulpit, including a story of brokenness turned to victory that I had heard him share many times, but never as powerfully as the last time I heard him really tell it in its fulness…

It was the summer of 1999. I was a 38-year-old pastor, just beginning my 6th year of full-time ministry at Hanover. I didn’t know it then, but I was about to go through the hardest year of my entire pastoral career. The Lord knew it though, and maybe that’s why I needed to hear dad’s story one more time. Dad was 66, not much older than I am now, and he had just found out he had cancer. He and mom had traveled down to Tulsa, Oklahoma to the Cancer Treatment Center of America, a new state-of-the-art cancer hospital located in the “City of Faith” tower on the campus of Oral Roberts University, where dad was scheduled to undergo surgery and begin a series of radiation treatments. I decided to fly out from Richmond and surprise them the night before dad’s surgery… and surprise them I did! It was after supper when I got to the room and knocked at the door. They were settling in for an early night before a very early morning wake-up call - which was their normal routine anyway - but I think you could have knocked them over with a feather when I walked in.

I hadn’t been there but a few minutes when dad lifted a rough, calloused, four-fingered hand and motioned for me to come over to his bedside. He wanted just one more time, to tell his son a familiar story - his testimony about the day he “died” and was born again. I just listened as dad began to talk.

“Many years ago, I had big ideas and big plans. I wanted to “make my mark” and improve life for our family. I knew Vern Davis had 320 acres he wanted to rent about six miles north of the farm. We didn’t have two nickels to rub together but we had the farmland that your mom had inherited from her parents, so I took a big risk, mortgaged our land and entered into a ten-year lease, a lease that had two big rent payments due every year. I used the borrowed money to drill two water wells, install an irrigation system, plant grass, build corrals and buy 100 momma cows. I worked day and night to keep it all going - plowing ground, planting, watering, harvesting crops, feeding cattle, moving cows, birthing calves, fixing broken machinery and driving back and forth between the two farms. I worked like a crazy man… but nothing seemed to succeed. After five years I hadn’t made any money. In fact, all the money was gone- any profits we had made and all the money we had borrowed - gone. I couldn’t pay the rent, I couldn’t pay the mortgage, I couldn’t even pay the bills or buy groceries and I had nothing left to leverage. Not only did it seem like I’d lose the lease, but I was in real danger of losing our farm that had been in the family since 1886 - land that had been homesteaded by your great-grandpa after the civil war. The weight of it was unbearable and inescapable.”

“One evening about dark, I was driving home from the lease up north. I was exhausted from another frustrating day of work. I was in so much mental anguish - you know, the kind where it feels like your whole body is about to explode… and maybe it would be better if it did? I was so very angry and upset and worried and afraid all at the same time. I pulled off the road and nosed my truck down a two-track trail into a corn field, slammed on the brakes and threw it into park. I began to sob and cry and pound the steering wheel. I knew about God. I even believed in God. But I hadn’t surrendered to God. I began to yell at Him, and then slowly, I began to talk to Him.”

“God, I can’t do this. I can’t fix it. I’ve got nothing left. I’ve tried and tried and worked and worked. So, I’m giving it to you. From now on my life is yours. This farm is yours. If you want to make this farm work, then you'll have to do it. If you want it to crash and burn, then so be it. I’m not in control, you are. I haven’t trusted you, I don’t even know how, but I want to. Forgive me. Forgive my sin of pride and all the other sins too … especially for thinking I could live apart from you. I give up. You take it.”

“And you know what, son? God took it! I backed out of that corn field and drove home. I died that day… but God met me there and resurrected me and from that day forward, things turned around. Things started to work… little things, then bigger things. Not overnight… but enough that we didn’t go bust. But even if we had, I know God would have taken care of us His way, and I would have been okay with that because it wasn’t my deal anymore, it was His. I began to learn to trust him and let Him lead. For the next five years we made a profit, more each year until by the end of the ten years I was able to pay off all my loans. We sold the cow herd in 1979 and it just “happened to be” at the point where the market was at its all-time historic high. From that year forward I never had to borrow any more money from the bank. We’ve lived lean but we have never lacked anything we ever really needed. We’ve been able to support several missionaries over the years and never missed tithing a single Sunday. But even if things hadn’t turned out financially the way they did, that day, that moment changed me forever. I’ve had to come back several times and remember it… and recommit to it. But that’s why tonight I’m not scared. I know my life is His. Whatever God’s plan is, I’m good with it. It’s real. When you die to self, that’s when you begin to live… and that's when Christ makes everything new.”

Of all the things he could have said to me the night before his cancer surgery, that’s what was uppermost in his mind - that’s what stood out to him as the most important thing for him to share. Dad survived his cancer and lived 23 more years. I know if he were here now and only had time to tell one more story, that’s the one he’d tell you – his “Acts 26 witness.” The ten years that span this story were for me, from my 8th year to my 18th, and his witness, his testimony lived out in front of me, was in large measure how I learned that God could be trusted.