On January 8th 2020, WBVN began broadcasting in a new year for the 31st time. I’ve had people ask me over the years where the impulse to start a Contemporary Christian Radio station came from. It’s not a simple or necessarily an easy question to answer. There were many things that occurred to push the process forward. At the time, there were many things happening to me and Jane. Our lives just seemed to be propelling us in a direction we had never anticipated, in what seemed to us, unexpected ways. If I had about 10 pages instead of this one, I would discuss all that, but for this letter let me just say the twists and turns were so exaggerated we could not have been mistaken about the evidence of the fingerprint of God in the mix. Most significantly, I think the reason we were experiencing such new and, let’s call them wonderful, things was we were increasingly following our hearts. We were following what was coming from deep inside us, not in our logical brains but our spiritual being. There was one single knowledge that had occurred in both of us pretty much at the same time, the one thing that set us out on this journey. That knowledge that we came to believe with everything within us was that ‘Dad ain’t mad.’
Somewhere along the way, we became overwhelmingly convinced that God was a giver, a lover, an encourager. That knowledge was in contrast to some of our previous thinking. Over the years, it had been suggested that God was holding out on us a bit, was slow to give much of the time. That’s a thought very similar to the whisper of Satan in the Garden in the third chapter of Genesis. We became persuaded God was a friend. That He was not angry at His creation but was actually the remedy for people of His creation. He was not mad at us, not repulsed by us, not trying to find an excuse for eliminating us from His Life. Rather, God was, in Jesus, providing a way for us to enter into that Life. We discovered that God so powerfully Loved that He could not help but Give. We had come to believe that He takes every opportunity to bring us into Himself, not looking for ways to keep us out. He was making a way for us, not getting in the way. He was eager to be a companion, not an angry God finding reason to separate us from His Love. If ever there was one reason, one thought, one thing that was the seed that eventually grew up into WBVN, it was that truth. To take the kind of steps we were taking, the confidence in those thoughts was the only way for us to have been so bold. For us, we found that believing in God’s Love for people was a full-time thing. As we did that we saw our lives change. We saw more and more opportunity to say that over and over again. That ‘knowing’ led to more opportunity to do what we had been doing in the privacy of our home and eventually to do that publicly with thousands of WBVN listeners.
What we trusted in the most, what we said the most, was that God Loved us before we loved Him. That He chose us before the foundation of the world to be in Himself. And, it was His Purpose and His Will that we might live and move and have our being in Him. It was God’s dream to do that and we’re the benefactors of His dream. In spite of thousands of reasons and justifications to turn us into ash, God has always desired for our relationship with Him to be real. He literally provided cover for Adam and Eve. He placed blood on the doorposts in Egypt so that His people might be spared. He provided a ram for Abraham. He put Abram to sleep and cut a covenant, one that He knew Abram could not keep, so God did that by Himself. He provided a Day of Atonement in the Law to offer forgiveness to Israel. He provided manna from Heaven. Does that sound like a God looking to separate Himself from His people? He personally buried Moses with loving kindness. He chose David (in today’s terms kind of a jerk) in spite of David. He chose Saul (Paul) even though Saul was the chief persecutor of believers. And amazingly, immediately after the resurrection Jesus instructed Mary to go and tell Peter of His resurrection. That was the same Peter that had just denied Him three times. And it was God that gave the ultimate sacrifice, the final sacrifice, His Son for a perpetual sacrifice so that we could approach the throne of His Grace. God searches us out, offers us a Grace and Mercy we don’t deserve, provides access for the unworthy. He sent the Comforter of God to be in and on people who will need comfort. And, what was once reserved for only the Prophet, Priest or King became a companion to all that believed. Does that sound like a God that was trying to find a way to eliminate people from His presence? Does it sound like a God that we have to persuade to love, care and share? Does that sound like a God that’s holding something back?
He paid a price we could not pay. He gave us a Gospel that, if anything, is too good to be true. He pledged that He wouldn’t leave or forsake us. He obligated Himself that nothing could separate us from the Love of God. He promised to set a rainbow in the sky as a testimony of His Grace and Forgiveness and being totally and completely satisfied with Christ’s life and blood as a propitiation for our Sin.
For us, it’s constant that ‘Dad ain’t mad!’ His hand is still reaching out. He is, in Jesus’ parable the Good Samaritan that paid the price. He is the Father that stands at the road’s edge watching and hoping for His son; places a ring of covenant on his son’s hand and a covenant coat on his back upon his return in the story of the Prodigal. Bottom line is He’s not the problem, we are the problem. Our alienation, fears, embarrassments are self inflicted.
People sometimes say to me: Yes, but! And I’m okay to have someone describe the Gospel in other ways and in other expressions. However, if I had to tell you what’s the most important truth, what changed our lives the most, what’s the secret to seeing the impossible happen in people’s lives, what’s the most profound, most powerful, it is this: God told Abraham that He was the Friend of Abraham and we are Abraham’s seed and we have inherited that same Friendship and Love. (2Chr. 20-7,James 2-23) Dad ain’t mad is the most powerful truth Jane and I have found in the Gospel. He is the Center of our attention, and amazingly, we are the center of His. We believe God has sought us out, reached for us, gone through the heart-ache of the cross for us, all for the moment of hearing someone say, ‘I Believe,’ to Him. He has done all these things for us so that believers can do just as the angels have done, declare ‘Peace on Earth, good will toward men’! That Peace has been declared, a covenant of Love has been fulfilled and we can be the beneficiaries of that Great Love. It hasn’t been a revelation of who we are that changed our lives; it was a revelation of who He is that made that difference. When we began to live like ‘Dad ain’t mad,’ things that we had struggled with all our lives fell off our hearts. Peace became our home. We finally entered into His promised Rest that comforts us daily. When death stood at our door in March of 2012, His Rest had already filled the room, filled our hearts.
Well there! I’ve done it. I’ve blown our cover! In Ephesians, Paul teaches that in order to understand the height, width and the length of God; we will first need to know the Love of God. That’s step number one in knowing Him. That’s the order of His revelation of Jesus Christ. Any other order than that one, Paul calls a foolish pursuit of the Gospel. Simply put, God intervenes in our lives every time we see Him for who He really is. Jesus said in so many words, if you can perceive me, correctly perceive who I am, you will be able to perceive who He (Father) is.
For us, that was the turning point. That truth has brought liberty; it has brought a freedom that doesn’t take advantage of the Love of God, but has expanded what we have seen and what we’ve experienced. We all know what is wrong with the world; we know what is wrong with us. The mystery is to discover what He has made Right in us. Why and what we started broadcasting in the beginning is still in our breath today. WBVN continues with one message and one hope: that all those who have come to trust and obey that trust, will find the God of Abraham who was Abraham’s Friend, is their Friend also.
