The Jericho Road

    A Little BIOgraphy 

 

 

I am an American ex-pat with deep southern roots, married to a very patient English lady, and we live in Wales. I pastor two Seventh-day Adventist churches, one in Newport and the other in Cardiff. They are ethnically and racially diverse; like my wife, they are very patient.

I have two children who live in America, a large extended family, and an African Grey parrot. I enjoy watching wilder things when I can. Reading, writing, and speaking keep me busy. I have already done too many funerals, yet I prefer them to the amusement
park.

I long for the presence of God and when he is present in prayer, it is the most satisfying experience in my life, therefore, my ministry feels complete if I can help someone else into his presence; this is the meaning of my life and my work. I long for this to be my consistent experience, my bread and water, the breath of my soul. Perhaps this website will go this direction.

I know God through battles with pride, self-centeredness, fear, anger, lust, and an ever present feeling of loneliness. In the past I was overcome with an addiction to drugs: alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, cocaine, marijuana, pain killers, depressants, speed, and have used others in many ways to feel significant and safe or to merely feel good. Yet, these are not my greatest sins. I neglect God and have repeatedly blamed him for not satisfying my lust to feel safe and meaningful, unwittingly demanding he obey me . My desire to be satisfied in life by something other than God is the root of my sin and though I have laid the axe to this root, it ever seeks new life. If I do not abide in Christ, this is who I am.

I am still on the Jericho Road, a half-century old and daily moving toward the cross, where I am crucified in Christ and the world is crucified to me. No matter how often I kneel there, each day is a new journey of abiding in his death and resurrection, finding God hidden in suffering the temptation to choose another way; he speaks in the “thin silence” of this suffering.

The Bible is the voice of God to my soul. I believe Christ, the Word made flesh, to be “God’s thought made audible” (White), accepting faith and repentance as the conditions upon which these truths are reality in my life.

I hope we can talk these things through. I want to hear of your experience, to walk with others on the Jericho Road to the cross. If this is not what you want or understand, I hope we can talk about that as well.