Walking the path

(7-minute read)

The most difficult deception for me to detect is self-deception.

In 1970, after only about a year of studying spiritual things, I felt the Lord wanted me to buy a reel-to-reel tape recorder, but I didn’t know why. I had never owned one and knew nothing about them. A man in our Bible study group worked for a company that sold such things. This was before the days of cassette recordings and CD players. It was a bit of a stretch on our finances, but I gave him enough money to purchase a professional quality single-track recorder. I told him it was for the Lord and I didn’t know what to buy. He said he would pray and be led by the Lord.

It was 2 weeks later, the man from the prayer meeting said he was at work, and some numbers started running through his head. He knew those numbers were a part number but didn’t know what that part number was to, but he felt it would be a recorder for me. This warehouse contained hundreds of different types of electronic equipment. When he checked the inventory, he found the part number was a reel-to-reel single-track recorder. He handed me the box and then gave me a handful of money. The recorder he bought cost less than 20% of the money I’d given him. My wife and I stored the machine under our bed without opening the box.

About a week later, our friend Alberta Shaw called and said she had a problem and asked if we would come and pray with her. We picked up Alberta and decided to drive around on country roads and pray so that we wouldn’t be disturbed by phone calls or people dropping in. Eventually, Alberta told us the problem. She said, “I make tapes of our Sunday sermons for missionaries sent from our church. I have two tape recorders, and I copy from one to the other. One of my tape recorders died, and I don’t have enough money to buy another one.”

I turned the car towards home without saying anything to her about it. After arriving home, I went to the bedroom, got the box with the tape recorder, took it in, and gave it to her. After she opened it up, she said, “This is identical to the one I have.” She then began to cry. After I told her the story of coming into possession of that recorder, she began to cry again and said, “The Lord is so good. He answers even before we pray.” My wife and I were thrilled that the Lord would let us be a part of something he was doing.

Little did I know that this was the beginning of a discovery that would last for years in which the Lord would put his finger on a significant weakness in my life. A few days later, a check arrived in the mail. It was money owed to me years ago, which I assumed I would never get and was no longer part of my thinking. Strangely, it was precisely the amount I had given the man to buy the recorder. At the time, I thought the Lord rewarded us for giving the money for his work. I wanted the Lord to financially reward us. I looked in scripture to see if the Lord does that sort of thing, and some scriptures looked like he might. Several friends had had similar experiences and considered it to mean the same thing. At the time, I knew nothing about the psychological quirk we humans commonly have called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when a person, without realizing it, makes a significant effort to find evidence to confirm what they want to believe and expend little to no effort looking for evidence to disprove it.

Without consciously realizing it, in my mind, I had given more emphasis to money than hearing the Lord’s voice and being a part of what he was doing. I just didn’t see it. The whole thing seemed spiritual to me at the time. My initial reaction was, “This is great. It is something the Lord and I are doing. This is spiritual. Of course, I like money. The world is built around it.” I actually thought all of this was part of following the Lord. Although you can dress it up and comb its hair, deep within me was the love of money. The problem is the scripture says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. I deemphasized the problem in my thinking and celebrated the cash, not knowing that corruption would follow.

There were numerous opportunities to learn as the Lord put me through multiple situations to teach me to walk with him. I was a bit thick at catching on, but the Lord never seemed to get mad at me. It was similar to when my mother taught me to tie my shoes as a child. I didn’t get it at first, but she would show me again very calmly, using different words and giving me a better look at what was happening.

Twelve years after the tape recorder incident, in 1982, we moved to Pennsylvania. Shortly after arriving there, I felt the Lord saying I should open a brokerage account and invest in the stock market. Each morning, I would pray and ask the Lord if there was a stock that I should buy. Although he didn’t speak to me often, occasionally, he would give me the name of a stock and tell me how much to buy. On another occasion, he might tell me what stock to sell. This went on for nearly two years. I had never lost money on a single stock. I think my broker thought I was doing insider trading. The amount of money in our account grew so much that my stockbroker called so often you would have thought he was my best friend.

Although it took a while, eventually, I saw how I was deceiving myself. One day, I started getting numerous calls from my broker about events that would affect the value of some stocks I had. I tried to hear from the Lord about what to do but couldn’t hear anything. I didn’t know if God was not speaking or if I was in a spiritual place where I couldn’t hear him.

This was a project the Lord and I were doing together, and now I couldn’t hear from him. I started listening to my stockbroker about what to do. A few days later, I flew out to Las Vegas for a meeting and decided to read a book by the Welsh minister Arthur Burt on the plane. By the time I got off the plane in Las Vegas, I was under such conviction for making changes and not waiting for the Lord. I had deceived myself into thinking it was my money and I was responsible to act. There is a great chasm of self-deception between the Lord and I are doing something together and I am doing something and the Lord is helping me. Even pagans asked the Lord for help.

I felt I had been unfaithful to the Lord. When I got to my hotel room, I called my stockbroker and said, “Sell everything.” He tried to get me to wait a few days, telling me I would lose a lot of money. It didn’t matter; I told him to sell it all. I lost more money that day than what five years earlier would have been my annual salary. I asked the Lord, “Lord, make it hurt enough that I’ll never turn away from your voice again.” I have never bought any stocks since.

Jesus did what he saw the father doing and said what he heard the father saying. Jesus walked with his father the way I want to walk with him. I couldn’t help but wonder why the Lord initially gave me money that looked like a reward; why did he let me make so much money on the stock market? I felt led by the Lord to the scripture discussing Judas as a thief. What did the Lord do about that? He made him treasurer for the disciples. You can’t stop being a thief until you have something you can steal and turn away from doing it. Just because God gives you what you want doesn’t mean it’s a reward. It’s sometimes just an opportunity to change for the better.

If someone like Judas was among my friends today, I would probably think of him as a spiritual man. He followed Jesus and preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and when the Lord sent them out two by two, Judas healed the sick and cast out demons. I know that some people think Judas betrayed Jesus to force him to become the warrior king and free Israel from the Romans, but there is nothing in scripture to suggest that. In scripture, Judas was a thief who stole from the disciple’s treasury and betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. I have never had a problem with stealing, but what I did have was just as bad. I wanted to be free of it before it matured into something disastrous, as it did with Judas. Lord, keep me from self-deception and going my own way. Help me walk this path of life with you.