The first thing you should know about me is that even though I am so very sinful, I am a dearly beloved child of God because of the death and resurrection of His Son. Jesus Christ is everything to me. He is my passion, my treasure, my joy, my life, and my all. The singular aim of my life is to know Him and make Him known—to love as I have been loved by Him.
I grew up on the family farm in Cedar Grove—a small, rural, Dutch-American village in southeast Wisconsin. My parents sometimes say in jest that I was the best mistake they ever made. That is because they were in their forties, and my siblings—Kenny, Mike, and Brenda—were 18, 16, and 13 when I was born. All three were in college when I was in kindergarten! So in one respect, I guess you could say I was unplanned. But God had a plan in mind for me before the world began. He makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8:28).
I like to say I won the parental lottery. My mom and dad took me to church every Sunday, loved me to smithereens, and instilled in me a strong moral compass. I had it all. What is more, to paraphrase Paul’s words in Philippians 3, if anyone in our community had religious credentials, I had more: baptized as an infant, a member of the First Reformed Church, Dutchman of Dutchmen; as to church attendance, spotless; as to drugs and alcohol, blameless; and as to legalistic fervor, unrivaled. And yet inwardly I was spiritually dead and rotting. I would go to parties and judge those who drank. All the while, I was sexually immoral, unkind, unloving, and arrogant. It was easy for me to point my finger at others because I never looked in the mirror. I was, for eighteen years of my life, a contradiction—a “Christian” without Christ.
“But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost” of sinners, “Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life” (1 Timothy 1:16). Through a series of providential events during my senior year of high school, the Lord convinced me of the terrifying reality that for all my purported religiosity, I was in need of a Savior. He convicted me of my sin. And then the Gospel, like a cool breeze sweeping through my sin-scorched soul, persuaded me that I could have everlasting joy and total forgiveness in a relationship with God that was not dependent on what I could do for Him, but on what He did for me on the cross. I will forever cherish the first time I truly worshipped God through song at a college retreat. Overwhelmed that Jesus would choose to love a wretch like me, I threw myself to the ground as big tears trickled down my cheeks and a hundred uplifted voices cascaded overhead: “Hallelujah! Grace like rain falls down on me.”
When I opened my newborn eyes for the first time, it dawned on me that I had never genuinely loved anyone in my life—not even my parents. But Jesus began to change me from the inside out. Whereas I formerly judged and detested others, now I found within myself an intense desire to love and serve them. So I changed my college major and decided to go to seminary. I began studying and preaching the Bible. God placed tremendous mentors and friends in my path. And He gave me the privilege of reaching out to my friends in Cedar Grove with the love of Jesus.
Meanwhile, I served as an assistant high school football coach in our hometown for seven years. Coaching has been one of the distinct privileges of my life. We have had some tremendous players and teams and even went to state one year. But for me, the real joy of coaching lay in investing in tomorrow’s generation of men. Fatherlessness and various other factors are ravishing young men in our nation—even in our quaintest small towns. Looking back on my high school experience, I wish so desperately that someone would have taken me under their wing and taught me how to be a man of God. So the Lord laid it on my heart to pour into the young men on the football team and to endeavor to show them the love of God the Father. Heaven knows I have not done so perfectly, but I will say this: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (3 John 4).
For years I enjoyed relatively smooth sailing in my Christian life. But then, quite abruptly, the floodgates broke. One evening in September of 2012 as I lay in bed a blanket of uninvited darkness, as it were, wrapped itself around my soul and began to suffocate me. My chest tightened. My heart raced. My blood ran cold. Unbeknownst to me, I was having an anxiety attack. The next evening, the same thing happened. I thought I was having a heart attack, so I told my mom to dial 9-1-1. And then something happened that I hope to never forget. Gripped with compassion, my Dad grabbed hold of my hand, lay down on top of me, held me in his arms, and said, “B.J., we love you so much. Do you feel God here with you yet?”And by the time I got in the rescue squad, I was one of the calmest people in the room.
But the anxiety attacks didn’t relent. Night after night for forty days they visited me. So I dropped out of seminary for the semester. I stopped coaching cold turkey. At times I could hardly sleep or leave the house. Here I was, a full grown man, emotionally crippled, holding my mother’s hand until the break of dawn. But the Lord Jesus never once departed from my side. In those darkest hours of the soul, when I was weeping in my bed or writhing under another attack, I met the God of the Cross—the God who suffered for us, the God who weeps, the God who in undying love died for us.
On the fortieth day I came in contact with a biblical counselor who convinced me that God can heal our soul’s deepest wounds and fears. Over the course of the next week, as I lay in bed and walked with Christ into the darkest rooms of my heart, I experienced profound healing in spirit, mind, and body. Joy began swelling inside me as it never had before. And during the same span of time, as I read Scripture and listened to God’s voice, the Lord began revealing to me powerful truths about how our relationship with our earthly father impacts our relationship with the heavenly Father. As the Lord pulled me out from under the dark waters of anxiety, I decided to write a book about Malachi 4:5-6, fatherhood, and intergenerational sin. It is nowhere near completion, but I pray that in due season it will increase the Fatherly fame of God!
Fast-forward with me to the first week of December, 2013. At that time the Lord began tugging my heart in the direction of the nations. Recalling the missionary experience of my best friend Jake, I began praying about going on an eleven month, eleven country missions adventure called the World Race. Although I was highly reluctant to leave home, God gently swept aside all of my objections and persuaded me that the Word Race was His will for the next year of my life. My prayer for our team is that God would use us, His unworthy servants, to love the last, the least, and the lost. To Him, our gracious Father, be glory now and forever!
