Persecution's pain worth the gain

Not Sooner forgotten ..

I've officially fasted just once. It came after my boss, a devout atheist, axed me for being a Christian. 
    It hurt. A lot. Especially my wife, who was enduring breast cancer and a radical mastectomy during the persecution. But God actually was preparing to greatly bless me and my family.
     It happened while I was editor of an award-winning employee magazine for a major corporation, at the same time serving as an untrained pastor in an innovative apartment ministry back in the '80s. I had a picture of Jesus on my office wall, a Bible on my desk, which I read during coffee breaks, and I openly counseled and prayed with troubled employees at their desks.

Errantly casting my pearls

     I made a mistake in trying to witness to my boss on a road trip, however, without first praying, apparently throwing pea

I made a mistake in trying to witness to my boss on a road trip, however, without first praying, apparently throwing pearls before a bore. Although I was excelling with the magazine, he kept raising my bar at review time, expecting I'd fail. When I didn't, all thanks to God, he finally gave me one month to leave.

     While my wife baked a cake for my going away party that featured a hatchet dripping blood, I fasted to know God's will during this unjust persecution. The Holy Spirit said for me to go to a downtown mission and offer to do "whatever job was needed that workers didn't have time to do." And I was asked to repair damaged baseboards along kitchen walls.
     Properly humbled, the Lord then sent this Sooner to (shudder!) Austin, Texas, where I was led to place this advertisement in the Texas Press Association's classifieds:

"You've tried running your weekly newspaper man's way; now do it God's way and be successful."
     I had no real idea how I was going to do that, except to trust and obey at the time. God supplied the inspiration from another prayer I voiced after reading Charles M. Sheldon's "In His Steps," which in later years would give rise to the viral wristband craze of "What would Jesus do?"
    One of the characters asking that life-changing question was a newspaper editor who then refused to carry liquor and other ungodly ads at a loss of revenue that threatened his business. The book doesn't say how he fared, so I asked the Lord what would happen if an editor DID include God where honestly appropriate. Some might say you've got to watch what you pray for.
    That crazy classified launched Ellen and I on a long, winding road around Texas to rescue a series of failing newspapers by including God throughout editions.
     This, too, was an answer to an old prayer of mine. After becoming a believer, the Spirit reminded me of the times I saw newspapers edit out references to the Lord. Such as when covering a Fiesta Bowl for the Phoenix paper: My exciting task was to write a top-of-the-front-page feature on the game's "hero," who I would select and have an exclusive interview apart from other press.
    It turned out to be the winning quarterback who had his best day ever. Ah, but he answered every question by crediting Christ, back before any athletes did that, saying things like "God guided my arm" and "the Lord lit up that receiver." I kept asking in different ways to get non-God-honoring answers when this headline hit my then-heathen mind: 
    "Nation's hottest QB is Jesus freak."
     When the editor heard that was the subject of my feature, he said: "Kill it!"
     Wuh-wuh-why?
     "Because I'm not putting God in my sports section!" he angrily barked.
     Remembering such times, I repented for my part and prayerfully asked the Lord if I could somehow make up for them. To do that, I had to be persecuted out of a great job, humbled, unemployed with all doors closed -- in Austin of all places -- until finally being in position to place that seeming insane classified.
    Just as crazy was how successful those community papers were when honestly NOT editing out Godly references from the news they reported. Weeklies would run a front-page article when a civic club had a speaker at a meeting of a dozen folk and summarize the message. But they wouldn't cover an NFL player or coach speaking to a youth group of 40 kids and parents.
     Repeatedly I found that people were starved for Godly instances in the news. In one town after another, God enabled me to take these papers out of the red while training staffs to be open to God in the news.
     And I just happened to be rescuing a coastal newspaper when nearby Corpus Christi passed an ordinance against porn shops. One Monday morning there suddenly were three previously vacant store fronts in town now selling porn in town.
     I counterattacked not only with front-page articles but page one editorials. And God helped me raise such a ruckus that a state taskforce secretly was created. And in the course of one wonderful operation, officers shopped the stores, purchased items that were obscene and shut all three down, even carting off all the porn before sunset. 
     What a day! Had God not had me there as part of my crazy redemptive saga, well, I wonder.