When I was seventeen, my first child was born, Stephen. He lived for two days.
Two days—barely enough time to understand love,
but long enough to understand loss. “He is not going to make it.” “His lungs are not developed.” “It might be time to turn off the machine……but it’s your decision.”
Everything around me felt blurred, the world was suddenly condensed and it was pressing in on me, crushing my heart and spirit. “Do you want to hold him.” Inexplicably, and something that would torture me for many years……”No.” I did not want to hold my own dying heart, how utterly selfish.
On the day of the funeral, I sat in the back of the hearse,
a small white coffin resting on my knees.
It felt too light. Too still. Maybe just an empty box….. like my heart.
I was there but I was distant in my mind, none of it seemed real.
He was to be laid in the place reserved for stillborn children,
though he hadn’t been stillborn.
He had lived. He had tried, he had tried hard.
The driver took a corner faster than he meant to,
and the tiny body shifted inside the box.I could “feel,” him move.
That was the moment all the walls I had built
collapsed in a single breath.
I knew what was in the box.
The truth I had been keeping at arm’s length
pressed itself into me with a weight I simply could not carry.
For a long time I carried anger for that driver—
that unnamed man who broke the silence for me
before I was ready.
There are things we bury deep,
not because they are gone,
but because we cannot look at them, cannot handle the weight of it, but is still caries the same weight whether we look at it or not.
Years passed.
I came to the Lord.
Life moved on in the way life does—
slowly, quietly, with its own kind of insistence.
And then one ordinary day,
standing under the warm water of the shower,
the deep finally broke open.
Grief rose from the hidden places
like something long trapped beneath ice—
cold, vast, unstoppable.
My legs buckled.
I held the walls with both hands.
A lifetime was passing through me in moments, years
were flooding out of me, threatening to sweep me away.
My wife heard me and thought I was breaking apart.
Maybe I was.
But when it was over, I could breathe again.
The bitter waters that had filled that sealed chamber
were gone, emptied out.
In its place came something pure, living waters
from a pure crystal stream, unmistakably from Him.
The Lord leaves no room untouched.
Every locked door is His.
Every deep place is His.
He moves like a glacier—nothing stands in its way
slow, sure, reshaping everything in His path
until what was buried
finally meets the light. No chamber left untouched.
If you are carrying within you something hidden—
something buried away, unnamed, unknown to the world
know this brother, sister
it will not stay buried forever.
He will touch it.
He will open it.
And when He does,
what comes will be healing.
Unmistakable.
Beautiful in its own way.
Stephen, you are not forgotten…..but your father is forgiven.
Last year, in the midst of chemo, my house became unbearable. Nausea was a problem I never overcame for the several months of treatment and every smell made my stomach turn. I just had to be outside so I would take refuge on our deck—a south-facing suntrap where the fresh air seemed like heaven itself. Out there I could breathe again. Out there the warmth, the breeze, and the open sky were gifts. The Spirit of God would literally rest upon me. This was a place for me where sky and earth seemed to become one.
I told a friend I felt as though I were taking a Masterclass in Grace. Because the Spirit of God would rest on me out there, even as nausea raged through my body. I forced myself to walk a block each day, slow, steady, determined, and then I’d return to my lounger on the deck. Between me and the heavens were trees full of birds I had never noticed before. Dozens of tiny frenetic little guys. Great joy filled me as I watched their antics. How could I have not noticed these wee fellas before A thousand songs in the branches.
I was strangely alive.
I sat there for hours, looking up.
That was the lesson He pressed into me:
Lift up your eyes, Frank and see where your help comes from.
Even while chemo ravaged my body, grace flooded my spirit.
Behind my house is a field owned by a church. I have always loved that openness, the privacy, the flow of wildlife, the quiet beauty of it. During that season, I watched a BBC documentary on rewilding, taking a low-yield field, restoring native plants, planting indigenous trees, letting the land become what it was meant to be again. The transformation was stunning. Butterflies returned. Birds returned. Life returned.
Somehow I felt like that rewilded field. Early stages for sure. There are no fences in the fields God restores. He works in wide open spaces. There are no straight edges in nature, nothing to tell you where the old man-made boundaries once stood.
No manicured edges to remind you of the places trimmed by the hands of men. Only the quiet rise of something wild and free beginning to grow again.
That show stirred something deep in me. In the flush of my enthusiasm
I contacted the church.
“How about you rewild your field,” I suggested, with great enthusiasm. “It would save you lots of money, you would not have to mow it.” And “you would be helping the environment.” I was hoping to appeal to something, anything. He explained to me that the city wont let them grow the grass over a certain height.
I called the city, found grants, stirred possibilities, sent the information to the church…….and then, life and treatment and circumstances pulled the thread from my fingers, and the idea slipped away into the quiet. Like many great stirrings, it got swallowed up by circumstances that press in and with great tyranny, demand your attention.
A year and a half later, just last week, I walked through my back gate which leads to the field, which leads to a familiar path, the trail where so many prayers have risen like incense. Many of you have seen the prayer videos and the pictures I have taken along my narrow path. But this day I saw poles driven across the field, a line, a boundary, dividing the ground in half. Close to my house. Too close.
I told my wife, “Something is being built in the field”
We were dismayed at the thought of construction in our peaceful oasis in the back. Some parking lot perhaps that would be illuminated at night like a stadium?
Then the neighbor,the keeper of all neighborhood knowledge, you know the one (the guy who would complain to the church if they did not cut their grass in time) told me what was going on:
They are rewilding the field!!!
The aeration, the markings, the disturbance, it was preparation for wildflowers.
Boy Scouts were involved. A grant had been given.
The city approved the letting-go of their height rules..
Our field will very soon rise up and bloom.
Then I realized that the enthusiasm for my field, in the midst of my chemo with the Spirit of the Lord resting on me was Spirit breathed. And what He breathes upon springs to life……in it’s time.
I had forgotten, but the Lord had not.
A thought born in weakness, planted in sickness, had been carried by God until its season came.
Wildflowers were coming to my back door.
God had not forgotten.
A memory from early in my walk with the Lord returned to me.
I once lived near manicured neighborhoods, gardens shaped by tape-measures and string lines, flowers placed with military precision. Beautiful, yes… but controlled, tamed, measured. As I walked that neighborhood and surveyed these impressive gardens in these huge houses, the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear “look the other way.”
Across the street was a culvert beside an open field, and around that culvert grew thousands of wildflowers, flung by the wind, seeded by the unseen hand of God. No symmetry. No order. Only life, and that more abundantly.
And the Lord said to me then:
“Look, Frank. This is what I want for you.”
Not the regimented garden of man’s expectations, his denominatons, his preconceived notions…….
but the freedom of a wildflower field—
growing where His wind carries me,
rooted where His hand plants me.
Now, all these years later, and after chemo last year, after grace under the open sky, after the birds and the sunlight and the prayers in the field……it comes full circle.
The field behind my house is becoming what God once whispered into the soil of my soul.
A place of wildflowers.
A place of return.
A place of restoration.
And I know now:
I have been rewilded.
This is where I am.
Not in the place of always striving for perfection…
Not in the place of certainty.
But in the tender, trembling ground of becoming.
I am standing in the field between who I was
and who He is forming me to be.
The soil is soft.
My soul, undone.
My life, waiting like a seed beneath the surface —
buried, broken, but not forgotten.
In order to restore God has to reclaim. He has to undo the work of man. He has to carefully remove all of their marks and then the allows the ground to lie fallow. And then the wind begins to blow and the seed fall upon the prepared ground, good ground, ready to receive.
And when God restores, beauty returns.
Color returns.
Freeness returns.
The wildness of grace returns.
The butterflies come home.
Life begins to inhabit the field again.
When the Lord returns us to our true beginning…….
the place He dreamed for us before we were shaped by the world…..
something magnificent unfolds.
The complexity of life falls away.
The garden grows without our striving.
For in a rewilded field, the hand of man is no longer the gardener.
The Lord Himself tends the soul.
He sends the rain.
He calls forth the flowers.
He arranges the seasons.
He brings beauty from earth we thought was barren.
And now I can see it. He has been rewilding me all along. Slowly, surely, and my unawareness of it, up till now, only makes it all the more the Masters work.
He has taken the field of my life,
cut square by the expectations of organized religion,
shaped by the hands of others,
emptied by suffering,
and He is restoring it
to the original design He designed for me
before I ever took a breath. Now the calling is to us all, come off that road and walk through the gate into the open field that leads to the high mountain passes and wildflower alpine meadows. He is restoring His Church, He is rewilding it.
And what He does is marvelous.
What He does is holy.
What He does is beautiful to behold.
I am being rewilded — and the work of His hands is wonderful to behold.
What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to exercise faith? And what does it truly mean to trust in the Lord? The words faith and trust are often used interchangeably, yet Scripture distinguishes their shades of meaning. The Greek word for faith, πίστις (pistis), carries the sense of conviction, fidelity, and steadfast belief , a firm persuasion of the truth and character of God. It is not vague optimism but anchored certainty rooted in who He is. The Greek term for trust, πεποίθησις (pepoithēsis), flows from pistis and means confident reliance, settled assurance, and inward persuasion. It is faith extended through endurance, faith that has matured under testing. Thus, pistis believes what God has spoken, and pepoithēsis continues to rest in that promise when sight fails and the storm gathers. Both are born of the same root: confidence in the unchanging nature of God. This is the foundation upon which all true preparedness stands, the faith that acts and the trust that endures.
Faith, then, is the spiritual substance of what is unseen, the invisible made certain in the heart of the believer. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). It is not mere belief that God exists, but confidence in His goodness, His promises, and His Word. Faith does not rest upon sight or circumstance; it rests upon the immutable character of God. It looks into the unseen and says, “Thou art faithful.” It is the anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, which enters within the veil where Christ Himself has gone before (Hebrews 6:19–20). Pistis is not a feeling to be maintained but a conviction to be lived by, it sees the eternal in the midst of the temporal and moves the heart to obedience.
To exercise faith is to act upon that conviction. Faith untested remains theory; exercised faith becomes testimony. The one who believes that winter is near cuts his firewood before the frost. His pistis (faith) moves his hands; his belief produces action. But the frail widow, who has no strength to lift the axe, exercises faith in another form. She cannot labor, but she trusts , her pepoithēsis (trust) clings to God’s faithfulness, believing He will make provision where she cannot. In both, faith lives and breathes. The strong man acts upon what he believes; the widow rests upon what she cannot see. Faith is not idleness. It is obedience moving in harmony with the will of God , for “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17). Yet these works are not self-reliant striving; they are the fruit of divine persuasion , the evidence that pistis (faith) is alive within the heart.
To trust in the Lord , to walk in pepoithēsis (trust) , is to place one’s full confidence in His sovereign care when reason falters and outcomes remain hidden. “Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6). Trust is faith stretched through time; it is the steady endurance of the soul that refuses to doubt the character of God though all outward things collapse. Job, sitting among the ashes, spoke this divine paradox: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15). That is trust refined in the fire , pepoithēsis (trust) at its highest expression. Faith says, “God can.” Trust declares, “God will.” Love adds, “Even if He does not, He is still my God.”
What, then, is our part in this divine partnership? Scripture tells us to “put on the whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:11), to take up the shield of faith, to gird our loins with truth, and to shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. These are commands of readiness. The armor is given by grace, but it must be worn by choice. The believer must take up what God has provided. Preparation is not unbelief — it is the living demonstration of faith’s reality. The man who sharpens his sword before battle is not denying God’s help; he is aligning himself with it. Our pistis (faith) equips us; our pepoithēsis (trust) steadies us. The one is the conviction that moves; the other is the confidence that endures.
And did not our Lord Himself prepare? The supreme pattern of readiness is found in Gethsemane. Beneath the olive trees, Christ waged the invisible war before the visible cross. “And being in agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). The disciples slept, but the Captain of our salvation fought alone. The struggle was not with men but within His own humanity , the surrender of His human will to the divine. And when the moment came — “Not my will, but Thine be done” , the victory was secured. From that garden He rose, His face set like flint (Isaiah 50:7), and for the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2). The battle of Calvary was the outworking of the triumph of Gethsemane. Pistis (faith) led Him into prayer; pepoithēsis (trust) carried Him through obedience.
What, then, does it mean for us to be prepared? It means to cultivate a heart steadfast in pistis (faith) and anchored in pepoithēsis(trust). The prepared soul is not caught unaware when the storm descends. It has stored the Word in its heart, for the Word is the sword of the Spirit (Ephesians 6:17). It has guarded its thoughts with the helmet of salvation and girded its life with truth (Ephesians 6:14). It prays without ceasing, for prayer is the breath of faith (1 Thessalonians 5:17). It stands ready with the gospel of peace, for readiness itself is part of the armor. Such a soul walks neither in fear nor presumption, but in quiet confidence. The unprepared are like those who wait for winter with no firewood; but those who live by faith have already kindled the flame within their hearts.
The battle, as the Lord showed us, is won not first in the field but in the heart’s preparation. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:1). Victory begins in surrender. When a believer bows in the secret place and whispers, “Not my will, but Thine be done,” the triumph is already assured. From that hidden Gethsemane he rises clothed in divine strength, able to endure the cross set before him, whatever form it takes. Faith has believed; trust has endured; preparation has secured the victory.
To have faith is to believe. To exercise faith is to act. To trust is to endure. To prepare is to triumph before the battle begins. And when the soul, through pistis (faith) and pepoithēsis( trust), comes to that holy place of surrender, it finds, as Christ did, that peace flows where agony once reigned. For the Lord who prepared Himself in Gethsemane now prepares His saints likewise , that they may stand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Ephesians 6:13). Praise be to the Lord, for the battle is His , yet He trains our hands for war and girds us with strength for the fight (Psalm 18:34, 39).
Scripture Appendix
I. Πίστις (Pistis) — Faith, Conviction, Persuasion
Hebrews 11:1 – Faith as substance and evidence of the unseen.
Romans 1:17 – ‘The just shall live by faith.’
Ephesians 2:8 – Faith as the gift of God in salvation.
Romans 10:17 – Faith comes by hearing the Word of God.
Galatians 2:20 – Living by the faith of the Son of God.
James 2:17 – Faith without works is dead.
Hebrews 11:6 – Without faith it is impossible to please God.
2 Timothy 4:7 – ‘I have kept the faith.’
II. Πεποίθησις (Pepoithēsis) — Trust, Confidence, Assurance
2 Corinthians 3:4 – ‘Such trust have we through Christ to Godward.’
Philippians 1:6 – Being confident that He who began a good work will perform it.
Philippians 3:3–4 – Having no confidence in the flesh.
Hebrews 3:14 – Holding the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.
2 Corinthians 1:9–10 – Trusting in God who raises the dead.
Ephesians 3:12 – Boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.
Faith (pistis) is the seed; trust (pepoithēsis) is its fruit. One believes God’s word; the other continues in that belief when all else fails. Together, they form the unshakable posture of the prepared soul , believing, enduring, and standing firm until the end.
A Call To The Remnant 