Lessons
These are not lessons delivered by an authority. They are stories, questions, failures, and realizations from one man's long relationship with Jesus.
“This happened to me. This is what I learned from it. This is what I have come to see in Jesus.”
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Open any lesson to read the full story, see the connections, and follow the questions it raises.
Follow a thread through the story
These are not boxes to keep a life inside. They are five threads that keep reappearing as I look back.
42 lessons
The first time I remember truly feeling alone, I was around sixteen or seventeen years old — sitting in a parked car with a group of friends, an immense emptiness opening up inside a crowded car.
One of the guys in our circle underwent a radical, overnight transformation. His entire lifestyle completely reversed. Intrigued and quietly desperate, I asked him what had happened.
I was only nineteen years old when I got married. Within three years, we had three children. At the same time, I started a retail waterbed business. My life became deeply divided, fragmented, and stretched to the absolute breaking point.
In a single calendar year, my retail waterbed business collapsed into bankruptcy, my first marriage completely dissolved, and I fell into an affair. Every single pillar collapsed in the same twelve-month stretch.
I landed a job selling television advertising and stayed for ten years. I turned thousands of highway miles into my 'windshield university' — and built a home that was a clean, structured sanctuary for my kids.
I became a grandfather. Looking down into the eyes of those innocent grandchildren, I experienced a depth of unconditional love that shattered my understanding of the Father's heart — and melted the fear-based concept of Hell right out of my theology.
I was sitting in church with my eyes closed when the back wall of the sanctuary completely vanished. Three majestic horses charged toward me. A piercing voice asked one question: 'Who is between Me and you?'
My knees gave out. I burned out on sales. Then artificial intelligence exploded into the world — and at nearly 68 years old, I found myself starting a brand-new business from scratch, running toward purpose instead of away from fear.
My father abandoned our family when I was only four or five. His absence created a phantom limb in my emotional life — a constant longing for masculine validation.
Well-meaning relatives looked at me and said, 'You're the man of the house now.' I was just a boy, entirely clueless about how to anchor myself, let alone carry the emotional survival of an entire family.
I was standing on the front porch when I saw my five-year-old son walking home from kindergarten with his shoulders completely slumped. In one agonizing flash, I realized I was the reason he looked that way.
My house became their clean, structured sanctuary — a place where they could just breathe and be teenagers. I drew an ironclad boundary: no relationship would ever integrate into our family unit.
I consciously poured everything I had into raising them to be exceptionally strong, independent people. And that intention backfired on me. The very strength I gave them is the thing that keeps them from needing me.
Last night, my oldest grandson said the timing of what I sent him was perfect — he was trying to understand his own faith apart from his parents' faith. Sitting alone with tears running down my face, I realized none of it had been wasted.
This morning I had a thought that surprised me. The women I've loved throughout my life have shared something with my mother — a certain insecurity, a way of seeing what was wrong before seeing what was good. I'm beginning to wonder if what felt familiar wasn't always what was healthiest.
Looking down into the eyes of those innocent grandchildren, I experienced a depth of unconditional love that I didn't know the human heart was capable of. It shattered my understanding of the Father's heart.
In that quiet bedroom, as my friend prayed, an event occurred that nearly fifty years of human language still cannot fully capture. I experienced a living, breathing Presence.
'So, are you a Jesus freak now?' I didn't flinch. I looked him dead in the eye and said, 'Yeah.' And I never went back.
The atmosphere inside the car suddenly shifted into something thick and malicious. She lunged for my throat. In that split second of panic, a phrase dropped into my mind from completely outside my own intellect.
For three or four years, we completely bypassed the steeples and met in living rooms — crowded onto couches and floors, someone with an acoustic guitar, spending hours singing directly to Jesus. No elevated platform. Just honest questions.
I was in church with my eyes closed when the back wall vanished. Three majestic horses and their riders charged toward me. A piercing voice asked a single question that changed everything.
The armor you forge as a teenager often becomes the very cage that locks you in as an adult.
To this day, my kids carry the emotional echo and fear of the angry man I was back then. I would spend a lifetime learning to overcome that rage.
I have spent the last ten years living completely alone in absolute silence. It was a decade of profound solitude I didn't know I needed.
Those empty highway miles became my classroom. I recognized echoes of profound spiritual truths in the motivational tapes — principles that harmonized with scripture I had carried since I was seventeen.
In my twenties I was driven by clawing, desperate fear. Today I work twelve hours a day not because I am running away from poverty, but because I am running toward a clear, beautiful purpose.
You cannot mix the wine of a raw, experiential faith with the rigid structures of institutional religion without something tearing.
The church camps we sent my son to were a factory of intense fear and control. They drove into him that he was not worthy, not loved unless he performed perfectly.
Holding my grandchildren, I realized: there is nothing they could do that would make me send them to be tortured for eternity. If I, a broken man, possess that much love — how much greater must the Father's love be?
The church stopped walking far too early. The story doesn't end at the crucifixion. The cross was simply a threshold. When you look beyond it, you don't see an angry judge — you see an unfolding reality of wisdom and overwhelming grace.
A piercing voice asked a single question that changed everything: 'Who is between Me and you?' I looked at the pulpit and the answer hit me like a physical blow.
As a little boy, I watched people — some filled a room with peace, others with fear. I realized everything in life is producing something. If you want to change the harvest, you have to understand the seed.
I spent most of my life seeing it. I just didn't have a name for it. Every system faithfully produces what it was designed to produce. The difficult part is that most of us don't see the system — we only see the results.
Information never changed me. You can know everything about forgiveness and still refuse to forgive. The difference is between filling your mind and slowly transforming your life.
Young Rick asked if I was afraid to ask too many questions. I was terrified. But I discovered something better than certainty — trust. Certainty depends on having all the answers. Trust depends on knowing the One you're walking with.
Young Rick held his Bible and asked why I keep saying God can't be contained in a book. Because that's exactly what this book has been trying to teach me. The Bible was never meant to replace God — it was meant to introduce you to Him.
The better question isn't who the Antichrist is. The better question is: what is God trying to reveal?
For decades, people have searched for a technology — a barcode, a chip, a digital currency. But what if the battle has always been over our attention?
The young man beside me doesn't know who I am. He's seventeen. Restless. Confused. Searching for something he can't put into words. I remember him well. Because he was me.
Young Rick asked what I'd leave my grandchildren. I didn't answer right away — because for most of my life, I would have answered that question differently.
Young Rick told me I don't argue anymore. I told him I finally figured out what my job wasn't. People rarely change because someone tells them they should.
Young Rick finally asked the question that had been waiting since the beginning. I smiled — not because the answer was simple, but because it took a lifetime to discover.
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