I’ve just been diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer. Chemotherapy, Radiation, and Surgery are in store for me over the next six to nine months. It makes you think about things.

I remember a long time ago when I was separated from my first wife, and we were getting spiritual counseling from our Pastors. There were three pastoral couples in the room as well as myself and my ex-wife. The idea was to confess our sins one to another in order to facilitate reconciliation. It didn’t work out so well.

I went first and confessed everything I could think of from the time of my birth to the present date at that time. I confessed the sins of puberty, the sins of pornography, the sins of pride and every other thing I could think of. I was a Pastor of a small church and was having problems there as well. No one prepared me for the politics of the local church, and I was particularly bad at politics.

It took me three hours to confess everything. My ex-wife took five minutes. We were done. No reconciliation. She never came back to another session. She simply disappeared that week back to Argentina which is where she was originally from. She took the kids. I found out from my brother that she had left unannounced, illegally, and permanently (and with his help).

Apparently, she could not live with someone like me even though we had ten years or more of married life and two kids. She preferred to be on her own. I could have called Interpol and had my kids brought back but who would separate their kids from their own mother. Not me.

Instead, I moved to Buenos Aires myself without a penny to my name. I was no longer a Pastor and could only teach English in a foreign country. When I got here, we ended up before a judge to get divorced and decide on custody rights. She got full custody by simply citing all of the things that I had confessed to and throwing in the possibility of sexual abuse toward my children. The judge had to investigate that accusation by law but both he and the social worker dismissed it quite quickly. They understood that she had to make me into a monster in order to justify bringing the kids to Argentina illegally. Thank God for small miracles.

We were in her small town in the interior of the country. The judge was an acquaintance from her childhood. I didn’t speak the language. But I had no fight left in me anymore anyway. I believed in the power of confession, and it had destroyed my life.

Not that I wasn’t guilty of many things. Not the adultery that she claimed but lots of other things. As far as career choices were concerned, I had the opportunity to get my PhD in Old Testament Theology with the potential of becoming a professor. I turned it down because I wanted to get out of the ivory tower and get my hands dirty in real transformation and ministry. At least that is what I told myself.

It went well for a while. Our small church was growing quickly. There were adult baptisms, the first our church had ever seen, new people were showing up and I assumed that they would be welcomed. Apparently, I wasn’t aware that there was a clash of cultures going on and that the leadership considered me a “newbie” pastor who needed to be trained on how things really worked in the church.

Not that it was entirely their fault. I handled it badly. I don´t have a lot of emotional intelligence when it comes to working with people in conflict situations. I tend to preach and expect spirituality where there is none (or less than I expected). I thought the church was like my Bible School and Seminary where everyone was dedicated to spreading the gospel.

I was wrong.

It didn’t matter that I had been at the top of my class in Seminary. I made the decision not to be a professor. I made the decision to leave the pastorate. I made the decision to move to Argentina and become an English Teacher. It all took about three or four years to destroy everything.

And here I sit at my computer thirty years or so later, knowing my days are numbered and wondering what I have to offer my Lord for all his investment in me. I’m not talking about salvation. That is only and always based on the work of Christ on the cross. I know that. But still, there is work to be done. And what have I done that was of any use to anyone?

I’ve written several books that have not been published. I have a blog that practically no one reads anymore. I write about anointing but have none myself. I write about the priority of the Way of the Cross but find confession terrifying, and repentance bloody difficult. I’m not particularly good at prayer. I get myself into situations in the church that I can’t get myself out of.

After I left the pastorate, I worked in Commercial Real Estate with one of my parishioners. We borrowed millions of dollars from many individuals and lost it all. I have never been able to pay it back. One of my brothers, who knows what happened, still blames me. He was instrumental in helping my ex-wife leave the country illegally. We have never spoken since much less reconciled.

And that wasn’t the only time.

I tried raising money on my own a few years later when we were back in Canada for five years or so. I raised eight and a half million dollars for alternative energy projects, but they failed and then the crash of 2008 happened. I was living back in Argentina by that time, and I simply went home. Many of my investors were friends of mine, pastors, Christians, and people who couldn’t afford to lose their investment. They have never been paid back.

Even in Argentina, I was trying to raise money for various projects so that I could afford to publish my books and move back to the States or Canada. Sixty thousand dollars later, I am still nowhere, and people are mad at me. I have left broken relationships in my wake wherever I go either because of money or because of my difficult personality and style.

I had some opportunities to preach here in our International Church, but it just got me into trouble. My wife and I ran the Alpha Program one year and loved it, but the church was not ready to deal with the kind of people that came. We ended up with Alberto and his daughter, Antonella, living in our house, together with Rafa, for many months during the Covid 19 crisis. It was an adventure, to say the least. These people were off the streets and Alberto claimed, with a fair bit of evidence, to have worked as a hitman for the government early on in his career.

I only found out recently that what I thought was ministry was, in fact, traumatic for our teenage daughter who is still in therapy over it. I was simply blind to the things that mattered most.

That’s not to say that there weren’t moments of laughter and joy and ministry. There was but nothing seemed to come from any of it other than rejection in the church and isolation in our home. For years we spent our Sunday mornings together watching YouTube Worship videos and either reading my posts or listening to Pastor John Piper preach on TV. Not a spiritually healthy environment to say the least. In the meantime, I write what I can and make some extra money as an English Teacher, and try my hand at different aspects of Internet Marketing. My kids think that it´s a waste of time, and they may be right. But I don’t know what else to do.

For some reason, the Lord seems to want to give me interesting insights to write about, especially when I am listening to worship music. And so, I write. I can envision entire movies in my head and have outlined a few ideas. I have ambitions about starting a podcast and making YouTube videos. I have lots of material and lots of ideas. But is it ministry? Not really. It doesn’t go anywhere. It sits on my computer in a file and there is no money for editing and no audience to buy or even give away the books. I have some nice websites where people can go and read practically everything for free. But even that isn’t working.

Earlier my wife caught me crying while watching some worship videos and wondered what was going on. I suppose I am a bit sensitive to the fact that I have so many regrets in my life that remain unresolved. There is so little that I have actually accomplished for the Kingdom of God. There are so many unresolved relationships that I don’t even know how to get started with reconciliation. There is so much money to pay back before people will even listen. In the meanwhile, I have brought disgrace on the name of the Lord.

Yes, I know that I still have some time, perhaps years, before I am called home but today, I feel like I have nothing to show for all the years I have spent aimlessly trying one thing or another to find my way back to effective ministry.

And there is a lot more that could be said but what’s the point. This post is depressing as it is. Confession is dirty business. It may be necessary at times and repentance should follow but sometimes the mess is just so big that you remain broken at the foot of the cross with nothing to show for your life. That’s where I find myself today.

I still believe in confession, but pride and arrogance are strong adversaries and cannot be ignored. The only thing that I can tell you is that when you are broken before the Lord not just in terms of salvation but also in terms of sanctification and ministry, there is only one truth that you can hold on to. It is only God who can make something worthy of a life that has been wasted with bad decisions and broken relationships.

Perhaps somewhere someone heard or saw something that God was doing in my life and was inspired to draw closer to Him. Perhaps some hidden ministry was accomplished that I know nothing about. Perhaps someone, even just one person, will find my websites and read something there that will make a difference. I don’t know. Only God does.

So, I confess that without Him my life is worthless, and I am so sorry that I have not made the right decisions or done the right things to have made a real difference in the lives of those that I love the most much less the rest of the church and the unsaved. Perhaps that is a good place to be. I’m not sure.

I certainly don’t want to be the servant who comes to the Lord with nothing to show for his efforts. For now, I pray for healing and work towards healing by taking care of myself the best I can. And I pray for reconciliation and work towards reconciliation (as you will read about in the next few posts). Not that I’m very good at either one but there you go.

Confession is dirty business in the mud and blood and disgrace at the foot of the cross but, then again, that is where anything worthwhile starts.

The rest I will have to leave up to God.

The Desert Weakling