Learning from Steve 1: How to Love, episode 114

0:00 If you love a prodigal, you can discover help and hope for their wilderness journey right here when you love a prodigal. And also help and hope for your own life journey. On October 29, 2022, my wonderful husband was called home by our Lord. It has been a hard, tearful, but joyful year. I have represented him, received awards for him, written and spoken about him, and visited all of our children and grands at least twice, giving and receiving love and comfort.

0:45 Steve was a wise, godly man. He was intentional in how he lived and walked with God, and loved people, and shared the gospel. I knew him so well, 52 years together, including 5 dating and 47 years married. I am dedicating this month on the podcast to Steve, not to talk about him so much, but to share his life practices that will, I believe, encourage each of us to become more and more like Jesus in every part of our lives, and especially as we relate to our loved prodigals.

1:33 These are things I have written about, Steve, over the years. May they bless you, encourage you, strengthen you, give you wisdom for your own life and for your loved ones. May his actions and attitudes open your eyes to ways you might do things better with your wanderer. Please, when God whispers to you about something that I share, write it down and seek to act on it. The best gift God has given me other than Jesus is this wonderful man.

2:13 So here are some of the things that I have appreciated about him. Again, this is not just to talk about him, but to share the way he lived that might encourage you. He loved God. It is wonderful to partner with a man who loved God above all, even more than he loved me. He would seek, listen, follow, obey our Lord on a moment-by-moment level. I could go on and on. He loved me. He has always loved me well.

2:55 But in recent years, he had increasingly shown what it means to love like Christ loves, to sacrifice for me, to give preference to me. I marvel at his goodness to me, and I could tell you lots of examples. He served me. His favorite way to serve me was to fix my coffee in the morning, bringing it to me and keeping my cup full. But there are so many other ways. He always washed the dishes after meals. He usually beat me to doing the laundry.

3:36 He picked up the house. I am more tolerant of Clutter than he is or was. He did our finances, probably in self-defense. He got the oil changed and my red Mustang convertible, and I could go on in the many ways that he served me. I was so pampered. He believed in me. I do think he thought I could do anything. He had more confidence in me than I did, for sure. I have taken faith risks because he was sure I should and could. He was always saying, you can do that.

4:19 He helped with the kids. He agreed to expenditures, sometimes more than he thought were wise even, came along to pray for my ministry opportunities, and he listened to me—ideas, passions, concerns. I could go on. He encouraged me. As the more emotional one of us, which is an understatement, I sometimes would get down or discouraged or overwhelmed. Always he was there with attention, comfort, perspective, encouragement, or an invitation out to dinner.

5:03 He learned not to try to solve every problem except when I asked for help. He was so good at believing the best and helping me to also believe the best of others. He was so wise, always he encouraged me. He considered me a true partner. We always did our marriage together for our walk with God and our living and loving together in parenting, in ministry. We were partners. We each had our responsibilities, our strengths, our contributions to make.

5:44 We thought, planned, studied the word, prayed, worked as a team. This was a great high-performance team, and I miss it. Oh, yes, he fixed things. The only things I can fix are words and maybe feelings, emotions. But he could fix almost anything. When it breaks, I by knew he repaired. He loved doing it, thinking of creative ways to solve a problem. Ask about lawnmowers. Let me tell you about the iron.

6:26 I don't even remember what was working with the iron, but he fixed it. He also made this little thing like they have it cleaning places. They have a thing where the cord goes up. And it's out of the way and not getting in the way as you iron. And so he fixed one for me. It was kind of humorous, but it helped and it still works. It's been there, I bet, 15 years now. He fixed everything, which I greatly appreciate it. And I'm missing. Oh, the differences. He was steady.

7:06 I'm somewhat volatile. He was contained. I'm pretty emotional. He was always cold and I am always hot. He was thrifty. He was sure I might give all our money away, though. He said no better than I do, but not a great strength for either of us. He liked movies. I liked books. He thought strategically. I thought compassionately. And I could go on with more differences, but they didn't matter because they helped us work together as a team.

7:50 There was such oneness. God is so creative. We had the same passion for the Lord and for our family. We both loved to stay home when we could, but we traveled a great deal. We didn't like wasting time, but we could relax. We loved to be together, but we're okay to be apart because we were a lot. We didn't really like traveling, but would go anywhere to serve the Lord and our staff. Okay, I could go on on that as well, but I won't. Thank you, Lord. I have been so blessed and so grateful.

8:34 Now I know I'm describing a marriage, which is a relationship. And yes, your relationship with your prodigal is different from a marriage, but I'm hoping you picked up that there are some important ways that people relate to each other in a good relationship and that you would try always to be applying those that work for you so that you can learn from my relationship with Steve and the years that we were together, ways to relate better, which we talked about previously with Heather Holloman, to develop loving conversations in order to enhance and improve your relationship with your prodigal.

9:26 I'm praying that learning from what Steve was like will help you to be that way to your prodigal. Now I want to share with you a poem I wrote to Steve when he turned 70 expressing the wonderful ways that he loved. It's brief. Steve, I love how you love. I love how you love people intentionally engaging them, offering to help, believing the best. I love how you love our ministry, leading us humbly, keeping us focused, working tirelessly.

10:09 I love how you love our family, responding to requests, modeling a walk with God, giving priority to each child and grandchild. I love how you love me, desiring to be with me, serving me in so many ways, believing I can do anything. And I love how you love God, seeking him first and always, multiplying your gifts for the kingdom, humbly bowing before him. Happy birthday, my love.

10:50 So that's what I wrote because I just think the way he lived his life and the way especially that he loved everyone, people that didn't even include the neighbors and the people he met on an airplane and the people that he was speaking to and he would stop and say, how did this go, did you think I could have done better in this message and being humble to ask for input from people. And again, I think this models a way that we can walk with God and a way that we can love, that we also connect with our loved prodigal.

11:36 They don't want to connect with us sometimes. They are pushing away, but that partly is because we're so often seeking to correct and we get angry or we're frustrated or we throw up our hands, whatever, I don't care. And he just showed us how to keep loving and to keep loving and to keep loving. And it has been my prayer that I would consistently live and love as Steve did. Of course, he was not perfect, but I'm not going to tell you about those.

12:17 But he pursued God's heart more than anyone else I know. And it's also my prayer that his example will encourage and inspire you to love well as he has demonstrated to love in general, but specifically love that one who often makes it hard to love. And you know, our prodigals can push away and do things almost intentionally to annoy and upset us. And they make it hard for us to love them.

12:58 But God keeps loving us no matter what we do. And Steve kept loving me and he kept loving our children and especially our prodigal even when he was doing all sorts of things. And so I pray that love will flow from you. God's love flowing through you in such a way that it woos your prodigal back to you and to the Lord. God bless you.