"Andrew, That Will Be You"
Rock of Remembrance.
In September 2007 I found myself trying to obey God at real emotional cost. An otherwise great romantic relationship needed ending. Though it wasn’t an easy break, it was clear that keeping us both in limbo any longer wasn’t healthy. So we parted ways, wishing each other well despite the sadness.
As for the future I was moving toward now, my head knew God, being God, could bring His woman for me to Uganda from anywhere in the world. My heart, however, wasn’t feeling so sure. Possible permanent bachelorhood in the likely romantic desert of Africa, didn’t exactly fill me with cheerful expectation.
About a week before we broke things off I’d been leaving my parent’s house when I spotted a familiar book on their hallway table. Hadn’t seen it for at least two decades. Mum had found this paperback and left it out for me to collect.
Originally a Christmas present when I was thirteen and about to start high school. A thoroughly disappointing gift. Not because I didn’t love books, I did, but because it was Mum’s way of warning me not to wreck my life by becoming a foolish teenager who gave into peer pressure and “took drugs”. I remember being offended she didn’t really know me or understood my heart at all. I’d read the blurb on the back and never opened the cover even once. Stubborn little twerp :)
Now, twenty-seven years later, I thought I might as well give it a go. The book was Where Flies Don’t Land by Jerry Graham.
Over the following week I’d been reading his story and really felt for the bloke. I hadn’t walked in his shoes, but I had managed to fill my own with more than enough heartbreak. God had done a serious work on his heart, bringing him out of addiction and ruin, including fifteen years in prison, into repentance and new life in Christ.
Later the same day of canning the relationship I was feeling a tad blue. Grieving what we might have had and trying to steel myself for whatever this obedience to God might mean for my future.
So I picked up Jerry’s story again and moved to the sunny outside deck as a temporary escape from my own troubles. Half an hour later I found myself walking back inside for some shade still reading.
Then came the bit that caught me square on the chin: after all that mess, at age forty, he found himself loved by a beautiful godly young woman half his age. Jerry struggled with understanding it because he felt so undeserving. They married. God gave them a son. The God of too much.
That was exactly when my Heavenly Father spoke into my spirit.
Not audibly.
But clearly heard in my heart.
“Andrew, that will be you.”
I knew it was Him.
Almost immediately, unbelief barged in. It wanted to shut the whole thing down before hope could rise too far. Better to protect myself from disappointment than dare believe something that lovely was possible. Maybe, I thought, it was just me and my wishful thinking. After all, I too was now a forty-year-old man with a failed past. The parallels were obvious enough for my imagination to grab hold of them.
Suddenly an insane desperation for the written Word of God hit hard. I scanned the lounge for my Bible thinking I’d read Proverbs 20. I had no set reading plan going on, but it was the 20th of the month so that would do. As my fingers flipped for Proverbs I heard that same clear voice in my spirit:
“No. Read Psalm 20 instead.”
So I did.
There the Lord seemed to be saying He would grant me the desires of my heart, hear my prayers, and look with favour on the sacrifices I was making.
That was meaningful.
I thanked God for the hope He was giving me despite feeling confused by the concept of a relationship with a woman half my age.
And then, over the following few months, I proceeded to show Him how flimsy my faith still was.
When no such woman made an appearance I grew impatient and became involved with another good woman I met through getting back on a Christian dating app. An American in her early forties. Intellectually and spiritually, a lot seemed to fit. She had mission experience in Africa and a desire for more! When she flew over to visit me a few months later she got on beautifully with the people most important to me.
By every sensible logical measure the thing looked promising. But every time I seriously considered committing to her in any way beyond friendship, it felt like pushing against a brick wall. I didn’t journal back then and had completely forgotten the message from my Lord about His match for me. I kept trying to make it work for too long and ended up hurting her by doing exactly that.
By the time I left for Uganda, a year after God’s word to me, I’d well and truly fumbled the ball. With time and space, I’d eventually had to admit my heart was not in it. I knew that and pulled the plug upon my arrival in Uganda. A week before I met Eden.
Meeting her only confirmed the de-plugging but because I had not trusted God to act on His word in His timing, and because I was not yet wise enough to keep a journal of such things — I still had zero recollection of the word He’d given me a year ahead in time.
He hadn’t.
That is one of my Rocks of Remembrance now.
God gave me a word of hope when obedience felt costly and the future looked thin. I heard Him. I was comforted. And then, in classic human style, I muddled about in unbelief and impatience anyway.
Yet He didn’t forget what He had said just because I lost my grip on it.
That has humbled me more than once.
The point of this story is not that I believed brilliantly.
It’s that God remembered His word even when I failed to.
That means more to me than ever now. Later came Eden, marriage, children. Stuff of my dreams.
What still steadies me is what came first: God speaking hope into a man trying to obey Him while quietly fearing obedience might cost him the deepest desires of his heart.
He was kinder than I knew. Or could imagine.
He still is.