Time and time again in my Christian life, I call to mind people who have shaped my life. In Philippians, Paul does this in chapter 4. "When I needed help, you Philippians sent gifts to me and kept me on my feet." Many of us would go under if it weren't for the encouragement of others. My daughter drove down from Richmond and met me in Farmville today for lunch and then for a walk over the High Bridge. We had a great time just being us. What an encouragement to me! There were three or four men in college and seminary who were that to me in my spiritual pilgrimage. When I graduated it was a thrill for me to be able to say to them, "Thank you for believing in me when I didn't believe in myself. Thank you for having the vision I didn't have. Thank you for supporting me when I needed it." One of them was my Christian Education professor at Biola. His name was Bill Bynum. It was my first semester of teaching Greek, and I thought it might be good to take some CE courses since I was so new to my career. Dr. Bynum's "College Teaching Procedures" course fit the bill perfectly. I thought so much of him as a professor and as a mentor I would have done anything for him. When he handed back our term papers at the end of the semester, he had written a simple but (for me) life-changing note on the last page of my paper. It read, simply, "Thank you for pouring yourself into this course. I'll take a dozen just like you." Today I write little notes like that on my students' papers. Where did I learn that from? From men like Dr. Bynum and Dr. Mitchell and Dr. Kurtanek and Dr. Kwast and Dr. Payne. They all said to me, in essence, "Hang in there, Dave. It's worth it. Go for the broke. Don't quit. Don't stop."
Let's don't stop doing that, okay?