God – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

May 15, 2025May 15, 2025

Interior Design

“Jerry, when are you going to stop apologizing for who you are not?”

My periodic coffee meetups with Dave had tooled along for a couple years’ when he delivered the gut-punch question. Straightforward as he was, I had not met with such terse language from my esteemed life coach friend. Now moving into my seventh decade of life on Planet Earth, the months going forward would witness to the truth that Dave’s provocative challenge came at a good moment.

Like many people afflicted with the self-questionings common to classic naval gazers, I had grown fairly adept at masking my personal insecurities. Being a person with something of a quick wit, I could without realizing it employ a periodic splash of comedic humor, which could in turn detract from my inbuilt fear of failure. Lighthearted levity, I would afterward see, can serve as a handy denial mechanism.

A curiosity stirred inside me about the Panera Bread friend seated across our table. What was it about Dave that got himself out of bed each morning? What fueled his relentless desire to help men – a lot of men by now – to move into life’s slow lane and think reflectively? Many of us gents, I came to realize could gain a thing or two from doses of down-to-earth wisdom.

Among the special toolbox instruments wielded by this retired airline industry professional was the tool of helping me uncover a short list of fundamental things that make me tick. For a good while I had carried an unspoken yearning to understand what it was that had been making me get out of bed each morning!

Your One Degree, states the website blurb, is a personalized, coach driven program helping you discover and implement your unique God-given Design.*

Dave’s question that day over coffee blew open a window, making way for a breeze of revelation to waft in. I had been much aware in a general sense that I, like all image-bearers, had been created on purpose, yes by design. These sessions with Dave Jewitt and the thing he had dubbed “Your One Degree” had been wakening a truth in me. I am invited to quite intentionally cooperate with the Divine in unleashing (even at this senior age) still further elements of life-giving juices. All this in the company of and under the administration of the Spirit. God’s truth-anchored Spirit.

I am now pretty much done apologizing for the person I am not.

Gems of life-shifting perspectives can emerge in varying kinds of settings. It seems that – amidst them at least – God carries a fondness for coffee shops.

May 8, 2025May 7, 2025

Promising Prospect

Those surprise happenings that all of a sudden spring up in our lives. Such a moment came when Ann and I learned that our nephew Todd and his wife Karena were selected as backup singers for Andy Williams in his popular Branson show.

As special as this was, we grew happier still when word came of the debut of a blockbuster theatrical production in the same family-friendly entertainment center. Branson, Missouri nestles along the shores of Table Rock Lake in the glorious Ozark Mountains

Learning that Todd and Karena would be portraying a range of varying characters in scenes of The Promise – a robust contemporary musical depicting Jesus’ life – we reached out to some T.U. students for a special kind of road trip.

During one of these excursions as our van negotiated the scenic landscapes of Ozark Country, a young man – a father-to-be – broached the subjects of conscience and of faith. Mr. Ming displayed an intensity of emotion.

The child had been conceived at an inconvenient time. Their discussions over the unplanned pregnancy found the couple grappling over the pros and cons of a probable impending “procedure”.

Later on, after taking in The Promise production – a beautifully choreographed musical – and afterwards enjoying a nice chat with my “celebrity” nephew and niece, our group boarded the van for our return to Tulsa. Along the highway route, the earlier conversation resumed.

Mr. Ming, leaned forward from his place behind the driver’s seat, volleying question after question on the value and possible dignity of life. We spoke of the precious worth of each created person. Our back-and-forth dialogue ignited still more questions. Scripture was brought into play.

Through the days that followed Mr and Mrs. Ming and their unsettled minds were privately presented to heaven by believing friends.

Weeks passed. Months rolled by. Weighing their options in view of a freshly illumined conscience the couple made their call. And, when into the family circle the new little one entered the young parents pressed forward with deeper assurance than ever into their own infancy pilgrimage. Trust in God – author and guardian of life – was their new North Star.

January 16, 2025January 15, 2025

Elusive Dawning

When young high school graduates – North American or otherwise – set off to distant places for college life abroad, they are not always met with rosy experiences.

While many students mark their overseas academic ventures as satisfying and rewarding, a good number endure unexpected heartbreak. Some facing immense loss along the way.

A Southeast Asia couple loses their precious pre-born in the final month of a full-term pregnancy. Immeasurable sorrow.

A female student is harassed and threatened by a student of her own ethnicity. The threat is forestalled only by the intervention of a sympathetic campus minister and the academy’s threat of expulsion.

In February, 2024 eleven missionary students of diverse nationalities die when a truck with faulty brakes crashes into their vehicle at high speed. Such times call for something beyond human sympathy. In periods of darkness even Scripture can seem to ring hallow.

“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.”*

Shortly after arriving as new students on one campus Joyce and Henry met each other. They were soon recognized as a romantic “item”. During their free times in the coming months the two seemed inseparable.

Horror struck during a criminal car-jacking attempt.

The assailant, in a rush to flee police officers pursuing him, accosted the students as they waited in their car at an intersection for a traffic light change. In the chaos that followed the armed man fired a shot, critically wounding young Henry, then ran from the scene. He himself did not survive an officer’s gunfire moments later.

In the aftermath of the terrible end to a couple’s intended happy outing, a bittersweet saga – long and arduous – began. Whatever possible ray of light may somehow lie ahead, offering any glimmer of hope, seemed elusive at best.

August 22, 2024August 21, 2024

Street Beat

One of the most astonishing episodes of my life happened in 1995, stemming from a phone call from New York’s Lake Ontario region.

“Hi there Jerry, this is David Spencer. Would you like to go to China?”

David’s grandfather had long ago pioneered the mission agency through which we had served in Africa through our younger years. David was in pursuit of friends to pull together a low-profile short-term prayer team.

From the early 1970s a phenomenon (tagged later on as ‘Prayer Walking’) had been evolving, expanding its reach year after year. No single group or organization or church had a corner on this partnering-with=God practice. Prayer-walkers – hundreds, then later on thousands of small bands of intercessors donning all manner of footwear – had been taking to the streets all across broad sectors of the globe. Missiologists, evangelists and church planters took note, sensing that a burgeoning prayer movement was clearly afoot. The work of a sovereign, compassionate, pursuing God.

By the 1990s bands of such purposeful intercessors (Jesus-followers directing their praying outward toward the needs of others) had lined up at airline ticket counters. It was as though the world’s nations, many of them hosts to entire people groups still uninformed of the existence of Jesus, had seized the hearts of these travelling travailers.

Our prayer-journeying team (of Canadian and American heritage) numbered twenty and rangwd in age from 19 years to 81.

From our Hong Kong Port of Entry where orientation sessions were taken in through the fog of jet lag, we navigated thousands of miles by train, plane and automobile, by country bus and the occasional rickshaw. Add to this the mile on mile prayer-walking stints along strategic venues of five ‘gateway cities’, the occupants of one such urban center numbering sixteen million strong. Indeed, no town whose sidewalks welcomed the touch of our collective shoe leather boasted populations of less than three million.

An eye-opening, soul-stirring adventure of a lifetime.

Soon, I would take in a piece of news from a Pennsylvania farming community set to catapult my mind to jaw-dropping wonder. Leaving me happily puzzling in the general direction of the heavens,

What manner of God are you?

August 1, 2024

Recovery Road

Week after week our men’s step group gathered.

One by one, unhealthy elements of our lives found their way to the light. These elements (whether imposed by others or self-inflicted) defined the things that could now get brought openly before the Lord and one another.

As with the peeling away of onion skins, our interior selves gradually emerged. Confession – issuing from a humility of heart that only God can bestow – buoyed our confidence in his trustworthiness.

Because of his astounding love for broken persons caught up in vices of sexual impurity (scripture’s listings are long and precise), Christ calls his sons and daughters to identify and renounce our self-justifying games. I was summoned by the Spirit’s drawing to call a spade a spade. Enough with avoidance! As put forward in the lyrics of the old spiritual, “It’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer”.

Owning and confessing my personal moral wrongs was, I knew, necessary for turning toward and gaining freedom. Victory was in reach, but only through the strength of God’s promised Spirit and Word. This I had come to know. I longed for freedom as much as anything I could long for.

Frankly, I found it easier earlier on to open up about the bad things that had been done to me, than to come clean about my own repeated cycles of willful sinning. The process toward freedom was marked by the proverbial rhythm: “Two steps forward, one step back”. Factored in, was a continued revisiting of our compassionate God, calling out to him in fervent appeal. He did not disappoint. Not ever.

Of the various recovery communities spread across the North American landscape, the Step programs that seem to bear the more promising fruit are those calling for vulnerable, courageous action.

While (mercifully) my particular brokenness had not translated into outright infidelity (though heart iniquity was another matter), there was no side-stepping the element of straight-up confession. Not only before God and my brothers, but in contrition to my dearest and nearest family members – not the least, the precious wife of my youth. The distracting nature of a divided mind had far too many times deprived my family of a focused attentiveness.

STEP 8: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.*

May 9, 2024

Poised

Mr. Tang’s baptism was warmly celebrated at our Thirty-fourth and Garnett Rd Church. Pastor Steve Morgan administering the sacred rite. The sacrament affirmed, as for so many others across the centuries, evidence of a brand new identity. Mr. Tang was a reborn creation, his old life yielded up in exchange for his new life of Christ within.

How wonderful of the Lord, bringing a precious man with essentially no knowledge of Jesus from the far side of the globe to this place – in this time – for this purpose.

People are different from one another. An understatement. In each of our world’s seven-billion-plus souls, there is written a unique human story. And, while every story varies, all our journeys pulse with deep yearnings. Amazingly, the Designer God who formed us can meet us where we are – poised and ready to lead us toward himself. Some of our personal narratives may feature, as with Mr. Tang, a case of disentangling from chemical substances. Step by slow step our transformation gains traction. We may suffer setbacks. He is faithful still.

For others, the prevailing vice is the obsessive drive to excel in education or business. Human beings have a notorious capacity for succumbing to hard-driving taskmasters.

Our friend, Nguyen, from Southeast Asia pursued a common aim in the world of higher education, to advance as a leading scholar in his chosen field.

One evening at the student activities center an English conversation volunteer introduced Nguyen to a series of fantasy pieces. One of these featured a wardrobe and a lion and a witch. Nguyen’s own narrative was poised to turn a corner.

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024

Stated Intent

A brilliant and beloved Southern California professor was fond of urging his fellow believers to live life on purpose, employing principles which he dubbed VIM.

Those lives that bear the marks of wholeness and flourishing for the good, Dallas Willard contended, tend to stem from persons who have firmly embraced Vision (the first letter of the acronym).

Alongside Vision come Intention and Means. Our infant ministry on the Tulsa campus – testing its wobbly legs with gangly stops and starts that are common to the very young – had started hammering out our Intention piece.

Just what were we sensing that God actually wanted? What would bring a ready smile to his magnificent countenance?

Jim Garton and I set out to give it our best in crafting a mission statement. It was clear that International Student Ministries needed one.

What shall we count as ISM’s Intention (the aim or aims that could be counted on to mark us and keep us grounded and focused through coming years). While we understood that a mission purpose can be tweaked and that often the best of aims can meet with course corrections, we felt daily the gravity of this assignment. It weighed on us.

At long last, with a lot of needed grace from above, we landed the plane.

The stated purpose carried two crucial features, neither of which could be realized apart from the other. Students needed to be able to enjoy the assurance that they are genuinely welcomed and cared about. Relationship must be key, with Christ’s tangible love and presence the heartbeat of it all.

The team’s next newsletter to be rolled out would herald our reason for being. Our Intention:

International Community Outreach exists to glorify God by meeting practical and spiritual needs of international students, through acts of service and through the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

With our stated mission now in place, all that remained was to live it out!

This was to take some doing.

January 4, 2024January 3, 2024

The Qualifier

“God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.”

It was a quote I had heard years before. Now, like small fragments of glowing embers in a fire pit being newly-roused by a stout breeze, the phrase was poised to ignite afresh. And just in time.

A lot of my life had been marked by self doubt. I fell short of one of those most desirable qualities (according to popular motivational speakers) for achieving success. Self-confidence. Oddly enough, the Christian tradition which had most shaped my spiritual life and worldview had been often given to bold and assertive, ‘you’ve got-this!’ declarations. “I can do all things…” “I am more than a conqueror…” And even, “Give me this mountain!” – a bold claim voiced by an 80-year-old, battle-scarred vet. Caleb. There was something beautiful about my growing- up years in such an upbeat climate of a believing community. Such confident, faith-fueled declarations (drawn straight out of sacred text) were even then serving to deepen in me a much-needed trust in God that could come into play way down the road. I was just not very aware of it.

— Hwy 169

Cruising along the busy Tulsa expressway one afternoon, I listened half-attentive to music pulsing through the car radio. I was at the moment right in the middle of head-talk.

“What an opportunity, international outreach right within the heart of Tulsa, Okla!” Countered by, “Right … but you? Really?” A voice inside my brain objected, then continued, “These are really bright scholars from across the world, many in advanced fields of the sciences. What do you know? What qualifies you?”

The music piece on the radio ended. In that moment, in the middle of my cerebral – emotional tug-of-war, the DJ’s voice broke in – “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” I later heard that the poignant statement was traced to Theodore Roosevelt. Regardless, this was my first-ever time to take it into my ears.

Astonished is too mild a term. In that moment I was, as our British friends would put it, gobsmacked.

August 24, 2023August 25, 2023

Means Aplenty

The thing that sparked my interest in guitar was my brother’s interest in guitar (a trait of the junior sibling).

A 25 cent chord book (fingering charts included) paired together with a nine-dollar second-hand acoustic was our father’s investment in us launching our musical enterprise. Tim, giving diligent attention to the chord book, taught himself. And tutored me along as he went. The ‘two-bit’ resource proved priceless.

That modest publication with its folk songs and fingering charts was vital for our picking-and-grinning advancement. Its few pages helped transform my brother, a teenaged guitarist-wannabe, into an effective musician.

In much the same way effective (gratifying, fruit-bearing) communion with God lies within easy reach of any believer. Any who with willing heart chooses in good faith to simply practice.

Praying the words of a select few lines of a Scripture Psalm over and over. Pondering a phrase or a single word. Expressing this or that fervent heart cry as though it were penned by the one now reading and voicing it. This tool alone has helped bring many over time into lives of vibrant communion in God.

Without notes and chords in place the music room lies silent. Without the apprentice’s heart-strings brought to movement in prayer, no life of flourishing in Jesus will bloom.

Finally, discovering that the Christian is not called on to pray perfect prayers brings unspeakable relief. God goes so far as to let us know we are, in fact, quite ignorant when it comes to the spiritual practice we call prayer. What comfort! No need to fake it.

Without apology God reminds us via a terse confession of his tentmaking apostle, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought”*.

With this truth in mind Christ’s apprentices have the door of a whole toolshed flung wide open before them. His treasure-trove of tools (our means) is not restricted to the book of Psalms. Talking with God in our own personal words (nothing fancy, please!) we also have full permission to give voice to a host of prayers offered up across the pages of Scripture.

Consider this.

How might you feel knowing that a friend or family member was earnestly interceding the following for you, “that he might know the love of Christ. . . that she may be filled with all the fulness of God.”?* Be assured, God would be more than pleased our invoking as our own, Paul’s petition. For anyone whose name or image might show up on the radar of our petitioning heart.

August 10, 2023

Super Model

Our role model, Jesus, was intentional at the start of his mornings, carving out space and time to personally give himself to the direct presence of the Father. We in our day might label this as his quiet time. Regardless, the action was predictable. Conversing with God is a thing he looked forward to, this life rhythm of communion.

Inhaling and exhaling air is an activity we (as did Jesus) practice a lot while seldom ever consciously thinking about it. Breathing comes automatically. In his repeated ‘practice’ of meeting with God upon his daily risings, Jesus had grown to ‘automatically’ pray. Not robotically, as in responding to external commands, but meeting with his Abba Father as a much-beloved offspring. He (unlike me whose mind far too easily might get hijacked by distraction) purposely – eagerly? – pushed aside the many lesser attractions vying for attention.

Nothing going on around Jesus on any given occasion commanded his attention more than nearness to Abba. Communing with the father trumped all.

The Spirit of Jesus invites us, his beloved apprenticing friends, to this same lifestyle he enjoyed while navigating the many winding, hilly terrains of earth’s pilgrimage. He really does.

Christlike living, simply put, involves prayer-centered living.

Jesus’s predictable beginning-of-day habit of prayer was no less familiar to him than his other common practices – breakfasting, teeth-cleaning, sandal-strap latching.

Doesn’t it seem reasonable that apprentices of Jesus are those persons who regularly apply themselves in patterning their lives after him? In dependence on him, routinely employing those practices that clearly marked his own life rhythms.

Summing up. It is not complicated. The call of the disciple is to,

(1) Engage the common practices that he, the son of man, routinely undertook

(2) Often ask Jesus for his help in putting in place a practice (such as prayer in its varied forms)

(3) Mark out a space where, upon waking each new day, the practice gets underway.

Remember. The disciple is not one who faultlessly follows, but one who follows the faultless One. Receiving from his table generous servings of grace at every step.