Praise for My Wife on the Occasion of my Graduation from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Unlike the time it took me to graduate, I'll keep this short.  In August of 2006, I sat down and told Julie that I felt it was time to make a change.  We had been at CBTS for three years, but feelings that God wanted me to do PhD studies and conflicts with the school over the Sovereign Grace Church we were attending were beginning to make it plain that it was time for us to go.  Three years is a long time to be a grad student - even longer to support one.  But when I sat Julie down to explain the possibility of moving to TEDS to finish my MDiv, she was immediately in full support.  I knew that she would be - everything about Julie is supportive of me.  So we decided, and we moved, and we lost about 30 credits in the transfer, and we started over again in Chicago.

Last week I was driving down the road thinking about what my experience at TEDS has meant to me and how thankful I am that God directed me here.  For years I had wanted to make an exit from Fundamentalism, but could not muster the courage.  For almost as long, I felt the desire to study in a place that would push me academically and prepare me for academic ministry.  The move to TEDS afforded both of these and more.  Not only was I able to make new contacts in an Evangelical world with which I had no acquaintance [Colin Hansen was the first person I met on campus . . . standing in front of me waiting for a parking pass], and not only was the degree held in high academic esteem, but I also got to study under men whose writing had shaped me intellectually, theologically, and morally.

But all at once, it became clear to me for the first time that while the move to TEDS was motivation enough for me, Julie had no compelling reason to come.  She never read Kevin Vanhoozer [though she did read some D. A. Carson].  Julie had never dreamed of a PhD or theological academia.  Julie came for me.  She left a comfortable town house which we had worked together to make into a lovely home, and moved into an apartment that looks as if we lived in the Warsaw Ghetto so that I could fulfill a dream of mine.  She left a job she loved, teaching children whose parents loved and appreciated her, to take a job teaching the underprivileged on the West Side of Chicago - the first day of school for both of us, she called me crying: "I can't do this."  She has done it for two years now with what the principal has called the hardest class she has ever seen, so that my ministry could benefit from Cultural Hermeneutics.  She left our convenient location in Greenbrier, just a three minute drive from work, to commuting an hour both ways each day, so that I could have the joy of taking Calvin with Dr. Manetsch.  She willingly gave up my completion of the MDiv in four years, and graciously accepted a two year extension so that I could hear Dr. Sweeney lecture on Jonathan Edwards.  She came here for me.

Graduate school is difficult.  And I suppose that it is natural at the end of such a long road for us to consider with gratitude all of those who have supported us in our studies.  If time permitted, I would thank my many friends who have challenged my thinking, family who have patiently prayed for and encouraged my academic pursuits, my parents who first taught me about Jesus, professors who instructed me the spiritual discipline of intellectual morality, and my churches [Berean Bible Fellowship, The Orchard and Sovereign Grace Church] which have patiently encouraged and supported me in my studies while they waited for me to understand that Revelation was given to them by God - it is theirs and for their benefit - and that my calling is to be a humble minister of this grace to them.  As much as I have received from all of these and as much as I am indebted to them for their kindness, none of them have so completely poured themselves out for this accomplishment like Julie has.  For the past six years, Julie has made herself of no reputation and taken on the form of a servant so that I could be equipped for the ministry, and while the degree I'll hang on my wall will only bear my name, I want her to know that I know the truth - it's more hers than it is mine.