We’ve been talking about Christmas these last few weeks and so I thought we might take a change of tact this week as we head into this last week for the year. That kind of funny time between Christmas and New Year and look at life, as we do around this time, look back on the year that’s been and think forward to the year that’s to be. I love listening to other peoples stories and so I’m joined this week on the program by a man called Dave Hanson.

Dave’s an American with a really ordinary upbringing but these days, he’s the vice president of International Ministries for Back to the Bible, he leads an extraordinary life. Today we’re going to look back on his life briefly and as we do that, perhaps you and I can look back on our lives too and think about the things that have been, a time to pause and reflect on our stories, kind of through Dave’s story.

Berni: Now Dave, just tell us just briefly, where you were born? What was your childhood all about?

Dave: Sure, well I was born in Minnesota, one of the Northern states known for 10,000 lakes but moved to the State of Nebraska when I was very young. My father was a pastor and so I grew up as a P.K. (Preachers Kid) and spent most of my life in Nebraska, I graduated from high school in Nebraska and then went to Grace University in Omaha and then also went to radio engineering institute in Omaha so that kind of gave me the education that I needed.

Berni: So you had a fairly, I guess, standard conservative upbringing, is that a…?

Dave: Definitely, when you grow up in the Bible belt in Nebraska, pretty much the mid-west central part of the U.S., conservative Christian life.

Berni: And these days you spend a lot of your time tripping around the world to all sorts of weird places I believe.

Dave: I do as…

Berni: Including Australia.

Dave: that’s right! As the vice president of International Division for Back to the Bible, I have that privilege of travelling the world and of course I’ve been to this wonderful country of Australia a number of occasions and been to places like the Solomon Islands, been to places like Indonesia and India and Sri Lanka and it goes on and on and it’s been a wonderful time.

Berni: So how does this kid who has this pretty routine, straight out of central casting, Bible belt upbringing, um end up doing this sort of stuff ’cause I imagine, you know coming from where you came from, what you see now, what you do now, probably blows your mind a little bit?

Dave: Oh absolutely! I wouldn’t ever guessed you know, more than 30 years ago when I started this career of journey, that I would be doing this. I wouldn’t ever guess that I was going to travel the world; I wouldn’t have ever guessed that I was going to work with some wonderful Bible teachers around the world. My passion was in the area of electronics and I wanted to use the talents and the interests that I had to advance the gospel through media…

Berni: Uh, hum.

Dave: And that actually got Judy and myself to Italy and that was in, believe it or not, in 1974 and we actually spent 11 years there before I moved back to the United States.

Berni: You don’t look a day over, what 70?

Dave: Ah, yeah right. Thanks Berni.

Berni: That’s my gift, I’m pastorally gifted So you look back on, how old are you now?

Dave: I’m 57.

Berni: You look back on this kind of amazing journey, we’re going explore your journey more during this week on the program but you look back on this journey, what are the things that really stand out for you? What are the things that you, you learned or the insights, the wisdoms that you come with your, your advanced years?

Dave: Laughs, yeah thanks Berni, appreciate that. (Both laughing) Well there is a reality that um, through life there are many things that God has actually preparing you for, that you don’t know, you’re going to be prepared for down the road.

Berni: Uh hum.

Dave: I went to Italy in ’74 as I said and had a background in electronics but had also done a lot of construction and little did I know that the company I worked for was going to build a massive studio office complex in the 1980’s but all those years of construction, which for me was nothing more than money..

Berni: Uh hum.

Dave: Basically it gave me a background to do that and life is that way. God is constantly preparing us for what He has next for us.

Berni: Mm, He doesn’t seem to waste a whole bunch does He?

Dave: No, He doesn’t. He has it all planned out.

Berni: Yeah.

Dave: If we’re willing to follow.

Berni: Yeah, so what did that following look like? I mean, you kind of look, you’ve got a chance now to look back a little bit, what does, what did all that look like?

Dave: Well, 11 years in Italy and they were wonderful years. Our boys were born there, they attended Italian schools, we learned Italian. We learned to love the Italian people. I didn’t know much about Italy before I got there. I’d never really been out of the United States but it really impacted our lives because within that first year we understood that the number one objective was to entrust to the national Italians everything that God had given to us. And it reminds me of 2 Timothy:2.2 where it talks about entrusting to reliable people the ability to teach the word of God and that was crucial and so those years really impacted what I was going to do next. And after 11 years, the office was nationalised or turned over to a national leader and I was asked to come back to the United States and oversee the international part for Back to the Bible and that’s where my world went from Italy to the entire world. And today, Back to the Bible’s working in 25 languages around the world, as you well know and ah, I have that privilege of working with 13-14 wonderful men.

Berni: Yeah. How did God prepare you for that? I mean I still struggle over this leap from you grow up in Nebraska and your football team, the Cornhusk Kids..

Dave: The Cornhusk Kids, yeah, yeah. They might even win this year.

Berni: And now you’re doing this, you look back on that, what did you learn? What’s God really taught you through all that?

Dave: Well, one I think is the reality ‘it’s not about me’, it’s about God and a necessity for me to remain humble, a necessity for me to realise that there are no borders, for God there are no nations, there’s none in Australia and there’s not in America, there are people that God loves and I have to set all that aside in order to make sure that the Kingdom is being reached. It’s also the reality that I had no idea that there were 1.8 billion people who still had never heard of Jesus Christ. 1.8 billion, you know Christmas has just been completed and yet there’s 1.8 billion who have no idea of what Christmas is or even about, they don’t know what that ‘Jesus in a manger’ was about and it’s important that we take that message to them.

Berni: 1.8 billion people, so you’vegot a busy life then.

Dave: I have a busy life.

Berni: You know you don’t have time to retire.

Dave: No, I don’t have time to retire but it will come one of these days.

Berni: Yeah, it’s your comment about God preparing and I look back on my walk and I can see how God prepared me for things I had no idea. Like before I became a Christian, I was travelling around the world, speaking at conferences, doing all this stuff and then when I encountered this person of Jesus Christ, I look back and it was such a humbling thing when I realise that all of that time God was getting me ready for something and I think we are often going through things, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience but we’re often going through things and they’re hard and they’re painful and they’re scary and we don’t know why it’s going on but Gods in that place..

Dave: That’s right.

Berni: And Gods doing something that we can’t see down the track.

Dave: Yeah, as I said, I would never have guessed that I would be doing what I am doing today. In fact I remember going to Italy saying that ‘I am never going to get into the position where I don’t do what I’m trained for’ and I actually didn’t expect to be in administration, I didn’t expect to be doing what I am doing today; overseeing the international side, globally for Back to the Bible. I had an engineering background and I knew how to run the knobs, the tape recorders and how to fix them and install transmitters and how to climb antenna’s and I would never had guessed that I was going to give that up in order to be on the other side of the media ministry.

Berni: I just wonder when each one of us looks back as we’ve just briefly over the last few minutes, done on your ‘long life’. It’s my gift, it’s a way of flattery…

Dave: Thanks, thanks.

Berni: But as each one of us looks back I think we can each point to things where God has done things sometimes through difficult circumstances to prepare us for what we’re doing now and other things around the corner, over the next hill which we just have no idea about.

I know you probably expect me to be talking about Christmas right now but we’ve been going through that over the last few weeks and as we head into what’s effectively the last week of the year, I thought we’d look back a bit on the years that’s been by sharing the story of my guest on the program today, Dave Hanson. He’s an American with an ordinary upbringing but somebody whom God is using in the most extraordinary way in his role as the vice president of International Ministries for the media ministry, Back to the Bible.

Now by any measure you and I would look at Dave and think ‘wow man, he’s made it, he’s arrived, he has it all together’ but I’m going to ask him today about the year that’s just been and we might get a few surprises and perhaps, as we look back on the year, we can take a moment to reflect on our story through his.

Berni: Dave thanks for joining me. You know I don’t know how it is for you, whether you’ve had this experience but I look back on this last year and there have been some hard things in the year and there have been some fun things in the year too and each year comes and we have this sense of anticipation of the new year and we don’t know what’s around the corner and some years are really hard years. What’s your year been like?

Dave: It’s been a year that um, a lot of growing, been a lot of growing because it’s also been a very, very hard year. Ah, maybe one of the most difficult for me as a leader of the International part for Back to the Bible. Some of that relates to money and yet sometimes God brings us through those circumstances financially in ministry in order to get us where He wants us to go both as an organisation or as a ministry as well as personally. And besides that it’s also been a very difficult year because we watched a personal friend die from cancer. Exactly the same age.

We’ve had Bible study with this couple over and over for the last 10 years and for the last 4 she has struggled and we knew our watching someone’s life on this earth come to and end while all of us know that the eternity is around the corner for those who know Jesus Christ as a personal saviour, it’s still hard. But it also makes us understand that life is not about this earth but it’s about eternity and for me it’s an understanding that, as it says in Psalms, that God is the strength of my heart and that portion of my life forever.

And as I’ve gone through these hard times and some of them have caused me to weep, some of them have been hard decisions, some of them have been areas in my own life that I’ve had to come back and ask myself, ‘so do I really believe in Gods strength? Is He really ALL to me or am I trying to do this in my own strength?’ And here I am, you know having done missions now, we’ve been part of Back to the Bible and been in a V.P. position and you’d think you had arrived right?

Berni: Well, I was going to ask you that. I mean people must look at you in your home town…

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: In your home town of Nebraska, it’s a metropolis of what 250,000…

Dave: Yeah right, a mini city.

Berni: And people look at you, and you are the vice president of International Ministries of Back to the Bible, its a global ministry, you’ve got a wonderful wife, you’ve got 2 grown up, well adjusted boys…

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: You’ve got a nice home. Dave you’ve arrived, you’ve made it. How can you be talking to me about a hard year?

Dave: Well you know, it reminds me of the realities. That the Christian life is not about taking a cruise on what used to called The Love Boat..

Berni: Oh dang, oh that’s it, I’m out of here.

Dave: Yeah. It’s about taking a battleship. And the Christian life for us has to being prepared for whatever battles are before us and there will be battles. You know I think all of us would love to just kind of zoom through life as if we were taking a cruise and we went swimming every day and we sat on the beach and enjoyed the sun and all this kind of stuff.

Berni: That’s what I thought you did.

Dave: Oh no, no it’s not that way but the realities are God calls us to be prepared for the battles that are going to come before us and there are all kinds of battles that we’re going to face because we are in a spiritual battle..

Berni: Yeah.

Dave: And the spiritual battle is between good and evil…

Berni: Yep.

Dave: And we who are proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ are going to face those battles and so the question is, are we ready for the battle or are we not ready for the battle that is before us?

Berni: I used to look at people who were in full time ministry before I was in full time ministry and think, ‘well, they’ve got a pretty easy life, you know they’re Gods people and God must look after them’ and that sort of stuff but you’ve been doing this for a lot of years, I guess you’ve been through a lot of battles.

Dave: The fortunate part is at least I haven’t lost any personal family members like Sue who passed away these few months ago.

Berni: Well tell us a bit about her.

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: I mean, these are good friends of yours, you’ve known them for many, many years, husband and wife and the wife is dying of cancer as I understand the story.

Dave: That’s right.

Berni: What was that journey like?

Dave: Well Ralph and Sue, in fact believe it or not, their last name is Hanson as well but they’re no relationship what so ever. Ralph and Sue are exactly the same age and 4 years ago she was diagnosed of having ovarian cancer. She actually just went in for a check up and discovered that she had a tumour and then in those 4 years she has gone through one treatment after another. And you know, it was amazing because you really never wanted to give up hope but all the statistics said there’s no way she can beat this. So your dealing with that difficulty in life of saying, ‘well I don’t want ever to give up hope but unless God steps in, in a miraculous way, its going to be over as far as this person’s concerned’. But amazingly to me it was her faith, she never complained.

Berni: Mmm.

Dave: You know 1 week before she died she attended the wedding of her son and she had to be wheeled down in a wheelchair to the front of the Church and I spoke with her as much as you could afterwards and she was still joyful, still thankful for what God had given to her and yet within 1 week she spent eternity with Him.

Berni: It’s interesting you know, I’ve been walking with the Lord for 12 years but I meet people who’ve been walking with God for 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years and its the people who have drawn close to Him in that time, because you can believe and not draw close to Jesus right.

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: You can believe and keep Him at arms length but it’s the people who have believed and who have drawn close to Him, when the battles come, when the storms come, when, when the grenades are blowing up around you, they seem to have this peace, as Paul writes when he was on death row, this peace that surpasses all understanding. You can’t explain it, there’s no physical reason, this woman’s going to die and yet she has a peace and a joy about her.

Dave: Well, in the Christian life what you have to do is take advantage of the good times and you have to prepare yourself for when the bad times come. If you don’t you won’t be prepared for those difficult days, those difficult times. So we need to take advantage of the good times, we need to spend regular time in The Word, we need regular time in prayer so when we hit those moments in life that are very, very difficult, we’re prepared. It’s a routine for us; it’s an understanding of who God is. You can’t at the last minute, all of a sudden change…

Berni: Mmm.

Dave: It’s a process of growing in your understanding in your relationship with Him.

Berni: I’m interested that you, you quoted out of the book of Psalms there, I often think of psalms, ’cause psalms were really the Hebrew hymn book is the best way to describe it..

Dave: Uhhum, uhhum, yes.

Berni: A book of hymns and prayers. I often think of the book of Psalms as being a book of praise but actually there are more psalms of lament and of woe and of crying out to God than there are psalms of praise. I love that about God, I love that God puts that in His Bible, that He’s real and practical, not some dry, theological text book…

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: but people who are crying out to God.

Dave: And many of them were David.

Berni: Yeah.

Dave: You know, King David so to speak and yet God allowed us to see the difficult side of his life and how he cried out to God so that we could understand that that’s what we need to do as well.

It’s funny how the years tend to slip by, sometimes great, sometimes not so great but I wonder how often we take the quiet time to look back and ask ourselves, ‘okay, with everything I’ve been through this year, what have I learned? How have I grown?’ Inevitably it’s some of those ‘not so great’ things that happen that provide the greatest learning opportunities but unless we think about them, well it’s an opportunity lost.

I’m joined on the program again today by Dave Hanson, the vice president of the international ministries for Back to the Bible as he looks back on his year on the things that he’s learned, perhaps that might provide us, you and me, with an opportunity to do the same.

Berni: Dave it’s great that you could join us again today. I guess we’ve been looking backwards over the last few days in your life. You were saying to us yesterday, this last year; well it’s had a few downs as well as a few ups.

Dave: Yeah, right that’s exactly right.

Berni: A friend of yours died…

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: Had some tough things at work.

Dave: Yeah but the reality’s are, at least in my life when you look back, and I guess it is for you as well Berni, that when God takes us through those difficult times, that’s probably when we grow the most spiritually. We don’t like to admit that and we don’t want to go through the difficult times in order to grow but the realities are that, that pushes us into more growth and into new areas that we probably wouldn’t grow in if it weren’t for those difficult times. I have on my door a saying that I wrote in large letters that said, “I would rather trust God for the future than know it.”

Berni: Say that again.

Dave: I would rather trust God for the future than know it.

Berni: Do you believe that?

Dave: Well I have to read it often. When I begin to doubt it and when the difficulties come, I read it again. I read it every day before I go home because I realise that the next day, I really don’t know what the future holds in many cases. You know, we who are involved in leadership or, or called upon to ‘chart the course’ you know…

Berni: Mmm.

Dave: Have your ten year plan, have your strategic plans and all this kind of stuff you know and you spend a lot of time working and, but then all of a sudden (Dave clicks his fingers), just like that it can change and we’ve done all of our planning and all these things and, so at that point it’s a reminder that, ‘do I really trust God for the future or do I trust myself for the future?’

Berni: Let me ask you, why would you rather trust God than know the future? ’cause it’s kind of counter intuitive.

Dave: It is, it is because God does know what is going to happen to me, He does know what the future is going to be, He knows what is going to be good for me even though I may not like it…

Berni: Uhum.

Dave: So it’s far more important that I trust God that I trust Him for salvation okay, but I also have to trust Him for daily living. I have to trust Him with what He will do with me tomorrow because if I knew what He was going to take me through 3 years from now or 5 years from now or what Sue Hanson went through when she had ovarian cancer, I wouldn’t want to go there and so am I really willing to trust God?

Berni: There’s a great passage in the book of Hebrews chapter 12 that talks about trials and discipline and it says this, Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 7,
“Endure trials for the sake of discipline; God is treating you as children for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline.”
And then later on it says,
“Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time but it later yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”

It also says in Hebrews that Jesus, even though He was the Son of God learnt to trust God. He learnt obedience through what He suffered and sometimes we struggle with what we suffer in life don’t we? You, you look at this Sue Hanson, I don’t know her but dear friend of yours and you think, ‘Lord she was so young, why did you take her now? Why is it that her husband has had to go through all of this as well and their family? And yet He takes us through places of suffering and trial and pain and discipline in order that we have the peace and I loved how you talked about the peace that this woman had…

Dave: Oh wonderful.

Berni: Because she let God make that difference in her life.

Dave: Yeah and you know we would all like to be able to explain everything particularly in the Christian life, we would like to be able to explain ‘so why did God allow Sue Hanson to go through such suffering?’ or ‘why did God take my wife’s sister home at a young age? Her brother home at a young age why did that happen?’ but the realities are there are things that we will never understand on this side of eternity and that’s where we just have to trust God. We have to trust Him that He is accomplishing His will.

Berni: There’s a great poem called The Weaver and people may have heard it before, I’ll try and remember it. It goes like this,
My life is but a weaving between my Lord and me.
I cannot choose the colours as He weaveth steadily.
Sometimes He chooses dark threads and I in foolish pride
forget He sees the upper and I the underside.
Not till the loom is silent and the shuttle cease to fly
will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why
the dark threads were as needful in the weaver’s skilful hands
as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He hath planned.

Dave: How beautiful.

Berni: Isn’t that a beautiful poem?

Dave: It is beautiful.

Berni: Interestingly, in that passage that I just read before in Hebrews when it talks about discipline always seems painful, it’s never fun, we never sit down and pray, ‘dear God, discipline me today. Lord, prune me.’ Have you ever pruned a tree and you get the scissors out and you cut through the flesh of the tree, have you ever thought ‘that must hurt’, you know, like schwkkkk, none of us wants to be pruned but it finishes off and says,

“Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees and make straight the paths before your feet so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.”

It’s a message of hope that God is in this place with us and even when it’s tough and even when it hurts and even when it doesn’t make sense, God is in this place and He has a plan.

Dave: In Psalms 3 is exactly what David did, he poured out his heart, he was honest with God of the difficulties that he was going through and that’s the beauty of being able to talk to God, that’s the beauty of being able to pray and to spend time before God just pouring out because God wants us to be honest with Him and to express to Him the difficulties that we’re feeling in our hearts, the challenges that we’re having and He just loves us to bring us honestly to Him.

Berni: I was talking to a dear friend of mine of many years who’s son, teenage son committed suicide, this was last year through depression and this mans daughter, great faith in Jesus Christ, she lost her best friend, her brother and she was shaking her fists at God and I said to him, “God is not going to fall off His twig through this right, encourage her to be honest with God and tell Him just the way it is.”

Dave: And that’s exactly what David did in Psalm 3.

Berni: So I’m sure you had some good things, some great things happen through this year as well, it’s not all a downer right? I guess you know you lose a friend…

Dave: Yeah, yeah.

Berni: And you go through some tough things in life and in ministry but, I don’t know about you but there’s something inside me that says, ‘okay, that was, that was the year that’s just gone, there’s this hope for the next year, there’s this hope for what Gods going to do next year and some of the good things that are going to happen too.’

Dave: Oh, absolutely and that’s important. Again is Psalm 3 when David came to God, honestly and openly and talked about the difficulties, after he poured out all his heart to God and so forth, at the end he basically said, ‘okay God, I’m ready for the next assignment.’

Berni: Yeah.

Dave: And that’s what we need to do as we come to the end of this year and look to the new year saying, ‘okay God, this has been the past year, this is all the difficulties that I’ve gone through, I lay them at your feet, I honestly commit them to you but now tell me the next assignment.’

Berni: Yeah, as I look back on the difficulties ’cause I have some tough things happening in my life too, we all do, you either get bitter about them and it eats away at you like a cancer or you say, ‘you know something God, I’ve been humbled through this and I’ve learned something through this and I’ve been pruned and disciplined through this, I am richer for this.’

You know what I really love, I really love the fact that we’re all so different. And, and what that means is that I can’t do everything on my own and nor can you, we need each other. I’m joined on the program again today by my good friend, Dave Hanson, the vice president of international ministries of Back to the Bible. Now Dave and I are so different and yet we make a great team. One of the things that strikes me about the man is that he has really well sorted out in his head and his heart, what makes him tick.

You see a lot of people are in jobs and careers that, well you can just tell they’re a bad fit. Not Dave, he’s figured it out and he’s following that calling. What makes you tick? Maybe as you listen to Dave’s story you might take a moment to ponder that very question.

Berni: We’ve been talking this week Dave about your life and about the last year and you shared with us yesterday that it’s been a bit of a tough year. Lost a good friend to cancer, she wasn’t that old. One of the things, I watch Dave Hanson a lot, you know across the Pacific and we talk on Skype….

Dave: Yeah, yep.

Berni: And we chat by email and stuff and I have often said to Dave who manages the international side of the ministry of Back to the Bible. So all these radio Bible teachers all round the world of which I’m one and Dave’s job is to kind of keep us all on the straight and narrow and help us and I’ve said to Dave, “I could not imagine doing your job. I just look at you and I think ‘if they offered me that job I would run a million miles.’ So what’s the matter with you? (Both laugh).

Dave: Well I couldn’t do your job either Berni so the good things is that, for each of us, you know God prepares us and calls us to, to what He wants us to do for Him because it’s all about building a kingdom and you know, you’re doing your part and I’m doing my part and, and other brothers and sisters in Christ are doing their part and together the kingdom is being built before Jesus returns. And it’s a necessity for us to take that same message that He gave to the 12 disciples and continue to take it to the ends of the earth. And what makes me tick is the realisation that, if what I have is so important to me and is of such value to my own personal life, why would I not want my neighbour, why would I not want the people in India, why would I not want the people in Indonesia, why would I not want the people in Australia to enjoy and know the same blessing that I can have in Jesus Christ.

Berni: Now, it’s interesting because I mean, in Australia for instance, I mean this program is heard all around the world, but let me just share with you culture in Australia. We listen to an American guy like you…

Dave: Okay.

Berni: Right, talking about God and Jesus and the images that that conjures up for many Australians is the American religious rite and arguments about a abortion, and you know all that, all that stuff and, and I’m not saying that’s bad but there’s always this sense that the Americans have kind of, you know, going out there and whacking people over the head with the gospel but that’s not what you’re talking about.

Dave: No and unfortunately and I apologise for my nation and some of my brothers and sisters who, under the name of Christianity have really kind of gotten side tracked of what really is important and the importance of taking the gospel of hope and the message of Jesus Christ and the message of Christmas to a world that desperately needs to know of Jesus as their saviour and you know sometimes we kind of get bogged down on some of these other things and use the Bible, in some cases, use the platform of Christianity almost as a 2 x 4 to whack other people and I don’t think that’s what the message of the Bible is all about.

Berni: The only 2 x 4’s that Jesus ever wielded seems to me, were against religious hypocrites and His own disciples who lacked faith. They’re the only people He ever criticized, yet think about it, and yet He hung around with prostitutes, He hung around with lepers, He hung around with the flotsam and the jetsam and the outcasts of society and the tax collectors and He was busy telling them how close God was coming to them through Him instead of telling them how far they’d strayed from God.

Dave: Yeah, well why did God send His only Son? That’s the message, the message of Jesus Christ who came as a baby, died on the cross, was raised from the dead, spends eternity in heaven, gives us a hope of eternity, that’s the message that we have to preach, that’s the reason that I do what I do. If it isn’t real to me then why would I do this?

Berni: Mmm.

Dave: And why would I spend my life travelling around the world? Why would I go to remote places in India and you and I have been to some very remote villages in India and we see the faces of those people….

Berni: Yeah.

Dave: And we understand that there is a day that they are going to die and they will either spend eternity in hell or they will spend eternity with the Lord, Jesus Christ and which do we want them to have?

Berni: One of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in working with the ministry of Back to the Bible around the world was being in a little village called Hallia.
which you know very well. One of the poorest places I’ve ever been to in my life and meeting 15 young men and women who, through our radio broadcast there had come to know Jesus Christ personally and having the opportunity to baptise those people…

Dave: Yes.

Berni: …and know that here were 15 people who were going to spend eternity with God, not apart from God.

Dave: Yeah, as it talks about in Acts: 26, it’s taking them out of darkness and taking them into light and you know, some might say, ‘well does their life really change on this earth?’ In some cases not a lot, they’re still going to be very poor people, they’re still going to live in remote villages of India but now they have the light of Jesus Christ which will give them life for eternity in heaven.

Berni: Yeah. Now it’s fascinating to me because your job is a backroom job right, you do stuff for people like me and my fellows around the world and you empower us and enable us and you help us and, as I said at the beginning of the program, I couldn’t do your job yet somehow Gods wired you to do this.

Dave: Well for me, when you succeed as the director here in Australia, I need to enjoy that, I need to realise that that’s part of building the kingdom and for me it’s all about building the kingdom and I don’t care whether its you or whether its me or whether its one of our leaders in India, it’s still all about building the kingdom and I’m just doing my part so that it can be accomplished as soon as possible, none of us know how long we have and the task is huge and we need to get on with the tasks so I just need to do my part.

Berni: I love the fact that God makes us each so differently and if you and I sat here and compared and I looked at you and went, ‘wow, you know I could never do what Dave does, I’m not very good’ or you looked at me and went, ‘wow’ ’cause I had to drag you into the studio right, it’s not your first love right.

Dave: No its not, I don’t spend too much time in the studio.

Berni: And if you sat here and went, ‘well you know, I’m not very good at this ’cause I don’t do what Berni does.’ If we compared ourselves with each other it would be such a stupid thing to do yet so often people are comparing themselves and saying, ‘I’m not as good as the next person, I can’t do this, I can’t do that’ yet God has given each of us a unique shtick, a unique gig, a unique thing that makes us tick.

Dave: That’s exactly right. He gives us personality and talents but He also gives us spiritual gifts and He has given you gifts that are incredible for teaching on the word of God particularly on radio but He’s also given me gifts that I use in accomplishing the administrative side for Back to the Bible.

Berni: And its really cool that you can’t do what you do without me and I can’t do what I do without you…

Dave: Absolutely.

Berni: …and that’s the whole teamwork thing and that’s Gods plan and the moment we start thinking, ‘I can do it all’ is when we fall flat on our faces and I love that about the way that God works.

So often at this time of the year people are thinking about making new years resolutions, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to exercise, I’m not going to work so hard and then by February it’s back to the same old, same old. We want to turn over a new leaf but it’s not easy is it? There are no quick fixes in life, it turns out that living life, well it’s about the long haul isn’t it?

We’re joined again today on the program by Dave Hanson, the vice president of International Ministries of Back to the Bible and as he shares with us his thoughts and insights on his future maybe there are 1 or 2 things that you and I can take away and weave into our story, our future, our long haul.

Berni: Dave’s it great that you could join us again today. Hey listen, we’ve been doing a bit of a retrospective of the life of Dave Hanson this week, you know I think it’s a good time of year to do it, this week between Christmas and New Year. We kind of look back on what’s been and we kind of look forward and we dream and that sort of stuff. Interestingly, a couple of years ago, I know that in your work as the vice president of International Ministries of Back to the Bible which is a fabulous role and a huge global role, you kind of did a 10 year plan didn’t you?

Dave: That’s right.

Berni: You had this plan, 10 years til I retire, I’m going to set out what my plan is, what happened to that plan?

Dave: What plan? (Both laugh) and actually I firstly have to say that I thought that I understood what God was wanting us to do at that point and what He wanted me to do and I had spent a lot of time praying and thinking about some of the areas that we might advance the Ministry of Back to the Bible.

Berni: ’cause you were thinking Africa, right, was a really big thing.

Dave: Oh yeah, absolutely it was a big thing and but course little did I know that what was going to happen in the next couple of years and yet God did. I think specifically of a case where I was actually about that close, right at the edge of bringing onto my staff an individual who would oversee ministry in Africa. A wonderful friend and had spent years in Cameroon, he was well prepared…

Berni: Uh hum.

Dave: For the task and you know we’d had dialogue while he was in Cameroon, secret dialogue because he didn’t want anyone to know that we were talking about this and he finally got back to Lincoln, Nebraska and then he let me know that he decided to move to Chicago instead and I was like, ‘WHAT!’ but within a month I said, ‘you know God I am thankful that he chose Chicago because it’s going to work out better than if he’d been a part of my plan so to speak’ because God had a different plan in mind at that point.

Berni: And parallel thing, I’m in the U.K. at a conference and I had no dreams or anything for Africa and I met this young guy Joseph Kebbie…

Dave: Yeah.

Berni: And God opened a door and Joseph is now working with us and we have another Joseph in Rwanda and 50 stations have grown with the Gospel. God does some weird things sometimes…

Dave: Yes.

Berni: You had it in your plan

Dave: I had it in my plan (laughing)

Berni: And I didn’t have it in mine (laughing)

Dave: He did it through you so that’s okay, the ministry’s taking place in Africa and that’s really what it’s about. At the end it’s really about His ministry taking place or not taking place and it’s not necessarily is it Dave Hanson’s plan or Berni’s plan? It’s what do we need to do in order to minister, in this case, in Africa? And God raised up Joseph through a contact that you had and he’s probably done more that way than if I had worked my plan so to speak.

Berni: So you look forward to this next year you know, here we are on the cusp of a new year, what are your hopes and dreams? When you’re looking forward you know, what’s on your heart?

Dave: Well, here I am sitting at age 57, the realisation that I’m getting older each year and retirement is coming before I want it to so to speak, at least from the present job and what I’ve been thinking a lot about, in this week between Christmas and the new year, is the reality that there are a lot of Christians, when they get to my age or moving into the 60’s they become old grumps.

Berni: Uh hum.

Dave: All they can do is complain about either the Christian life or complain about what other Christians are doing and….

Berni: Whether their elbows hurt.

Dave: Yeah that’s right, aches and pains but I’m more focused on the grumpy side of the Christian life and complaining about people that God is using in a different way than He used them so I am praying that I will be just that little bit more filled with joy this next year than I was in 07. I want to have just a little bit more joy because the next year I want more yet because I don’t want to become one of those old grumpy Christians as I get older.

I mean when you think about young people looking at lives of older people and if they look at my life and here I’ve walked with the Lord for over 50 years and if they look at my life and they see an old grumpy Christian, why would they want to go down the same road? So I need to demonstrate the joy of the Lord in my life at an older age just as I did at a younger age and unfortunately many of us, as we get older, we become grumpy Christians and a lot of it has to do with how we prepare ourselves for those years when life is going to be different for us, the demands, and you know, there’s a reality that for some people there are physical..

Berni: Sure.

Dave: or other things that kick into life but the realities are also a lot of us that, you know I would suggest you know for example, we need to stay mentoring young people.

Berni: Mmm.

Dave: I need to stay in contact with young people. That helps me keep feeling young and helps me also understand how God is continuing to work in the lives of young people. So I pray that next year is just a little bit more joy than this year.

Berni: So is this like a new year’s resolution?

Dave: Ah yeah, it would be one for me at least; I have more than one obviously….

Berni: Yeah, yeah.

Dave: … but that would be one that, next year I’ve got to have a little bit more joy than I had last year.

Berni: New years resolutions are a funny phenomena that we kind of get to this year and we, there are some things that we know that we don’t want from last year and we want to ditch them and we want to change them but so often peoples new years resolutions fail. They last for about like 2 or 3 days and then it’s back to the same old, same old, same old.

My hunch is that we have stopped dreaming, we’ve got so busy about this and that and the buying and the mortgage blah, blah, blah, right, that we’ve actually stopped dreaming and hoping. One of the things I noticed this morning when I was praying, a lot of my time praying is actually just, just my mind wandering, letting it roam over the hills, setting it free, letting God show me some of the possibilities that are out there.

Dave: Yeah and for me, I have 3 wonderful grandchildren, that’s a big help when you can bring one of those children onto your lap and you can spend time reading the Word of God to them through Bible stories or whatever that case maybe, it takes you out of what you’re doing as far as all this ‘stuff’ of life and makes you realise that, sitting there within your hands is a life…

Berni: Uh hum.

Dave: that God brought into this world through my son and his wife and I have the chance to impact their lives for the future.

Berni: It’s an awesome thing and I want to encourage each one of us to kind of go, ‘okay, there’s a new year about to happen and there are some things happening in our lives that we don’t want to continue but sometimes we don’t have the power to break those.’ Sometimes, I don’t know about you, I’ve got a really sharp mind, there are some things I cannot do for myself and that’s what my relationship with Jesus Christ is all about. This sense that He is in this place with me, He has made His home with me and what I’ve discovered is, when I take those things to Him and I spend time with Him and I draw close to Him, He actually does things and changes things and puts the joy there and the peace there in a way that I could never do for myself. I just want to draw closer to Him and closer to Him and closer to Him, ’cause He does stuff you and I could never do.

Dave: Absolutely and that’s why in Acts 20 it talks so much about finishing the race..

Berni: Yeah.

Dave: and that’s what life is all about, finishing strong and it’s a process of going day after day, growing in the grace and understanding of who Jesus Christ is, what He wants of us and not being bogged down with the things of this world and finishing that race while we have the opportunity.

Berni: Well Dave, our race is finished, we’re out of time. Thankyou so much for joining us this week.

Dave: It’s been my privilege.