Celebrating 20 Years with Jesus!

God Transforms and Uses Our Imperfections

            Dave Wilkinson, called David by some, Rusty by others, was not a perfect person.  He somehow graduated from high school with good grades without ever reading a book all the way through.  When I met him, he didn’t have the confidence to read orally or to speak up in a group in public. His lack of proper English grammar made him sound ignorant to an educated person and masked his intelligence. He was totally insecure using math and was terrible at paying his bills on time.  He used profanity, habitually taking God’s name in vain.  His dad was always getting after him for doing stupid things.  Dave himself told me of many stupid things he had done, like what he did to make a girl he was dating so mad that she threw his class ring into the middle of a lake, like riding his motorbike through the high school hallway, and like having a flat tire driving cross-country and getting talked into buying a whole set of new tires.

            David heard the Gospel at a church he visited when he was on a leave from his Marine base in Yuma, Arizona.  He was about 19 or 20, and though he had grown up in Levittown, Pennsylvania, with churches all around, he didn’t remember ever having heard the Gospel before in his life.  When he did, he realized it was the way to a genuine relationship with God for now and for eternity, something worth living for and dying for.  He professed his belief before the church and soon after was baptized in the Pacific Ocean. While still in the Marines, Dave’s chaplain began to disciple him, instructing him in the teachings of Christ, but after a while Dave would hide from his chaplain and not answer his door.  He was still living as he always had, but had started talking about Jesus in the bars. When he finished his Marine service he hadn’t grown much in his faith, but he knew he was a Christian. He came home to Pennsylvania to find a church, but instead, he reconnected with his non-Christian high school partying and football playing buddies, and got into the partying scene once again.

            A year and a half later, when I met him, he had just decided two weeks prior to live 100% for God.   He was driving himself crazy living as a non-Christian on the outside, knowing that inside he had been born again and made new.  Two weeks after he made a promise to God to come back to church, he did, and we met that day at my church.  He started walking in obedience to Christ, and his life started transforming in many ways. His motto in relation to living the Christian life was, “All you have to do is read it [the Bible] and do it!” And so he put some of us more seasoned Christians to shame in his praying with belief and his rejoicing even in trials, as God’s Word commands.

            Early in our friendship, he struggled to understand why, as he cleaned up his life, his past of drunkenness, partying, and sexual immorality came back to haunt him in terrible nightmares. As I got to know him better, I learned he often worried too much about what people thought of him, and he took rejection from others hard. Throughout our marriage, he keenly felt his weaknesses, and never felt that he had good enough self-control and self-discipline. In his spirit of competition, he always strove to be better than he was the day before. To me, he was a model of self-discipline in many areas. For the majority of the 12 years I knew him, daily he had 5:00 AM time with God, followed by exercise.  The voracious “cookie monster” that I married, to improve his health, disciplined himself to eat no sugar or milk products.  He completed Bible college and some seminary studies with high marks, learned to play guitar, basketball, and rugby, learned a foreign language and culture, and read hundreds of books all the way through.    

            I was the spectator watching God transform him to be able to speak with correct grammar and gain knowledge and confidence to become an effective speaker and preacher–in two languages in front of large crowds.  He overcame his fear of math and learned to effectively manage family finances and those of several village churches.  He overcame many of his people-pleasing hang-ups and fears of rejection.  But I also watched as God gave him additional weaknesses to contend with like the ringing in the ears that came with the onset of Tinnitus after three weeks of migraine headaches and the difficult adjustment to hearing aids.  Once in PNG, it became increasingly difficult for him to know how to manage his asthma well, and it was this through this weakness that God took him to Heaven.  In spite of Dave’s imperfections and weaknesses, and because of God’s transformative power over them or strengthening in spite of them, God received glory and continues to receive glory from David’s life and death.

            Over the years, the Lord, his people’s prayers and support, and David’s example have helped me as his widow to continue serving in ministry, in spite of many discouragements, difficulties, and my own weaknesses. I have trusted God for strength to serve in missions in the USA, back in PNG as a single mom, and now again in the USA.  To date God has not granted another husband with a like-minded focus for mission’s ministry, so 20 years later, it is still me and my three sons, but now also two daughters-in-law and a grandson!   As I continue to serve in the present and to look to the future, I trust God that he knows what is best for us all. God knows what can bring Him the most glory through our lives, and we trust and bless Him when he gives and when he takes away. When he says, “No” or “Not now” to some of our prayers we learn to live in contentment with his will.  It is my joy that all of my sons and daughters-in- law walk in truth and serve God with their lives as they minister to the needy, to refugees, immigrants, and the homeless.  It is only by your prayers and God’s strengthening that we are who we are today and can do what we do.

            Some of my friends and former co-workers from Papua New Guinea captured well the message of Dave’s life when they shared some of his words and their memories of him at his burial service.  I hope these words will encourage you to faithfulness as they have encouraged me.  

By Joe Dunn (New Tribes Missionary friend we saw occasionally when we would be in Goroka or when his family would visit us in Dingay-mambuno or in Kerowagi, Chimbu Province). 

            “David served in the Marines.  He wasn’t ashamed of that fact, and yet once he became a Christian, he transferred those thoughts and how he had been trained into the army God, and he was proud also to serve and even more so in the army of the living God, and that really stood out in many ways in all that he said and did, as I’ll share more in a minute from something that he signed.  

            And another thing is that if you knew him you knew that he loved life, he loved challenge, and he loved sports and competition, and having been in the Marine Corp myself, there was an instant camaraderie with Dave and his family. And that was cemented one weekend when we went to see him and he told me, ‘Now bring your tennis shoes because I want you to play basketball with me.  There is a team in Kerowagi that we’ve never beat, and I’d really like to try.’ So we started playing and about half way through the game my tongue was dragging up and down the court and I was really wanting to quit, but I could tell Dave was really into it so I kept on and kept on, and it finally came down to the first one to 100 wins, so praise the Lord we got to 100 first, 100 to 96.  I was glad because I wasn’t sure what he would do after that if we didn’t win; maybe he’d ask us to go on. And that’s the kind of guy he was. He talked about how great it was to beat them for two hours. He was really encouraged by it.

            And then that night we sat and watched a movie called Glory; maybe you’ve seen it; maybe you’ve heard of it.  It’s about the American Civil War and the first black unit to fight for the North and to get together to stand for their cause,  and many of those guys were slaughtered in a charge on a fort, and many of them lost their lives dying for what they believed in.

            The next morning we left, and he gave me a Bible, and he’d signed it, and I’d like to read it. This particular black unit was called the 54^th infantry unit of Massachusetts. And he signs it this way:

‘Dear Joe,

Remember the 54^th a great illustration of courage and zeal. But God has given to us a greater 54 to motivate us, 1 John 5:4, which says, “For whoever is born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that overcomes the world even our faith.”

Remember the faithful in Hebrews chapter 11.’  

And in Hebrews chapter 11 there are several people listed for different things that they believed God for and what he accomplished through their lives. And he says,

‘Remember those people in that chapter and may our names be added to the list.  We are certainly outnumbered by the world, but not defeated.  God has chosen a small army to bring glory to himself.’

 And then he quotes, ‘for there is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few,’ a verse taken out of 1st Samuel.

‘No matter what odds you are up against, always remember that. “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us,” another verse from Romans.

‘So brother, “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”’

And he signs it, with a Greek term, ‘Semper Fidelis,’ which means ‘always faithful,’

‘Semper Fidelis,’

‘In Christ Jesus, Love Dave’

And he ends it with 1st Timothy 5:12, which talks about thanking God for being counted faithful for being put into His service and into his army.  

And I just want to say Rhonda and to his family that your life has taken a totally different turn of events.  But for those of us left behind, Dave probably paid 5, 6, or 7 dollars for this Bible, but I wouldn’t take a thousand for it. And I just want you to know that as I minister around here, and I’ve just started a new ministry down the road a couple miles, may God find me faithful, working with people that he [Dave] loved and that he gave his life for in the language that he used, Tok Pisin (New Guinea Pidgin), and I want to do that, to be faithful.”   

By Mike Edwards (Co-worker that would see us once or twice a year and visit over phone calls).

“We were a long ways away in Moresby and we only saw Dave and Rhonda once a year and then last year twice a year. It is hard to explain the closeness we feel because we weren’t together that much.  Last year we were accountability partners. And we would call each other once a month back when the phones were working.  The first thing I think of is genuine compassion.  There is a phrase going around called the real deal. He was the real deal. We were up here in January and Dave said we have to get the Edwards up more than once a year. They need a break. We were having some problems down were we work.  I remember one time he called up and we were having problems, and I think we had just been tear-gassed out of the house [due to police intervening in illegal activity on the adjoining property—a regular occurrence]. And I was in the pits. I wasn’t saying too much and I think he could sense it and he said, ‘Look, you can’t quit. Don’t quit.”  And I was about to bag it with my family.  And he said, “Before you quit, you come up here and work with us in the highlands.” The Bible says bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. And Dave did that with his genuine compassion.

The second thing is that his genuine compassion made him very bold and straightforward.  He was very straight with you and bold. And I think of in Galatians where Paul had to rebuke Peter one time and he said, what they were it doesn’t matter to me because they were wrong. And Dave was bold. I liked that; it always refreshed me. I remember one time he said we were trying to get I think a little piece of land up here in the Chimbu for a church or something, and I think George had been trying for years, and finally Dave went in there and said, “Look, what do I have to do?  Just tell me.  What do we have to do to get this piece of land?”  I really liked it; it was refreshing. I remember when George’s truck got stolen and it was taken to one of the worst places in the highlands and Dave went out looking. And first he went to the police, and they said it’s a real bad area. We would need to get some more help. And Dave said, “More help? We’ve got four men and we’ve got some guns, how much do you think we need?”  So Dave said, “You go get some more help, but I’m going to go find the truck.  And so they went with him.  He knew the guys he talked to in the coffee plantations knew who took it, so he told them,  “You tell the guys who took it that I’m looking and I’m going to find it.”  Dave was fearless because he knew the sovereignty of God, that he had nothing to fear because God is in control.  That was refreshing.

            The third thing was his team spirit.  He got that in the Marines, but I think they got it from the Bible, because team spirit is biblical. In the Marines they shave their heads to teach them that the cause is everything and the individual is nothing. And he infused our missionary team with this spirit of “We’ve got to be a team,” and it infected us. I Corinthians, it says he who plants and he who waters is nothing, but God who causes it to grow.  We’re just a small little group of missionaries here in ABWE in PNG, and Dave was like our spark plug. It’s like the spark plug got taken out of the engine. But then I got to thinking, God’s the spark plug and Dave must have been the spark plug wrench. I don’t know, but we’re going to miss that guy, but we’re going to see him again.

            I took some notes when Dave was talking just two weeks ago.  You know we missionaries we get together and we need some help. So he was speaking and this was his selfless attitude. He said, “John the Baptist, he sacrificed, we haven’t. When we think we’ve given it all, think again.”  He was talking about John’s self denial and he said John the Baptist had no house, no wife, no kids, nothing.  He gave it all. He said, “You know athletes go full out 100% for things that burn up, that perish, yet how about us?  Let’s not fool ourselves. We haven’t left a whole lot.” For those of you who aren’t missionaries, sometimes we missionaries kind of have pity parties, I do anyway, and feel sorry for myself for what I’ve left, but he said, “We haven’t left a whole lot. We haven’t sacrificed much at all.” And that was his selfless attitude. 

            2 more things: Dave had his priorities right.  I was reading a couple of statements. ‘The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.’ When something like this happens you say, maybe he made a mistake, maybe he should have stayed home, but you know what? Dave had his priorities right.  If we are thinking that way, we have our priorities wrong because the greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast us like souls in heaven. Jim Elliot said, ‘He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he can never lose.’  And Dave had his priorities right, and there are going to be people in heaven who will walk up and say, ‘I’m here because of you, Dave,’ because he had his priorities right.

            And the last thing that I would mention is, I would say, that Dave dealt in reality. Because reality is life and death, we’re all going to die. And he knew the most important thing is life is to tell other people how to get to heaven. King Agrippa said, ‘you’re mad, Paul,’ and I’m sure there were people that told Dave and Rhonda, ‘You’re crazy,’ but he knew reality: life and death. And when I think of David I know he went out for a run, and I think that he just kept on running to heaven. If Dave were here, he would use a sports illustration like he often did. I watched the tape of the rose bowl, and I knew that even though Michigan always lost, in this game they won. And it was exciting because even before I watched it, I knew my team was going to win.  And I think Dave would say, 'If you know Christ, you already know who is going to win. We win! We win! We don’t lose! Guaranteed!’  And he’s in heaven, man, and I’m going to be there, too.”

Feb 3, 1993 Numonhoi, Papua New Guinea

I want to add…Dave’s last quote in his journal was “A man is not ready to live until he is ready to die.”  Check out 1 Samuel 14:4-15, one of David’s favorite Bible passages that he mentions in the writing in Joe’s Bible. Thanks for reading! Posting this is my little way of worshiping God today, my way of commemorating the great honor it was that God called me to be Dave Wilkinson’s wife and to reflect on God’s great care of our family for the 20 years that Dave has been separated from us and with his Lord and Savior, for whom he lived and died. I hope it was a blessing to you!

All for Jesus, Rhonda Wilkinson