How God Directed Me to Fire My Attorney
On Jan 27th, 2011, I was speaking at a story telling seminar at a local Christian college in Orlando, FL. During my introduction I mentioned my faith in Christ and my going through a divorce. At the end of my presentation, a Christian brother named Antonio Phillips approached me and stated emphatically that he and I needed to speak. I felt a bit of resistance to meeting with him, not knowing what his motive was, so I told him to just email my business partner who was keeping my schedule to arrange a time to meet. However, I truly had no desire to meet with him, so I kept delaying. About two weeks later, my conscience pinned me to the floor with, “you said you would meet with him, so meet with him”.
On February 10, 2011, I met with him over dinner where I discovered he had spent the last seven years in a hellish divorce custody battle. He told me his story and then challenged me not to fight the battle in divorce court, or for the children, saying that even if I won, I would still lose. He knew that she would make me pay hell each time I got the children for the rest of their life. He said, “As a father you want to fight because you believe that if you do not fight, the children will think you don’t love them, isn’t that right?” I said, “yes, that’s right.” He said, “I love my children dearly and my children know it, but I’m no longer willing to fight to keep what God has been pleased to take away.” He explained that the Lord had really been teaching Him about letting go, and then he said something so striking, that I pulled out my phone and made him say it again on video. He said, “Michael, do you want to continue to death grip your dead past, which God has chosen not to redeem, or are you willing to open up your hands to the life and goodness God has planned for you in the future?”
Before that, I had never had any thoughts other than to keep fighting for my family and my life. The thought of opening my hands and letting go of what God was clearly trying to remove from my life, had never occurred to me, until God used Antonio to speak to me. That had always felt like quitting and failure to me. Most men want to fight to keep their life, when Christ demands that we be willing to lose our life. Please note, God was going to ask me to give up the fight for my family for Him, but that does not mean that every Christian will lose their family. However, it does mean that every Christian must be prepared to leave all if Christ commands them to do so, in accordance with His will for their life. There is no person or thing that is more important than following Jesus Christ, regardless of the outcome. Whoever you love the most, you will follow and sacrifice for. Jesus demands to be our first love, and He is more than worthy as the Creator and Savior of all, to be so. Many times, following Jesus will result in others feeling like we hate them, because we are sacrificing them for Jesus. That is exactly what the Lord demands. Does the one who created all, not deserve just that? The people we may be called to “sacrifice” along the way, were also made by Him and belong to Him, not us! The Creator is always more important than the creation, and as Abraham discovered, there is no greater proof to God that we love Him more than all others, as when we are willing to “sacrifice” those we love.
Matthew 10:37 – “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10:39 “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it.”
Luke 14:26 – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.
Then, Antonio read to me the story of David and Saul in 1 Samuel 24 and challenged me to let God fight this battle like David did, rather than me, and to give up the win/lose court battle. I respected this brother’s faith and I was so moved by his wisdom and passion, but by the time I got back to my car, I concluded this was just too radical and risky of an idea for my situation. Soon after I got home that evening, a Bible teacher named Kay Arthur was on TV talking about this exact principle in 1 Samuel 24. I knew this could not be a coincidence, but I still felt Antonio’s advice was too radical or extreme.
The very next morning on February 11, 2011, I sat down to do my normal Bible study, and as I flipped the page to the next day’s reading, there it was again, 1 Samuel chapter 24. I was totally amazed, and as I sat there on my couch, I began to pray and asked God if He really wanted me to do this. As I was praying, I heard loud and clear in my spirit, as if God wrote the words on my heart, “If you will fire your attorney and trust me, I will defend you, and I will do it in a highly unusual way that will bring me much glory.”
I quivered inside with excitement and fear because I knew I was hearing from God, but that He was asking me to do something very risky which made no sense whatsoever to my natural instincts and my current understanding of Christianity. I knew this would be a huge risk to my relationship with my children and to my already collapsing financial future, even including jail if my ex-wife won, and I could not afford to pay what they demanded in child support and alimony.
Against all my own human reasoning, and against every one of my friends and family, I told the Lord I would trust Him and fire my attorney. My mother and stepfather both pleaded with me to see the danger and ignorance of doing so, even assuring me they would pay the attorney fees as long as needed, but I was now resolved to trust God’s words to me. Trusting God was going to make things much harder for a while, not easier.