Caught by the Hound of Heaven

September 3, 2025

This week, I thought I would share with you a passage from my first book, Three Years: Making A Difference in the Time You Have Left.

The book is available through my website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other platforms.

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Except for special days like Christmas and Easter, I grew up not going to church. If it were not for my uncle, a Catholic priest, I would not have given much thought to God when I was young. It was his influence and mentoring that opened my thoughts to there being a God, a Creator. Through my uncle’s influence, I studied and prepared for my first communion, participated in Mass as an altar boy, experienced the Stations of the Cross, prayed the Rosary, and attended a Catholic summer camp where I met peers who believed.

As I entered my high school years, I became lost. My life was turned upside-down at the age of sixteen when the girl I dated became pregnant. The next several years were a blur as I tried to raise a child while finishing high school. My parents fought hard to navigate the chaos and turmoil of those years as they tried to support me and keep my head above water. I wrestled with guilt for years, knowing I had hurt them deeply. I felt I did not deserve their help and certainly did not deserve God’s love after all I had done.

The years that followed saw a roller coaster of ups and downs. My daughter’s mother and I broke up. My wife of thirty-four years entered and changed my life. I studied English and history in college. My dad could not have been prouder the day I graduated and stepped into the role of teaching high school literature and composition.

Yet, even with the many blessings throughout these years, I carried guilt, terrible guilt, for the things I had done, the people I had hurt, the God I knew deep down was there, but I had ignored. Francis Thompson reminded me that “The Hound of Heaven” had been pursuing me for a long time, those “strong feet” following after me. As I have reflected on those years, I know this is true.

I did everything I could to try and make up for the things I had done, the people I had hurt. I went back to the Catholic Church while in college and was confirmed. After my wife and I were married, I attended a local United Methodist Church with her each week. Together, we taught Sunday school, and I got involved in Disciple Bible Study. While continuing my studies in graduate school and working toward my teacher certification, I met a young man who introduced me to having a personal relationship with Christ, something I had not heard about growing up in the Catholic Church. One night, at the dinner table with David and his wife, I accepted Christ and asked Him into my heart, to lead my life. Even after all of this, however, the guilt continued. No matter what I did, how hard I worked or excelled, I could not make up for what I had done, the pain I had caused, or the sins I had committed.

Therefore, I did what any sensible person would do: I entered ministry. I thought to myself, “I’ll show God I’m serious . . . that I truly love Him and am truly sorry for my mistakes . . . I will go into ministry.” The next thing I knew, my wife and I were on a new journey that included selling our home, moving into a parsonage, serving as an associate pastor at the local United Methodist Church, and attending seminary classes in Washington, DC. It was a couple years after entering seminary that I came home to hear my wife’s words, “He didn’t make it.”

There came a day when I would understand how important it was that Paul says, “work out your salvation” and not “work on.” I learned that I did not need to work on my salvation, for the life, death, and resurrection of Christ took care of that. 1 Peter 2:24 tells us, “‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’” We cannot work on or earn our salvation, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Until that day, I carried my guilt, my burdens, trying every day to make amends.

It was after my dad died, after a year of depression and crying out to God for help, that I discovered the difference between Paul’s words, “work out your salvation,” and what I was doing, “working on my salvation.” I was still in many ways lost, grieving my dad, my best friend. There was nothing I could possibly do to make things better. There was only one place to cry out when my dad died, one person to cry out to, and I had cried out to Him. In fact, I had screamed.

A couple years after my dad’s death, I cried out to God once more. I could not keep going. The burden was too heavy, the guilt too overwhelming. It was, on top of my grief, destroying my relationships, my thoughts, and my connection with God. I needed a night like John Wesley experienced at Aldersgate when his “heart was strangely warmed.” One night as I was driving home from seminary, I began to pray using a method I had recently learned in a class on prayer. I prayed without speaking, simply focusing all my thoughts, all my desires and energy, on Christ. After ten or fifteen minutes, all my sins and all the moments I had turned away from God surfaced. It was at this pivotal moment that I recognized my need for a Savior. I had accepted Christ in my heart, but it wasn’t until that moment that I truly understood God’s grace. I understood what it meant. I placed all my unworthiness at the cross, giving it over to Christ. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a scripture reference, Malachi 1:2.

The second time, the impression was so strong I pulled over and looked up the passage. It read, “I have loved you, says the Lord.” At that very moment, I knew I had been forgiven, and Christ had entered my heart. There was no doubt. In that moment I truly, in John Wesley’s words, “felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.” This was my moment of assurance and I never picked up the sins I laid at the cross that night again. The guilt I had carried for years was gone.

Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven” had finally caught up with me.