The Blessed Life

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Welcome to Grace at the Fray, a podcast that explores the many dimensions of God’s grace that we find at the frayed edges of life. Come explore how God’s grace works to renew your life and send you on mission in His Kingdom.

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0:00:23.8 Jim Lovelady: Hello, beloved. Welcome to Grace at the Fray. All right, I confess I have chronic FOMO, fear of missing out. And the ironic tragedy of this, I guess, psychological disorder, is that because I spend all of my time wondering what I’m missing out on, I miss out on what’s right in front of me. I think one of the only ways to learn to enjoy being present is to have a concerted effort to practice slowing down. I realized this during one of our company spiritual retreat days when our director for spiritual formation, Tim Cornwell, invited us to do a prayer walk. And what he said was, “When we do this prayer walk, we gotta walk very slowly.” And I was so surprised at how difficult it was for me to just walk slowly. How would you do with that exercise? Do you look forward to that kind of thing, slowing down? Or do you live at such a fast pace that actually it makes it where you don’t even have to think about what you might discover in your life and the world around you if you would just slow down? So lately, I’ve been struggling to have the discipline to pause and practice prayerful examination, to look back on my day or my week or my month or year and prayerfully review it with Jesus. No judgment, no condemnation. Just sit back and think about what God has been up to in my life and the life of my family and my church and my work. Do you take time for that kind of prayerful examination? Maybe it’s prayers right before you fall asleep, or maybe it’s a weekend getaway or an annual retreat. Well, today’s episode invites you into the practice of slowing down and reflecting on your life, because that’s the very thing that my guests do in this conversation. Aaron and Holly Hicks have served 20 years in Spain. The Lord recently has called them to leave that ministry and to return to the States to serve at a church in upstate New York. So how in the world do you talk about 20 years of ministry? Oh, man, it’s so beautiful. This conversation is like a prayerful examination of, to quote Eugene Peterson, a long obedience in the same direction and to come to, really, a sweet and quietly joyful realization of what the blessed life looks like. My conversation with Aaron and Holly has Psalm 128 written all over it, and we talk about it during this conversation, but I want to read it now for you, and I want you to hear Eugene Peterson’s version from The Message. And it goes like this, “All you who fear God, how blessed you are! How happily you walk on his smooth, straight road. You worked hard and you deserve all that you’ve got coming. Enjoy the blessing. Soak in the goodness. Your wife will bear children as a vine bears grapes, your household lush as a vineyard, the children around your table as fresh and promising as young olive shoots. Stand in awe of God’s Yes. Oh, how He blesses the one who fears God. Enjoy the good life in Jerusalem every day of your life. And enjoy your grandchildren. Peace to Israel.” Wow. It’s astounding. This is what Christ gives us. This is the blessed life.

 

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0:04:24.8 Jim Lovelady: All right, well, Aaron and Holly Hicks, welcome to Grace at the Fray. This is fantastic for me because y’all have been serving in my favorite city in the entire world.

 

0:04:37.2 Aaron Hicks: Wow.

 

0:04:37.8 Jim Lovelady: So welcome.

 

0:04:39.5 Holly Hicks: With good reason.

  

0:04:40.7 Jim Lovelady: It’s with good reason. So I love Granada. You just sang about Granada, and maybe I’ll put that on and link it in a bonus track somewhere or something. It was awesome. Welcome to the studio.

 

0:04:50.5 Aaron Hicks: Thanks.

 

0:04:51.4 Holly Hicks: Thank you.

 

0:04:52.8 Jim Lovelady: So you’ve been serving in Granada for 20 years. How’d it go?

  

0:05:00.7 Aaron Hicks: It was great.

 

0:05:01.3 Holly Hicks: Fine.

 

0:05:02.1 Aaron Hicks: Fine.

 

0:05:03.5 Jim Lovelady: How was school? Fine.

  

0:05:06.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, so tell me the story. Tell me what the Lord has been doing. We were talking before pressing play or pressing record about what the blessed life looks like. So you can tell me which one it is in a little bit. Yeah, so tell me the story. Tell me the story of Granada.

 

0:05:25.2 Aaron Hicks: Okay. How far back do you want to go? We could go to third grade. Well, not too far off. We could go all the way back to Holly in high school, which is part of the…

 

0:05:33.6 Jim Lovelady: Is that the first time you went to Spain?

 

0:05:36.0 Holly Hicks: Yes. Yes, but more importantly, after having a foreign exchange student live with us for a year from Madrid and having a lot of conversations about faith, I started praying for the country at 16.

 

0:05:48.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s awesome.

 

0:05:49.3 Aaron Hicks: So be careful what you pray for, because you might end up being part of the answer to that prayer.

 

0:05:54.4 Jim Lovelady: Well, right. That’s fantastic. I didn’t realize that.

 

0:05:57.6 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:05:58.0 Jim Lovelady: Okay, so since age 16, praying for Spain.

 

0:06:02.4 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:06:02.5 Holly Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:06:02.9 Aaron Hicks: My first contact with Spain was after college. Went on a summer mission trip to North Africa, and our orientation and debrief was on the southern coast of Spain. And it was an emotional time for me. It was a very difficult summer. In fact, at that point, I told God, “Okay, I’ve done the mission thing. Check that box. I’m done.” Yes, and that was pretty much convinced that was that.

 

0:06:30.7 Jim Lovelady: This isn’t for me.

 

0:06:31.2 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, but…

 

0:06:32.0 Jim Lovelady: I’ve decided.

 

0:06:33.3 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

  

0:06:34.6 Aaron Hicks: But lo and behold, about, I guess it was maybe four or five years later, I went to Urbana, Champaign, Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The pastor of the church that we were attending when I was at Gordon-Conwell Seminary invited me, or he invited the whole congregation, whoever wanted to go with him. We were thinking about doing cross-cultural work and mission work, had talked about it, prayed about it.

 

0:06:55.7 Jim Lovelady: Y’all met in college, right?

 

0:06:56.7 Aaron Hicks: Yes.

 

0:06:57.3 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:06:57.5 Aaron Hicks: We weren’t clear at all about whether that was something God wanted us to do. And it was at Urbana, when walking through a huge convention hall with 10 million stands, I think… I think our company goes there as well.

 

0:07:12.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:07:13.5 Aaron Hicks: And somebody just saw me walking like a lost sheep and said, “Hey, are you thinking about doing some overseas or mission work?” I said, “Well, maybe. Not sure.” “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” I said, “Somewhere Latin America or South America, ’cause my wife speaks some Spanish and I’m interested in learning Spanish.” And he said, well… The stand was Greater Europe Mission was the name of the stand, which I had never heard of. He said, “Did you know there’s a Spanish-speaking country in Europe?” And I literally looked at him like a deer in the headlights, and I had to think about it for a second. I was like, “What’s the Spanish-speaking country in Europe?”

  

0:07:49.7 Jim Lovelady: Which one would that be?

 

0:07:51.0 Aaron Hicks: And then suddenly I was embarrassed and said “Oh, yeah, you’re right.” And then he said, “Would you go back to the dorm room tonight where you’re staying, would you do me a favor and read the chapter in Operation World on Spain, the spiritual state of Spain?” And I said, “Oh, yeah, sure, I can do that.” And I did that and just started weeping. That night, I was weeping because I had been to Europe as an exchange student in France, and I knew the spiritual landscape was very post-Christian, very dry. But I, for some reason in my mind, hadn’t put together Europe and missions. And so that was kind of an aha moment. And I actually called Holly that night and said, “I think God might be leading us someday to Spain.”

 

0:08:34.3 Jim Lovelady: What did you say?

 

0:08:36.2 Holly Hicks: Probably, “Oh, we’ll talk about it later.” Unless it’s a present reality, I don’t deal with it.

 

0:08:42.3 Aaron Hicks: She said, “Yeah.” I think I remember she said, “Well, let’s talk about that when you get home.” That was pretty much her answer. So that was in 1996, ’97. The Urbana was over Christmas, New Year’s, ’96, ’97, and 10 years later, we ended up in Spain.

 

0:08:58.5 Jim Lovelady: Which I think is wonderful because so many times people are like, “Oh, I think I’m being called, I better go now.” But it’s like, no, this is a slow burn. And over the course of 10 years, that’s when your feet hit the ground.

 

0:09:15.4 Holly Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:09:15.5 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:09:15.9 Holly Hicks: Had to get the direction, go there. We didn’t have that for a while.

 

0:09:20.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:09:20.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:09:21.9 Jim Lovelady: How did you come to our company? You didn’t see the Serge booth at Urbana.

 

0:09:27.4 Aaron Hicks: No.

 

0:09:27.9 Holly Hicks: College friends.

 

0:09:29.7 Jim Lovelady: Is that what it was?

 

0:09:29.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:09:30.0 Holly Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:09:30.6 Aaron Hicks: I don’t know if I can say their names, but he was a friend from college and we had been supporting.

 

0:09:35.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, you Cornell folks.

 

0:09:36.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. And so he recruited us, basically.

 

0:09:40.0 Jim Lovelady: Ah.

 

0:09:41.6 Aaron Hicks: He said, “If you’re interested in Spain, we’ve got something going on in Spain.”

 

0:09:45.5 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s awesome.

 

0:09:46.5 Aaron Hicks: I said, “Oh, what’s going on there?” He said, “I have no idea, but I know the people.”

 

0:09:50.5 Jim Lovelady: It’s a thing.

 

0:09:50.9 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. I know this couple, Tom and Jane. Anyway.

 

0:09:54.2 Jim Lovelady: Oh, yeah.

 

0:09:54.6 Aaron Hicks: So we went and visited, and that was it.

 

0:09:56.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, I love it. In 2000, I did a summer project with another sending agency to Granada, and that’s where I fell in love. And it’s just funny how you get exposed to different adventures and the Lord really changed my life. I work for a missions agency now. I’m a pastor who works for a missions agency because of the things that I’ve experienced doing short-term and then living in Granada for a year doing overseas ministry and cross-cultural work. I love that city. Were you sent to Granada? Did you know about Granada?

 

0:10:36.4 Aaron Hicks: We did not know about Granada before we went to visit our acquaintances…

 

0:10:40.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Tom and Jane.

 

0:10:42.1 Aaron Hicks: Tom and Jane.

 

0:10:42.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:10:42.9 Holly Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:10:43.8 Aaron Hicks: I, in fact, knew nothing about Granada. And we were so overwhelmed because we had three kids at the time and one on the way, I did not even do any research. We just kind of got on a plane and went.

 

0:10:54.2 Holly Hicks: They opened a window in their apartment when we visited and there were mountains. And we were like…

 

0:10:59.0 Aaron Hicks: The Sierra Nevada.

 

0:11:00.4 Holly Hicks: He loves mountains.

 

0:11:01.0 Aaron Hicks: Filled with snow in the background. And I said, “Oh, Holly, I think we’re called to come here.” And she said, “No, you just like mountains.”

 

0:11:09.0 Jim Lovelady: Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Oh, yeah. I love it. What month was it? Because year-round there’s snow there.

 

0:11:17.3 Holly Hicks: February.

 

0:11:17.7 Aaron Hicks: It was around February, March. Yeah. And the snow in the mountains there is from October to…

 

0:11:24.6 Holly Hicks: June.

 

0:11:25.0 Holly Hicks: Yeah, May or June, usually.

 

0:11:26.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Yeah, fantastic.

 

0:11:28.9 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:11:31.3 Jim Lovelady: So you fell in love with Granada. What do you love about Granada?

 

0:11:33.7 Holly Hicks: The people. Yeah, they’re sincere, straightforward, very relational. It’s easy. You get together and you spend hours and hours together. Sometimes you felt a little like, “I need to get things done,” but most of the time it was a delight. And yeah, we love the people.

 

0:11:53.0 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. I think that’s what, in the end, you open your heart to the people that you’re ministering to and you fall in love with the things that they are and they represent. But there’s so many things that I love about Granada. I mean, I love the history. The last seat of Moorish power and the spot from which Spain became Spain, united as a country.

 

0:12:21.9 Holly Hicks: I dragged my family into a lot of castles.

 

0:12:23.9 Aaron Hicks: And Roman ruins.

 

0:12:24.3 Jim Lovelady: Oh yeah?

 

0:12:24.7 Holly Hicks: And Roman ruins.

 

0:12:25.4 Aaron Hicks: There’s Roman ruins everywhere.

 

0:12:26.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:12:27.3 Aaron Hicks: So, yeah, just the history of Granada is amazing. Of course, the Sierra Nevada there, the mountains are amazing. It’s just an interesting place. University town as well.

 

0:12:39.8 Holly Hicks: Great weather.

 

0:12:40.6 Aaron Hicks: 70,000 students. But I think just what we came to really love about the people and the culture probably is what I would highlight, what Holly just said about the relational aspect. They will drop whatever they’re doing and take you out to the local cafe and have a drink with you and spend three hours.

 

0:13:00.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:13:01.3 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. In fact, if that means they miss work, the relationships are a priority and time is not as much of a…

 

0:13:12.4 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, it’s not… You don’t have to limit things as much as you would in our kind of culture.

 

0:13:17.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. One of the things that became culturally convicting for me was how much I… How much of an American I am when it comes to time is money. I gotta get some stuff done. I gotta do, do, do, do. Instead of just like, “Hey, no, no, no, no, chill out, be.” I will never forget the time that I was waiting for a bus and I walked into a cafe and I asked for a coffee to go. And the person was… This was years ago, they probably do it more now… But the guy was like, “To go?”

 

0:13:50.2 Holly Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:13:51.3 Jim Lovelady: “Why?”

 

0:13:51.9 Aaron Hicks: “Where you going?”

 

0:13:52.4 Jim Lovelady: “Where do you need to be? No, you sit down and you enjoy just being.” And I was like… He didn’t scold me that much. It was all with his eyes. It was kind of like, “Why?”

 

0:14:04.9 Holly Hicks: You’re weird.

 

0:14:05.4 Jim Lovelady: As soon as… Yeah. Very much like, “Okay, here you go. I’ll find a to-go cup, figure something out.” In that moment I realized, oh my gosh, I need to chill.

 

0:14:18.6 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:14:18.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. So Granada told me to chill.

 

0:14:21.7 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you like efficiency and getting things done quickly and rapidly, it might not be the best place for you.

 

0:14:32.8 Jim Lovelady: That’s right.

 

0:14:33.8 Holly Hicks: Yeah. It has its downside.

 

0:14:35.6 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. Yeah.

 

0:14:36.6 Jim Lovelady: Well, like every place, there’s all sorts of frustrations. But all right, so talk to me about church planting, starting a church. I love this story because when Lori and I lived there, we prayed. We prayed for your church.

 

0:14:51.3 Aaron Hicks: Wow.

 

0:14:51.9 Jim Lovelady: Back in 2003 and 2004, we prayed that there would be a church. And so part of why you guys are so special to us is, I mean, we love you as people, but you also symbolize this thing of like, the Lord answers prayers.

 

0:15:06.3 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:15:06.7 Jim Lovelady: You know?

 

0:15:08.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:15:08.7 Jim Lovelady: And oh boy, did he answer our prayers. So, hey, so tell me about Reconciliation.

 

0:15:15.6 Aaron Hicks: Reconciliation Church, yeah. So I guess the roots of it are when we first went to Granada, there was the idea of church planting on the idea table along with a lot of other ideas. They had even mentioned it in the recruiting phase. And that seemed exciting to us. We had a real heart for reaching out to just the local culture and the idea of an international community too, reaching out to the international community. Around 2007, I guess it was, we basically said, “Well, we need to decide if we’re doing this or not.” We had been there a year, year and a half. And so we went off and had a retreat. And I remember specifically the meeting that after having this whole weekend retreat, we had invited a couple other people with the possibility of joining like a core team. There was a Spanish couple that were there. And we went around the circle at one point… I think it was… Probably can’t say his name either, but a fellow named Dan, who has a lot of experience and he was living with us at the time there. And he said, “Well, let’s go around the room and just sort of see if people are what they think about this idea that we’ve put on the table of planting a church.” And for some reason, it started with me. I don’t know. I was at the edge of the circle. He said, “Aaron, what do you think?” I said, “Well, I really don’t know, but I hope so. I’m going to say a strong maybe. Yeah, I think it would be great to plant a church.”

 

0:16:41.8 Jim Lovelady: It started with a strong maybe. I love it.

 

0:16:44.3 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:16:45.5 Jim Lovelady: And then…

 

0:16:45.6 Holly Hicks: I was similar. The two of us were kind of like, “I’m not sure.” And then everybody else after us, “Yes, yes, yes.”

 

0:16:53.2 Aaron Hicks: Yes, yes, yes. And it got all the way back around in the circle. I said, “Can I change my vote to yes?”

 

0:16:58.6 Jim Lovelady: Oh that’s awesome.

 

0:17:00.0 Aaron Hicks: So that’s… I’m probably not the typical church planter that’s been like, “Yeah, we’re going to do this. Here’s the vision.” It was much more of a team effort from the very beginning.

 

0:17:10.5 Jim Lovelady: But it was an equal strong maybe. So you guys are a team.

  

0:17:15.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:17:16.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:17:16.6 Holly Hicks: And part of it was a desire… There had been a focus on a more unreached people group at the time, and it had become awkward to just have Americans and this group. And so it actually was broadening to general church planting to make a place that was more comfortable because there were others there too.

 

0:17:36.6 Aaron Hicks: Welcoming of all different nations and reducing some of the cultural barriers that existed between Spanish culture and this particular people group, which historically there was a lot of cultural barriers. So the idea was to plant a church that, hence the name Reconciliation also, that would be a place of seeing the gospel lived out even across different cultures and ethnic groups that historically had trouble getting along. So we started with a prayer group… Wait, that’s not true. We started with a committee because there were some Presbyterians in the room and we said, “Let’s form a committee.”

  

0:18:15.7 Aaron Hicks: And I think…

 

0:18:16.1 Jim Lovelady: When in doubt.

 

0:18:16.9 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, we did the committee for about six months. And then I believe it was a Latin American friend of Jane’s who said, “Oh, you’re going to start a church? When are you starting?” And Jane said, “Well, we’ve started a committee.” And she looked and said, “Well, why don’t you just start a prayer meeting?” And we said, “Oh, maybe we should do that.” So we started a prayer meeting and that was in 2008. And in 2009, we officially started Reconciliation Church in the basement of Tom and Jane’s house.

 

0:18:46.2 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s right. It was in the basement.

 

0:18:47.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:18:48.3 Jim Lovelady: I think I remember eating dinner… Did they have their dining room down in the basement?

 

0:18:54.8 Aaron Hicks: They had a multi-purpose room with a patio out back. And Tom would cook up lentils every Sunday. A huge pot of lentils. That was what we did after… Actually, we had Sunday evening service.

 

0:19:07.9 Jim Lovelady: Alright, so walk me through some of the ups and downs. Go down memory lane. Cross-cultural ministry for 20 years, you guys faithfully serving doesn’t mean always joyfully serving, always trusting while you serve, always exuberantly serving. Faithfulness doesn’t need those things, right? For my part, just spoiler alert, for me to look at the 20 years of ministry that you guys have been doing, it’s such a joy for me. I mean, I can’t express… I’ve been trying to… I did not sleep last night because I was like, “How do I talk about how beautiful it is that you…” I want to celebrate the two of you in faithful ministry that you have had. And I don’t have words. So, I’m a word guy, but I mean, maybe not. So, go down memory lane.

 

0:20:01.8 Aaron Hicks: Frustrations.

 

0:20:02.6 Holly Hicks: Yeah. I mean, in the beginning, it’s constant turnover. Usually a lot of foreigners, a lot of people without jobs, and people that are kind of messes. More obviously than all of us. And…

 

0:20:19.0 Aaron Hicks: Just people coming out of very unstructured families. Like our first…

 

0:20:23.4 Holly Hicks: Drugs.

 

0:20:25.4 Aaron Hicks: Our first Spanish member, well, guy that was baptized, was one of these guys who had been through every religious search, every group, had burned all the relational bridges in his family, had served time in prison. And that’s who God brought to us in the beginning. And there was a big crisis, a financial crisis which hit Spain around 2010.

 

0:20:53.0 Jim Lovelady: Oh yeah.

 

0:20:53.6 Aaron Hicks: The mortgage-backed crisis. I think it started earlier here in the States, but around by 2010, it really was hitting hard. And so we basically, at the five-year mark… And this is interesting… At the five-year mark, I said, “Oh, we’re going to have a five-year anniversary. What would be great is to pull out the photo from the first worship service and give a certificate of recognition for all the people that have been with us during these five years.” And I pulled it out and I’m looking, scanning the photo, I said, “Oh, there’s one.” Everyone else had left. So that was a time of… Well, we did give him a certificate. Actually, he’s still there. But that was one of those things that was hard. I think also just on a personal level, there was just a lot of discouragement. Like, I would say there’s… In some ways, there were probably more times of discouragement than encouragement in the early years especially.

 

0:21:49.2 Holly Hicks: Yeah, it feels like it’s going nowhere.

 

0:21:50.5 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, you just feel like you’re spinning your wheels. You long to see more fruit, you long to see more life transformation, you long to see more…

 

0:21:57.5 Holly Hicks: Superficial conversations. How many times do I have to have tapas to be able to talk about something real?

 

0:22:03.0 Jim Lovelady: Okay, gotcha. Yeah, so give me, put more flesh and blood on that, because ministry leaders all over the world have their own version of that. What was your version of those frustrating things? Like, “I’m going to go hang out with people and we’re going to talk at this surface level, but I would love to know you more. I would love to hear your story at this level. How many tapas do we need to do to do that?”

 

0:22:28.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, yeah.

 

0:22:30.0 Holly Hicks: You get together hoping to talk about something real, get below the surface level, get to religious topics, Jesus. And most of the time, yeah, it stayed very superficial. They want to trust you before they’ll enter in that.

 

0:22:45.1 Jim Lovelady: You’re coaxing them out of their shell.

 

0:22:46.1 Holly Hicks: And so it takes a lot of years to get there.

 

0:22:49.5 Aaron Hicks: And we tried. People would say, like, “Oh, tell us what works.” And we said, “Nothing. Absolutely nothing works.” Like, so we tried everything. I’m talking about like outreaches and events and… I mean, literally, we tried everything. And pretty much that was accurate. Like, nothing was the secret sauce. Nothing was the answer. And I think that’s what would… We would often have these new ideas in the summer. We’d sort of pray and brainstorm, and we’d do these campaigns or whatever in the fall. And I would get to Christmas and we’d look back on those three months and say, “Was there any fruit here? Was there any…” And so January was just always a slump month for me. I would say the first six to seven years I was there, just like, “What am I doing here? I could go back to the United States and have a fruitful ministry.” All this, like, the grass is greener somewhere else.

 

0:23:42.8 Jim Lovelady: Grass is greener. Yeah.

 

0:23:45.5 Aaron Hicks: And actually, it was Dan who often was the key player in my life. He would sit down and he’d say, “Aaron, let’s grab a coffee together.” And he would just walk me through, “I think you need some time off. I think you need to spend more time with your wife. I think you need to spend some time with your kids. I think you just need to relax and God’s doing His work.” And I’d be like, “Oh, okay. I need to relax into God’s plan.”

 

0:24:11.2 Holly Hicks: And the encouragement that was kind of hard to hear, that statistically it took 20 years to plant a church in Spain.

 

0:24:19.3 Aaron Hicks: Oh, yeah. I remember the first time he told me that. Yeah, first time Dan told me that, he said, “I’ve done some research. It seems like the average church in Spain takes about 20 years.” This was like five years in. I was like, “Well, why didn’t you tell me at the beginning?”

 

0:24:33.6 Jim Lovelady: It would not have been a strong maybe.

 

0:24:34.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, I don’t know if I have that in me, Dan.

 

0:24:39.3 Holly Hicks: That’s why he didn’t tell us in the beginning.

 

0:24:41.0 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:24:42.7 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, it’s crazy how the slow burn requires, I mean, what you’re saying, what works? Well, you gotta be there for 20 years. That’s what works. And even then, it’s not like a guarantee that that works. It’s just, go be faithful, go do the things that the Lord calls you to do, go experiment. All of these things confront my need to get something done, my need to do something, my need to show some sort of accomplishment. And so my Januarys would be absolutely devastating if over the course of, like you’re saying, the first five years, it would be because for my personality, I go, “What do I have to show for myself?” And I feel like Granada is this way that the Lord sanctifies that attitude and moves you toward trust to just be a child of God. Yeah, just be a child of God. You don’t have to do the child of God stuff. You don’t have to do anything to prove that you’re a child of God. You don’t have to do anything to make yourself become a child of God. Just go be. And man, that’s really…

 

0:25:55.2 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, and I think in particular, I can’t speak for other countries, but in southern Spain, on the one hand, they’re a very open culture and very welcoming. And on the other hand, it takes a long time to build a trust that goes deeper. One example of that, our downstairs neighbor would ask me every single time I saw him, “Do you like Granada? Are you going to stay?” For 15 years, he asked me that question, “Are you going to stay?” And I’m thinking to myself, “I’ve been here 15 years. Like…”

 

0:26:33.6 Jim Lovelady: What do you want?

 

0:26:34.2 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. The funny thing is, around year 16, he stopped asking, “Are you going to stay?”

 

0:26:40.1 Jim Lovelady: Interesting. He believes you now.

 

0:26:42.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, it was kind of like he wanted to see. So there’s that sense of it takes a while for the people to feel like you’re committed and you’re there. And I think that longevity, and it’s sort of like what you said just being present, just being steady, just being there, was a high value in that culture. And we saw a lot of the fruit of that in the later years.

 

[music]

 

0:27:16.5 Jim Lovelady: I want to pause this conversation and invite you to join us in prayer for the Serge field workers that we here at the headquarters in Philadelphia are praying for each week. We meet on Tuesday and Friday mornings to pray. And in this week, we’re continuing to pray for our teams in the UK. Would you pray with me? Lord, we pray that you would bless these folks. Remind them that their labors are not in vain and that the long obedience that they find themselves in is part of your blessing for them because you love them. So give them great joy in their work in your Kingdom and the pleasure of your joy as they follow you. Give them wisdom and let your grace bound in their relationships with one another, with family members and children, and with the people that they serve. Heal all sicknesses, liberate the enslaved, protect them from the powers and principalities of darkness. And restore to them the joy of your salvation. And let your Kingdom come and your will be done in their life and in their places that they serve, just as it is in Heaven. We pray in your name. Amen. Now back to the conversation.

 

0:28:39.6 Jim Lovelady: So talk to me about when things started to click and five, six years in. Is that when it was? And what was that like for y’all and what was that like for the church when…

 

0:28:53.7 Holly Hicks: I think it was a gradual build up after that.

 

0:28:56.0 Aaron Hicks: I would say 10 years in.

 

0:28:56.9 Holly Hicks: Year five and particularly more growth, I would say around COVID times, strangely.

 

0:29:04.8 Jim Lovelady: Strangely, yes.

 

0:29:05.4 Holly Hicks: But, yeah, it was gradually people choosing to stay, having some families now, having people with jobs, and that took just time and building into them. Those are sweet years where you form a family. Like you get to know each other, you know each other well, you see each other every week and have more than just, “Hi, how are you?” So those were sweet years of that part. Still a good amount of people coming and going, but there were others that stayed.

 

0:29:37.9 Aaron Hicks: A strong nucleus. Yeah.

 

0:29:40.0 Holly Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:29:41.0 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, I would say about 10 years in, we started to see some real traction. When I mean traction, I mean reaching Spaniards. We had started to have Spaniards coming, somewhere possibly had grown up Christian, but most of them, I would say not. And Spaniards getting baptized. So that’s living in Spain, I would say that is a harder point to get to. It’s easier to reach non-Spaniards. So in particular, I would say the early nucleus of our church was mostly from Latin America. Well, some Americans because we were working there, but Latin Americans in particular, because God has really been doing an amazing thing in Latin America. And so those that come over were much more open to Protestant, evangelical Christianity. And so I would say just before COVID probably we started gaining some real traction in the church. And then, yeah, when COVID hit, it was interesting. We didn’t know, were we going to have to shut the doors? I’m sure a lot of churches had that experience.

 

0:30:49.9 Jim Lovelady: Right. Yeah, and Spain went closed up shop during COVID.

 

0:30:53.7 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. For three months we weren’t allowed out of our apartment.

 

0:30:57.2 Holly Hicks: Except a grocery stop or if you had to go to the doctor.

 

0:31:00.2 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, you had to… And if you didn’t have an official excuse or…

 

0:31:03.3 Jim Lovelady: A hall pass.

 

0:31:04.6 Aaron Hicks: You would be fined. So it was a pretty strict lockdown. And we just really didn’t know what was going to happen with the church. And it was interesting because that really is when things began to take off for the church. Yeah, God used that time of upheaval to really, I think, bring a lot of people to desire community and desire maybe look for God.

 

0:31:28.4 Holly Hicks: Yeah, Kiko might be an interesting just a snapshot of a guy that was invited to the church just before COVID.

 

0:31:37.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. By his Latin American friend who…

 

0:31:40.6 Holly Hicks: They were in a bike group together.

 

0:31:41.1 Aaron Hicks: I guess girlfriend at the time.

 

0:31:42.3 Jim Lovelady: Oh, nice.

 

0:31:43.5 Aaron Hicks: She had invited him to church. She had been having lots of conversations about God with him. He’s from kind of a non-practicing Catholic family. So he agreed he would take her to church and go to church with her. And he showed up, got to the door and couldn’t come in. He couldn’t walk in. He couldn’t do it. He said, “This is going to be a cult,” or they’re going to…

 

0:32:04.2 Holly Hicks: Feels too weird.

 

0:32:05.4 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. So he said to her at the door, he’s like, “You go in. I’m going to wait in the park.” So of course after service…

 

0:32:09.9 Jim Lovelady: The exercise park right across?

 

0:32:12.6 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, yeah. The little park.

 

0:32:13.5 Holly Hicks: In the plaza.

 

0:32:14.9 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:32:15.4 Aaron Hicks: So I went out after service and chatted with him and tried to get to know him a little bit. And he’s a very friendly guy. We chatted about different things, connected on bicycling and different things that he likes to do. Next week, same thing. Came in. He was planning to come in, couldn’t do it, went and sat in the park for the whole. And the services are longer in Spain, so an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes, he’s just sitting in the park waiting for his girlfriend to come out. Third week, same thing. Fourth week, he comes in. Never left after that.

 

0:32:42.9 Jim Lovelady: Huh.

 

0:32:43.4 Holly Hicks: Although he says he understood nothing at the beginning.

 

0:32:45.4 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. He said it was like a foreign language. He’s like, “I didn’t really understand anything anybody was saying.” But he’s like, it just had a… He experienced something that he said…

 

0:32:54.3 Jim Lovelady: Just the vibe.

 

0:32:55.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, that he wanted more of.

 

0:32:56.6 Jim Lovelady: Oh, I love it.

 

0:32:57.6 Aaron Hicks: He got baptized about a year and a half, two years later, and then had a major health crisis. And yeah, it’s funny how we saw that pattern many times, either before or after conversion, people having real crises. But God has used all of that for His glory. So that’s…

 

0:33:20.0 Jim Lovelady: Wow.

 

0:33:21.5 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:33:21.6 Jim Lovelady: So 20 years of shepherding people, 20 years of walking with them through the ups and downs, 20 years of having parachuted into a place. I mean, the Lord has been at work in Granada. It’s not like always dispelling this idea that we’re going to go and start something. It’s like, no, the Lord has been…

 

0:33:40.0 Aaron Hicks: Absolutely.

 

0:33:40.5 Jim Lovelady: Working in this everywhere. 20 years of shepherding and walking with people. Talk to me about what it was like when the Lord called you guys back to the States. ‘Cause you’re a pastor, you’re taking a pastoral position in New York to do upstate New York, middle New York?

 

0:34:01.2 Aaron Hicks: Upstate. Upstate.

 

0:34:01.6 Jim Lovelady: Upstate?

 

0:34:02.2 Aaron Hicks: Definitely. Yeah.

 

0:34:03.4 Holly Hicks: It’s not New York City, it’s upstate.

  

0:34:06.3 Jim Lovelady: That’s… Okay. There it goes.

 

0:34:07.7 Aaron Hicks: Depends on who you talk to.

 

0:34:09.3 Jim Lovelady: Well, you know, I’m trying to figure out like North Jersey, South Jersey, Central Jersey, there are people that insist. So I don’t know. So upstate New York, the Lord has called you to do pastoral ministry. But when you realized that, it was like nine months ago, is that right?

 

0:34:23.5 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, something like that.

 

0:34:25.2 Jim Lovelady: So walk me through the last nine months and what it’s been like to survey the landscape of the way that the Lord has ministered to you over the course of 20 years and what it’s been like to look at… I mean, from my perspective, you may not feel this way, but I think you should… A job well done. You look back and you go, “Well, that went pretty good.” A lot of hard, of course, but…

 

0:34:55.1 Aaron Hicks: I mean I would say my overall feeling is just one of utter humility that I feel like I brought very little to Spain and we have left with so much just by God’s grace. So there’s a lot of joy. A lot of joy and a lot of grief because we’ve poured out our lives and received more than we gave. I think sometimes people think that grief and joy are opposites, but I think they’re from the same root, which is love. So we have loved, but even more, we’ve been loved over those 20 years. And if I weren’t absolutely convinced that this is the timing and the will of… The will of God, I know, is a complicated question. For me, it’s always been a combination of some kind of inner conviction and seeing circumstances align in ways that I say that can’t be just coincidence, has to be God-instance.

 

0:36:02.7 Jim Lovelady: Right, right.

 

0:36:03.3 Aaron Hicks: But if I weren’t absolutely sure, I don’t think I could have left because, yeah.

 

0:36:10.3 Holly Hicks: Yeah. Maybe a photo of it would be after we were contemplating it, we went to a birthday party of one of the youth. They had organized a party in the church space and the youth were just… It was so wholesome and good what had created through the years. I’d had them in Sunday school since they were little and they were dancing together and just having a great time. And we’re saying, oh my goodness, how can we leave this? Like this is crazy. We’re going to a place that doesn’t have many youth, it doesn’t have that many kids. Our church is full of kids. There was nothing, humanly speaking, except for caring for our elderly parents, which was an issue, that was a plus, really.

 

0:36:51.0 Aaron Hicks: Well, we do have a grandchild also now.

 

0:36:53.5 Holly Hicks: There are other issues, I’m not saying, but as far as work goes, like feeling purposeful, loving what we do, enjoying the people, yeah, it was a joy.

 

0:37:05.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, you see this snapshot of something that is just so tremendously beautiful and you… This is the mystery of all of this stuff. It’s like you’re watching it, but you’re also in the snapshot and you’re part of… You are a significant part of having made that happen. So I love that you talked about joy and grief being kin.

 

0:37:30.2 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:37:30.4 Jim Lovelady: Because you guys are like the walking paradox of that.

 

0:37:33.6 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. And we’ve cried and shed more tears in the last eight, nine months than I have in my entire life. We got to a point where we’re like, “Can we keep doing this?” But honestly, I mean, you mentioned that you’ve been contemplating the blessed life, and I feel that’s probably the word that I would most identify with. I just feel blessed for having been invited by God to watch him do something. The whole analogy of being invited by your father, who’s a master carpenter, to bang some nails on the bench, that’s the way I feel.

 

0:38:17.9 Jim Lovelady: That’s how you feel.

 

0:38:18.6 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. I feel like God said, “Hey, come here, I’m going to let you swing a hammer.”

 

0:38:23.1 Jim Lovelady: “You do it. I think I’m getting in your way. You go ahead.”

 

0:38:26.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, and I’m banging away, probably missing the nail every three or four times, and then I step back and I’m like, “Wow, look!” And we know who’s really doing the building. But yeah, we left behind, I would say, an imperfect and beautiful community.

 

0:38:46.4 Jim Lovelady: Amen. Yeah, beautiful. When I found out y’all were going to be in town and I snagged a few minutes with you, ever since then, this passage, Psalm… And I told you this… Psalm 128 has been on my mind, and so I just want to read it because I feel like I’m reading about you guys. Psalm 128 is a song of ascents. Blessed… Is it blessed or blessed? Tell me which one it is right now, ’cause you nerded out on it.

 

0:39:16.6 Aaron Hicks: Go ahead and say blessed.

 

0:39:17.7 Jim Lovelady: Is it? I can say blessed?

 

0:39:19.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:39:19.6 Jim Lovelady: Sweet.

 

0:39:20.4 Aaron Hicks: Turns out it’s a grammatical thing more than anything.

 

0:39:23.5 Jim Lovelady: Were you right about the…

 

0:39:25.1 Holly Hicks: I don’t know, he hasn’t told me what the…

 

0:39:27.6 Jim Lovelady: All right, so last night at dinner, we were talking about, is it blessed or blessed?

 

0:39:33.8 Aaron Hicks: Turns out there’s a number of examples in…

 

0:39:35.3 Jim Lovelady: No, let me finish. You went to bed and researched.

 

0:39:40.1 Aaron Hicks: I did. Yes, I did. I nerded out. Yeah.

 

0:39:42.5 Jim Lovelady: I love it. Okay, so what’s the grammatical difference?

 

0:39:44.6 Aaron Hicks: There’s a number of examples in the English language, it turns out, that when you have this kind of ending, you make it two syllables to make it easier to pronounce or in different grammatical situations to distinguish. And so that’s the best answer I came up with, that it’s not just a Christian pronunciation of the word.

 

0:40:04.8 Jim Lovelady: Okay, good. I was just intuiting, but we didn’t know if it was…

 

0:40:09.0 Aaron Hicks: That’s what you said to me. I just didn’t believe you.

 

0:40:11.2 Jim Lovelady: Yeah, well, I didn’t know if I was Christian culture intuiting or English grammar intuiting.

 

0:40:16.3 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. Who knows?

 

0:40:18.5 Jim Lovelady: Okay, so that said, now that we got that figured out, this is so you guys. A song of ascents. “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands, and you shall be blessed,” I don’t know. “You shall be blessed.” I said it there.

 

0:40:40.8 Aaron Hicks: That’s correct. Yeah.

 

0:40:42.4 Jim Lovelady: “And it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, and your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion. And may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children’s children!”

 

0:41:06.6 Aaron Hicks: Amen.

 

0:41:07.0 Jim Lovelady: Grandma and grandpa. “Peace be upon Israel.” Is it hard to receive that? Is it easy to receive that? Is it a joy?

 

0:41:14.0 Aaron Hicks: I think hearing that right now, the first thing that came to mind is that we, in a certain sense… I know it’s maybe talking more about physical children… But we’re leaving and have left behind spiritual children.

 

0:41:27.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Absolutely.

 

0:41:31.6 Aaron Hicks: And that’s a hard thing, but also a beautiful thing. And I know that someday we’ll be able to look back and see that the people that we were blessed to invest in and be a part of their lives are going to go all different places, called all over the world probably, different things, and just God’s writing a story that’s so much better than we could ever have asked or imagined. That’s kind of what I was thinking as I was reading that. I know that I’m unworthy of the blessing that we’ve received.

 

0:42:09.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:42:11.2 Aaron Hicks: Grace upon grace.

 

0:42:12.5 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:42:14.4 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:42:14.7 Holly Hicks: I loved missions growing up, but as far as being propelled to go overseas, I didn’t feel that particular propulsion. And as we started talking about it, Serge encouraged me, “Make sure you’ve got a call personally.” God brought the verses about leaving lands and parents for the Kingdom. And as we thought and prayed about leaving, somebody some Sunday said, they were introducing some new person, “Aaron’s kind of like the dad, Holly’s kind of like the mom, and we’re kind of like the kids.”

 

0:42:46.3 Jim Lovelady: Wow.

 

0:42:46.5 Holly Hicks: And right after that, I saw that verse again. It was one of the confirming things. Yeah, we’re supposed to leave them in your hands, God.

 

0:42:55.3 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:42:55.7 Holly Hicks: And the beautiful thing is we really saw everyone step up, because in the beginning we thought, “We can’t do that. They’re not ready.”

 

0:43:02.8 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:43:04.5 Holly Hicks: But we saw God provide, and they did stand up, take over what we had been doing. It was beautiful.

 

0:43:10.4 Aaron Hicks: Even the last six months, we saw so many people just come forward and be like, “Yeah, we don’t want you to leave, but your announcement of leaving has made us really think, question, what is our commitment to God? What is our commitment to the church? And we want to be more involved, more committed.” That was just lovely to see.

 

0:43:31.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:43:33.1 Aaron Hicks: Which I don’t know if I had the faith for it initially, to believe that that would happen, but we saw it happen a lot in the last six to seven months we were there.

 

0:43:41.8 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:43:42.4 Jim Lovelady: As a pastor, the Lord has called me from a church to other adventures. It’s always been, I’m kind of afraid of how sad I’m going to be, and at the same time, it’s a sign of love. And that’s why I really resonate with what you’re saying about joy and grief being two sides of love. If you don’t leave some place and you grieve, I don’t know, was there love? But this strength of love, this strong, just overwhelming love that makes you go, “I don’t think that we can leave,” and the Lord’s coaxing you, like, “No, actually, I’ve made it very clear.” And y’all told your story last night at dinner. The Lord has made it very clear that it’s time to go, but man, the love is strong. And the love for and then the trusting, trusting Jesus with these people, that was a humbling experience for me, all these churches that I’ve that I’ve left, because I’m like, “What are they going to do without me?” And Jesus is like, “Oh, I don’t know. What are they going to do without you?”

 

0:44:48.6 Aaron Hicks: Exactly. Yeah.

 

0:44:51.0 Jim Lovelady: I don’t know. Ooh, are you the savior of the world? Are you the Lord? Are you the head of the church? All right, all right. Okay.

 

0:44:58.0 Aaron Hicks: That’s right. Yeah. And I think as people involved in church planting, it’s even easier to fall in that mentality because you were… What’s the person called who helps a woman give birth?

 

0:45:07.8 Jim Lovelady: A doula.

 

0:45:08.8 Aaron Hicks: A doula. Oh, okay. Yeah. There’s another…

 

0:45:12.2 Holly Hicks: Midwife.

 

0:45:12.6 Aaron Hicks: Midwife. Oh, okay. Yeah. In some ways, you’re you’re doing… And I think church planting is maybe closer related to midwifery. It would be a mistake for the midwife to think, “Oh, if I weren’t here, there would be no life.”

 

0:45:30.6 Jim Lovelady: That’s really good.

 

0:45:31.5 Holly Hicks: That’s my baby.

 

0:45:32.4 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:45:32.7 Jim Lovelady: Right.

 

0:45:32.9 Aaron Hicks: It’s my baby.

 

0:45:35.2 Jim Lovelady: That’s a really good analogy.

 

0:45:36.2 Aaron Hicks: Yeah.

 

0:45:37.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah.

 

0:45:39.5 Aaron Hicks: So, yeah, we needed to wrestle with that a lot in the last eight, nine months and just say, “Lord…” In fact, I would say if I had one concern early on in the process of when we were first thinking about whether God might be calling us to leave the field, I was concerned about the church more than anything. And when I say the church, the church as an institution, but also individuals, who’s going to take care of them? Who’s going to… And things aren’t exactly the nice, neat package that I wanted to leave behind with everything in, all the ducks in a row and the next pastor coming in and financially everything perfect.

 

0:46:18.3 Jim Lovelady: Not perfect, but still beautiful.

 

0:46:20.3 Aaron Hicks: Yeah, right.

 

0:46:21.9 Jim Lovelady: It’s the not perfect part that’s scary.

 

0:46:23.8 Aaron Hicks: No, those are the those are the things that was like I was worried about. Okay. And then the message that just kept coming back to me into my heart and mind, I really felt strongly that God was speaking to me and saying, “Aaron, it’s not your church. It’s my church.” I needed that. I needed to hear that over and over again. And I believe it. In my best moments, I believe it.

 

0:46:50.3 Jim Lovelady: The beautiful thing about trusting Jesus is that when you stop trusting Him, His kindness leads you to repentance and you go, “Oh, yeah, right. You don’t need me.” And, “Oh, right. I do love the… I do love the feeling of humility that makes me so grateful to have received grace upon grace.” I do love that feeling. And I want to reside there. I want to make my home there, wherever you call me. I want to make my home in your grace upon grace. Y’all have made me think about the line in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and the Pevensies, who at the very end of the book are all grown up, having spent 20 years or whatever in Narnia. And they’ve kind of forgotten the wardrobe and the path, and they have vague memory of this lantern. And then they find themselves suddenly back in the mansion through the wardrobe. They’re children again. I’ve always wished that C.S. Lewis had written a sequel to that of what life for these four children who grew up, but they’re children again. Like, what kind of person are they? That’s just been on my mind for y’all as you come back to the States to shepherd a new congregation with a certain kind of wisdom that is beyond your years. You’re just kind of children. I don’t know.

 

0:48:21.3 Holly Hicks: And children. Yeah. We have a lot to learn. We know that for sure.

 

0:48:29.5 Aaron Hicks: Well, in some ways, after being gone for two decades, I feel like I’m on my next cross-cultural mission.

 

0:48:36.6 Jim Lovelady: What is this place called? The United States?

 

0:48:38.9 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. Things have changed in 20 years. I’m not coming back… I’ve changed, Holly’s changed. And so we’re trying to enter back in with a missional mindset of just saying, well, let’s not just jump in and say, “Hey, we have the solutions because we have two or three decades of ministry.” No, we need to learn, be humble, ask good questions, learn the culture and the language. Different things. There’s things that we can’t say now that we used to say when we were younger. And my kids say, “Dad, you can’t say that anymore.” And I was like, “Oh, okay.” So there’s a lot to learn. So I think hopefully I’ll be as dependent feeling coming back as I was when I went over, when it’s very much more obvious because you literally express yourself like a three-year-old when you’re learning the language.

 

0:49:34.4 Jim Lovelady: That’s right, that’s right.

 

0:49:35.3 Holly Hicks: You know nothing.

 

0:49:36.1 Aaron Hicks: And your four-year-old at the table corrects your grammar.

 

0:49:39.5 Jim Lovelady: Nice.

 

0:49:42.1 Aaron Hicks: So you have very real-world, real-time reminders of humility, but that same attitude we need as we come back and minister here.

 

0:49:54.2 Holly Hicks: Yeah, I think Aaron’s done a good job too, of… I think like most of us want to avoid grief, but to go to the new opportunity, you need to grieve.

 

0:50:04.8 Jim Lovelady: Oh, that’s good.

 

0:50:06.8 Holly Hicks: So he did a good job several times when I wanted to out in the process, like, “Let’s not tell them yet. Let’s put it off.” He’d be like, “No, they need to know. We need to go through this together.” And that’s been good. And I think we still need to do some more this month. But yeah, we need to pass through that, enjoy, praise God for it to be able to then go forward to the new church with energy and excitement about that new opportunity. Yeah.

 

0:50:33.6 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate you giving a window into that joy and grief. I feel honored. And at the same time, I want to honor you for the work that you have done, for the way that you have been faithful, the way that you have feared the Lord, as Psalm 128 says. And Psalm 126 is the verse that says, “Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy.”

 

0:50:58.0 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. Amen.

 

0:50:59.2 Jim Lovelady: And so like that one too. That one’s y’all. That one’s totally y’all. Sowing in tears because 20 years of ministry is lots of tears. And then just the harvest of joy. That’s my prayer for y’all, a harvest of joy. But I love it that it’s through the grief. It’s not ignoring the grief. It’s through the grief.

 

0:51:20.8 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. They spring from the same root, I think, which is love. We’ve loved and we’ve been loved and been loved by God more than anything. He’s taken two very imperfect people and just… We’ve been blessed to be a part of his work over there.

 

0:51:39.2 Holly Hicks: I feel almost like we watched it more than made it happen. Like we watched what He did and that was really fun.

 

0:51:47.1 Aaron Hicks: Yeah. Just been a part of what He was doing. Just kind of trying to join in where He was at work and do our little part. Bang the nail with my little hammer, watch Him build.

 

0:52:00.0 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. And I love that this epic is coming to a close in the way that it’s looked. But there’s a new adventure that the Lord is calling you on a new journey. It’s not like you’re done. It’s not like you’re retiring. Sorry. No.

 

0:52:12.4 Aaron Hicks: I don’t know. Sometimes I think I’m ready to be shipped out to pasture.

  

0:52:16.7 Jim Lovelady: Well…

 

0:52:17.2 Holly Hicks: Not till we die.

 

0:52:18.1 Jim Lovelady: That’s right, that’s right.

 

0:52:20.1 Aaron Hicks: No, yeah, we don’t really even necessarily believe in retirement, so. Got a few years yet.

 

0:52:24.4 Jim Lovelady: Yeah. So blessings to you on your new journey.

 

0:52:28.2 Aaron Hicks: Thank you.

 

0:52:28.3 Holly Hicks: Thanks.

 

0:52:29.6 Jim Lovelady: Thank you so much for hanging out.

 

0:52:31.6 Holly Hicks: Good to be with you.

 

0:52:31.8 Aaron Hicks: Good to be with you.

 

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0:52:40.4 Jim Lovelady: What do you learn when you slow down? You realize the eternity that resides in a moment and how dense with God’s glory every moment is. If we would just pause, you realize that the good and the bad both reside within the sovereignty of God and His tender love and His desire to give you the blessed life. Look, sometimes I forget that God wants to give me the blessed life. Sometimes I find myself stuck in the idea that the Christian life is only difficult and it’s only about hard work and it’s only about discipline and seriousness. And then my wife reminds me, “Jim, you’re acting like it’s the Friday of Jesus’ death and that Easter Sunday never came. Cheer up. Repent. Jesus is alive.” Lord, forgive me for acting like an employee. Remind me of the happiness of being your son. Oh, what a blessed life we have in Christ. What a joy it is to belong to Him. What a privilege it is to serve Him, to serve with Him. If you’ve lost that joy, you need gospel renewal. Go to serge.org/renewal and sign up for Mentored Sonship, where you’ll have one of our mentors walk alongside you at a slow pace so that you can rediscover the joy of being a child of God. Just follow the link in the show notes. And while you’re there, look for a link to a blog post called Finding Home in Unexpected Places: A Story of Answering God’s Call to Missions. It’s perfect for the conversation we just had. And speaking of slowing down, the Christmas season is right around the corner, one of the busiest times of the year. Why would I speak of slowing down at Christmas? Well, it’s because Advent is before Christmas, and Advent is a countercultural season in the Christian calendar designed to slow us down, to have us sit and wait in anticipation for the coming of Emmanuel, God with us. So this Advent, Serge is putting together a collection of reflections and resources to help you prepare your heart for Christmas. If you’d like to get it, head to serge.org and then scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and sign up for what’s called Stories of Grace in your inbox. You can also follow Serge on social media. You can keep up with it there. And as always, like this episode, subscribe to our YouTube channel, leave us a rating, share this episode with someone who needs to be reminded of the blessed life that we have in Christ. All of these things help us grow the podcast and get more people who want to experience God’s grace at the frayed edges of their own life. And finally, alright, I want you to promise me that you’re going to take some time to slow down and examine your life, whether it’s your day or your week or your month or whatever section of time you want to look at with Jesus. Find a time to go on a slow walk and explore the grace that He’s been giving you in all the ups and downs in His sovereign goodness. Explore the grace of God’s presence with you in that moment, in that very moment of examination, and see if you don’t come away from that exercise with a renewed understanding of His blessing for you. So as you go, remember and receive the Lord’s blessing. May the Lord bless you and keep you and make His face to smile down on you. May the Lord be gracious to you, turn His bright eyes to you, and give you His peace. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, life everlasting. Amen.

 

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