Beeson Podcast, Episode #203
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>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. 


>>Timothy George:

Well, it’s a blessing to welcome you to today’s Beeson podcast. Dr Robert Smith Jr and I are here, as we always are at this time of the month to introduce you to a great sermon from today’s pulpit. Now this sermon is by Dr Lyle Wesley Dorsett. Dr Dorsett is a member of our own Beeson faculty, and this sermon comes in the context of a chapel series called “Tell Out, My Soul,” which is based on the hymn text of Bishop Timothy Dudley Smith from the Church of England. Great Hymn. “Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord. Unnumbered blessings give my spirit voice. Tender to me the promise of His word. In God, my savior, shall my heart rejoice.” 

The whole series is really a series about testimony. It’s about sharing our personal journey of faith with Jesus Christ. This is what Dr Dorsett does so effectively right here at Beeson Divinity School. Tell us, Dr Smith, the angle he’s going to take on “Tell Out, My Soul.”


>>Smith:

Dean George, as you know, John says in the book of Revelation that they overcame by the blood and by the word of their testimony. That’s exactly what we’re hearing, the word of his testimony, not personal address speaking to others, though we certainly feel as if he’s addressing us one by one, but personal witness. This is a completely transparent message, confessional in nature. He is sharing with us his oluwaseye, his journey, of feeling this place, being saved as young man, and being called but walking away from that calling and walking away from the way of the Lord. He could get away from the way of the Lord, but he could not get the way of the Lord out of him. He got out of the way, but he couldn’t get the way of the word out of him. So, he’s constantly trying to find home and that home, of course, is Christ. I think that his residence, where he is in various places, typifies the intensity of his search for home, which really is his search for Christ. His battle with alcoholism, just so transparent, self-disclosing, his winding up after three days of drinking near a graveyard and coming to a place where a great turn is made in his life to say in the end, in terms of hope, that I believe that God will never abandon you and God will never forsake you. There is pain in this message sir, but there is also joy and the way home is the one who is the way, Christ.


>>Timothy George:

Dr Lyle Dorsett is the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism at Beeson Divinity school and also serves as Director of Christ the King Anglican Church here in Birmingham. Let’s listen to our wonderful friends and colleague, Dr Lyle Dorsett. 


>>Dorsett:

Well, in my tradition, the Anglican tradition, many pastors, not all of them, wear these collars and in some parts of the world, they’re called dog collars. And they’re dog collars because we want to remember that we’re on a short leash with God. He called us, He’s got us on a short leash, and He’ll jerk us back if we get too far out of line. So, I’m here in my dog collar today and Mary said something about, you know, maybe, is my wife here? Yeah, there she is over there. She said something about, “You know Lyle, you might point out that you went from the gutter to the dog collar. That could have been the title of your message.” That’s exactly what it really is when you get right down to it. 

Well, I want to begin today, I’m not just expositing a text, I’ve been asked to tell out my story. We’re doing a series on this, so this will not be an exposition of the text. But certainly, Psalm 105, “And God called the chosen people to remember the great this He hath done.” The hymn writer said, “Remember the great things God has done.” And of course, the Jews were called to remember coming out of bondage out of Egypt, being cared for in the wilderness and so forth. But I like to see this Psalm for us, for you and me to keep a record, have stones of remembrance of the great things God has done in our lives. So, today I want to talk to you about great things He has done and certainly, I couldn’t be here to talk about it if He had not welcomed prodigals’ home because I am indeed a prodigal of the Nth degree that He welcomed home, and I could almost hear the rejoicing and glory in the wake of my welcome. 

Well, I want to begin my pilgrimage with the Lord by going back to the 1950s here in this city, Birmingham. Howard College used to be out in Eastlake, and it was a summer night, 1953, and I was walking home. I always had about three or four jobs. Dad always said there’s no one on the dole in this family and I always had two or three jobs and I had one job of putting up a marque on a movie theater. I was walking home that evening and I want to put this in a context. My family and I had moved to Birmingham in 1950 from Kansas City, Missouri. Any place I opened my mouth, I was called Yankee. I was reminded Birmingham was not my home and I was reminded many times. And you say, well why are you saying that this morning? I’m saying it because I’m walking home that night and I’m cutting across the Howard College campus, which was out there, and there was a football field. And on that football field was a big tent. 

Now I was born and raised in the Lutheran church. I was baptized as an infant, confirmed of the Lutheran Church, and I’d never seen a big tent. I’d never heard somebody preaching in a big tent. And I walked up to the edge of it and the preacher, a man named Eddie Martin, had a tinge of a Yankee accent because he was from Pennsylvania. So, I stopped to listen. Maybe I’m almost home here, you know. So, I’m standing there and he’s preaching on the prodigal son. Now I’d been raised in a Christian home. We didn’t go to church very often, but we called ourselves Christian. But that night, I knew I was the prodigal. I wasn’t a particularly arrant young man, but I knew I was lost an di knew I needed to come home. And he said, “So, I want to invite all the prodigals that are here tonight to come on up here and I’m going to pray you into the kingdom, pray you back home.” I would not go up because I wasn’t in the tent. Being an outsider, I thought maybe I’m not supposed to go up. But I knew that this message was for me. When Eddie Martin finished his sermon that night, he said, “If God gives me one more night, I’m going to come back and preach the gospel again tomorrow night because there’s still prodigals that have not come home.” He said, “If He gives you one more night and you’re one of those prodigals, I want you to get back here and come home.”

I was there the next night. I was in the tent, and I don’t know what he preached on, had no idea. I was waiting for that invitation because I’d heard the message the night before. I went forward during the invitation and Eddie Martin got down on his knees with me that night. I’ll never forget it. Put his arm around me, prayed with me. Now you may think I’m overly mystical and I’m going to tell you something that happened that night. I’m on my knees being prayed into the kingdom and I heard as clearly as I’m sitting here looking at you, Dr George. I didn’t see anyone, but I heard these words, “Lyle, I want you to preach the gospel like this man.” I knew it. After we’d finished, he talked to me and he said, “Now you have to go home and tell your family and you have to tell people what you’ve done here tonight.” And then he asked me, he said, “Have you been baptized?” I said, “Yes sir. I was baptized when I was an infant in the Lutheran church in Kansas City.” He said, “Well that doesn’t count.” He said, “No, you haven’t been baptized.” And he said, “So, we have to get you baptized.” Early the next week, Ruhama Baptist Church contacted us, said your son needs to get baptized, probably you do too, so all three of us traipsed over to Ruhama Baptist and we had a proper baptism. So, we’d been twice baptized, the Dorsett’s. 

My parents have already gone on. But I knew I was called to preach, and I also began to travel around with a young man who was 17 or 18 and we went to little mining towns outside of Birmingham and preached. I even preached. I didn’t know anything. Those blessed saints put up with me. But then a year and half later, we moved back to Kansas City and my life changed. Again, I wasn’t home. I didn’t have a home. Birmingham had kind of become home but it wasn’t home and I’m back to Kansas City and I don’t fit there anymore. And I never made a decision to turn from the Lord. I never set out to do that, but very gradually, seeking friends, wanting to hang out with other people, I was kind of like the frog in the kettle and I just gradually began to turn away. 

I went from being committed to the Lord and committed to becoming a preacher, a pastor. I felt, I don’t know, I know I felt guilty. I’d go to church, and I’d feel guilty. So, then I’d become critical. Awe, that person’s a phony, I know what they’re really like. And that was all my cover because I didn’t feel comfortable. I eventually went off, long story short, went off to university. I spent nine years doing BA, MA, and PhD in history. I totally changed my direction. And while I was in university, most of my professors that I really admired had a materialist, naturalist world view. And my Christina world view was set aside and to become intellectually respectable and identify with these professors, I adopted the materialistic, naturalistic world view. I had a new goal for my life. This started in graduate school, and it remained a burning passion. I’m going to become the best historian I can become. I want to be a university professor. I want to teach history. I want to write history books. 

Five years after I got my PhD, I met my dear bride. We will be married 44 years this coming July. You can see I married up. She’s better looking than I am, smarter than I am, and she’s known Jesus longer. When we came together and got married, Mary would have said she was a believer, but she had no personal relationship with Christ. And if she was really committed, she’d of never married me. I told her, I said, “I want to tell you this. If we marry there’s something you got to know about me. I’m a historian.” I didn’t put it this way, but I was saying I’ve got an idol on the high place. It’s history. “And I’m going to tell you, I’m going to write a book every five years and I’m going to write at least one article a year, maybe two. I’m committed to this craft of the historian. Can you live with that?” She said, “I can live with it.” And she did. A year and a half after we were married, Mary went to the Lutheran church in Boulder, Colorado. I was teaching at the university there. And she heard the gospel. She heard it big time. And she knew she was saved by grace through faith in Jesus, not of her works. She was a liberated woman. And then she began, and I got jealous of this, she began to fall in love with Jesus. And in a way, I don’t even know how to describe that I watched her as she went through the opposite of Kafkaesque metamorphosis. I watched her becoming more decent, more tender, more loving and all the while, I’m jealous and I’m angry. 

My career was first and foremost in my life. I think I was a relatively good father and husband. We had two children. But career was number one. But I’ll tell you, anything other than being a bond servant to Jesus is not easy, it’s hard and it’s demanding, and it’ll begin to destroy you. And I was eaten up with my ambitions and I was publishing, I was writing, I was doing things. I was getting job offers around places and I’d sometimes go for interviews just because I liked the ego trip of going on them. That’s disgusting but it’s true. I gradually was burning out emotionally, psychologically, and even physically. I suffered from an ulcer. My hair got prematurely gray. I’m really just a boy, barely out of short pants and high-top shoes. But anyway, the point is that it was beginning to tear me up, the pressure to write so much. I’d sign contracts. I had all kinds of contracts, and I was constantly pushing for the next book, so I needed some release. So, I began to drink heavily. I didn’t drink every day. I didn’t drink when I put my feet on the floor, but I began to drink as my escape. It was a way to get elevated from the depression I had, and it was a way to relax. I became an alcoholic. 

I did not drink everyday but when I drank, I drank compulsively and greatly, and I used to rat hole money and save it. And I’d go to conventions, or I’d go on research trips, and I’d stay three- or four-days extra time and just drink. Just hold up in my room and drink. Alcohol had a grip on me that was almost as great as the career. But the career idol was even greater because one of the reasons I’d stop drinking and get off of it now and then was I didn’t want to lose my career because that was my identity. Mary was praying for me. The hound of heaven got unleashed on me. You have a praying wife? I had praying parents and then I’d taken a position at the University of Denver, and I had a student. He was a wonderful student. Brilliant young man. Majored in history. And I noticed one day, he’s reading. I said, “What are you reading there Lauren?” It was the beginning of class. He said, “Oh, I’m reading my Greek New Testament.” He said, “I’m trying to get up on my Greek because I’m going down to Denver seminary and get my MDiv. I’m going into ministry.” I said, “Why you going to throw your life away Lauren?” I said, “You need to be a historian. You’re a natural. He said, “No sir. I got a higher calling going to the ministry.” 

One day Lauren met me after class and he said, “Sir, did I understand you to say that intelligent people are not Christians?” I said, “No Lauren. Listen to me carefully. I said intelligent reflective people are not Christians.” He said, “Oh, thank you sir.” And then kind of like Columbo, the detective, he gets to the door and then spins around, and he says, “By the way sir, have you ever read any books by C.S. Lewis or GK Chesterton?” I said, “No, I haven’t’.” He said, “Well, I want to challenge you to do that. The next class period, he brought a copy of GK Chesterton’s book, Orthodoxy, and gave it to me to read. I took it home and read it because Lauren bought it for me. Inside the book, Orthodoxy, he wrote in the cover, “To Dr Dorsett with the prayer that this book would point you to orthodoxy.” And under his name, he had this doodling under it. He had this doodling under his name, and I read the book that night. It’s a short book. I didn’t understand it very well. But one thing jumped out at me in it. Chesterton said, “After I became a Christian, I understood why I’ve always been home sick at home.” I thought man, that’s me. I’ve never felt at home. I don’t have a stinking home. But I didn’t really understand the book yet. And I brought it back and I said, “Lauren, what’s this doodling under your name?” He said, “Oh sir, I’m delighted you asked that.” He said, “That’s the cross that crucified our Lord on. This is the grave they stuck Him in. And three days later, He walked right out of there and He’s running the world. He had all authority in Heaven and on earth.” I said, “I’m sorry I asked you, Lauren.”

Lauren’s praying for me. Mary’s praying for me. Mom and dad are praying for me. And then, believe it or not, my car radio broke and was stuck on a gospel station. That’s true, isn’t it Mary? It’s a story you think, well, he’s putting me on there. No, it did. And I had it on that station because they had news at the top of every hour and in the afternoon, they had classical music, and I loved that station. But the problem was it was a Christian station and as I would commute between Boulder and Denver, I’d switched universities looking for home, and I would commute. I’d hear Dr Robert Dallenbach tell stories of great Christians. I began to get stirred again. The hound of heaven was after me again. 

Summer 1976, I’d finished a year. I had a year leave of absence to write a history of Denver, Colorado. I’d finished the book and decided to reward myself with a lot of drinking. I got terribly intoxicated. Mary asked me to please not drink in the house because she didn’t want the children to see it so I stomped out and said I will drink somewhere else. And I went to a tavern, to a bar and I drank until they closed and then I took beer to go. And then I drove up I not the mountains. I do not remember driving off that curvaceous mountain road. I don’t know how I got out. Woke up the next morning, my car parked next to the old Pioneer Cemetery in Boulder. If you saw it in a novel, you wouldn’t like it. It’s too contrived. I was a dead man in my inside. And I cried out, I said, “Lord, Jesus, if you’re there, would you help me?” I hadn’t been home all night. My wife was falling apart. I drunk a beer. I had a six pack on the floor. I thought here it is seven in the morning, I’m drinking again. I don’t want to be. Lord, if you’re there, would you help me? And I heard that voice again. Jesus was there. I knew He was there, and I knew He loved me. 

Long story short, I was able to put the plug in the jug by His help and able to go home. And no one will ever tell me Jesus is not alive. I don’t need to be argued into the kingdom and I don’t try to argue other people into the kingdom because you got to meet Him personally. Somebody can argue into the kingdom today and then somebody else will argue out of it tomorrow. But if you’ve met Him and He’s grabbed you by your shoulders and looked in your face and said, “I love you, you wretched sinner. I died for you.” Oh, you’ll not be talked out of that. There’s no way you will. No one will ever tell me He does not live. I preach the cross, but I also preach of the resurrection because I’ve met the resurrected savior.

I want to tell you something. During the next two years, I don’t know whether Ken Mathews is here or not. Yeah, Ken, you preached in here one time about the book of Joel. You preached on Joel. I’ll never forget it. It blessed me enormously and it resonated with me the two years after I surrendered to Christ in my car that the Lord said, “If you’ll rid your hearts and not your garments, I’ll restore to you the years the locusts have eaten,” for the locusts had eaten my years. But He restored to me the years. And about two years later, I began to get the call to preach again. And it took time to get healed and get things squared away and I tried to get ordained in one denomination and we weren’t a fit and I ended up being ordained in a little Bible church on the eastern plains of Colorado. And I still see it as my, I’m sorry, I still my infant baptism as a baptism too. But I see that ordination in that little Bible church on the easter plains as my ordination. Now, when I went into the Anglican church, they wouldn’t put up with that any more than the Baptist put up with my infant baptism. I had to jump through their hoops and get re-ordained. But you know what I’m talking about. You’ve got one but you go ahead, it doesn’t hurt you to get another one. So, anyway, two baptisms, two ordinations, you know. Just happy as a rat in a city dump. 

But I’m going to tell you, the Lord gave us the privilege, Mary and me, the privilege of moving forward with Him, moving together. I do want to tell you, I just want to tell you a few things in conclusion here about what we’ve learned on our journey. First of all, we have never been alone. We’ve never been abandoned. There have been times when it felt like it. We decided to give up the university position and take a position at Wheaton College and we took a big pay cut to go there, but we felt we were in God’s will, and we should do it. And then right after we accepted the position and before we moved, our 10-year-old daughter got sick one night and died the next morning. And I’m thinking, God what are you doing? I thought, see, I had a little veneer of prosperity theology in me. If I follow the savior and do what He calls me, especially if it’s a little difficult, oh I’m going to get repaid with things in the world. We moved to Wheaton and within six months Mary said, “I can’t pay the bills. I’m going to go to work.” And I got at the foot of my bed one night and I said, “Lord, I think I’ll move to Washington, DC. I’ve got a PhD in history. I can go to work for the foreign service. Maybe I can get a job at the CIA and support my family. I don’t want my wife to go to work. Mary said, “Why is your wife any better than anybody else’s?” 

But God had a plan. He had not deserted us. Mary ended up becoming the archivist at Wheaton College. She ended up using her benefits and got an MA in evangelism and spiritual formation. She began to minister to co-eds and had discipleship groups. And I realized, in my arrogance, we didn’t move to Wheaton just for Lyle Dorsett. We moved for Mary because she had a ministry there. And our son, by the way, met his wife there. He never abandoned us. It wasn’t always easy. But it worked out in the long run for His glory and our benefit. There’s a lot more I could say. He’s guided us over the years with scripture. I’m very grateful to John Stott for introducing me to Robert Murray M’Cheynes’s Bible calendar and reading through the Bible, the whole Bible, New Testament and Psalms twice every year. It’ll be 40 years for us this summer doing it. It changes your life. I recommend it. And it helps you check out if you have visions and dreams. And we had a couple of very powerful visions and dreams. We checked them out against scripture. They weren’t unbiblical and God used them to direct us. 

But finally, I want to say this. We’ve learned over the years, and some of you who’ve been to my office see, I have a little plaque on my desk, Psalm 71:18. “Lord, even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me please until I declare your power to the next generation.” Over the years, Mary and I have become full blown trinitarians. There was a season when we believed in almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, afraid of that third person of the trinity. We had to go out to India to find out God was still healing people. And we ended up, one of the reasons we ended up in the tradition we’re in, we’ve been free to pray. We’ve been free to be open to the spirit in the way we are. But we’re just one regiment in God’s army. But I want to declare to you today, He’ll never abandon you. He’ll never leave you. He’ll never forsake you. The hard things that come, He will enable you to use that to bless other people. Mary always says, “When it gets painful, when the pain comes and the disasters come, you have choice to get bitter or better. You only get better by letting the Holy Spirit come in and fill those places.”

I want to urge you to become men and women of prayer. God is still on the throne. Prayer still changes things because He has chosen within the perimeters of His sovereignty to delegate much to us through prayer. C.S. Lewis wrote, “If you had any idea how much He delegated to you in prayer, you would be busy learning to pray.” Well, I’m trying to get busy trying to learn how to pray. When I told our two oldest grandsons not long ago, got them together, I wanted to tell them about some of the stones of remembrance. And I said, “One day you’re going to get a phone call and say grandpa died.” And I said, “Don’t you believe that. Not for a minute. Grandpa will be more alive than ever. He’ll be in paradise with Jesus, and he’ll be home at last. Home at last and he’ll be waiting to see you when you cross over the other side.” God bless you. 


>> Announcer:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast with host, Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, Beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson podcast.