Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2019

Three Chairs William (Butch) Davis ’92 – Bruce Wilkinson, one of the world’s foremost Christian speakers and founder of Walk Thru the Bible, spoke at Cedarville in January 1992 as part of the Winter Enrichment Conference. He spoke on Joshua and his desire to serve the Lord all his days. His messages touched students’ lives deeply that week, with hundreds coming forward to make a commitment. One of those students was William (Butch) Davis ’92. I’ll never forget the impact that Bruce Wilkinson had on me from Winter Enrichment Conference my senior year. At the beginning of the week, Dr. Wilkinson placed three chairs on the chapel stage and left them there all week as a visual. § § Chair No. 1 represented Joshua and his famous statement, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15). He chose to follow the Lord no matter what. § § Chair No.2 represented the people in Joshua 24:31 and Judges 2:7, those who had only known of the work of the Lord on behalf of the nation of Israel. § § Chair No. 3 represented the people in Judges 2:10, who “did not know the Lord or the works that the Lord had done for Israel.” Later in Judges 2:13, we learn how the people abandoned the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. Dr. Wilkinson’s challenge was this: “Which chair are you sitting in?” Are you in Joshua’s chair, committed to following the Lord? Or are you in chair No. 2? Are you only seeing what the Lord did in your parents’ lives and the generation before you, but you really aren’t pursuing God with everything yourself? Or are you in chair No. 3? You aren’t even interested in serving the Lord. He drove home that whichever chair we were in, most likely the generation to follow us would naturally fit into the chair next to us unless at some point a major decision was made to pursue God intentionally. The impact for me was seeing myself sitting squarely in chair No. 2 and what that meant for generations behind me, my future children, specifically. If I didn’t make God my highest priority, my kids only would have heard stories and potentially not seen God’s hand directly and as a result, could potentially end up in that third chair, not interested in the things of God at all. I had never been a “go forward” kind of guy, but that night my heart was so stirred that I did. I made the commitment to truly align my focus on God once and for all. By God’s grace, my wife, Dawn (Hicks) ’90 and I, along with our three children, have been blessed to be used together as a family in furthering the Gospel and His Kingdom. B ill Bolthouse, Jr., while using a golf analogy about missions, invited Dr. Dixon to the platform to hit a wiffle ball out into the audience. Dr. Dixon topped his drive right into the forehead of a student in the front row, and everyone applauded. Mr. Bolthouse spoke about showing generosity to missionaries — when they come home on furlough, don’t take them to the thrift store for clothes. Take them to the mall and spend some money on them. I often think of this lesson as I purchase Bolthouse carrots at the store. Marianne (Palmer) Schuck ’97