257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105
(262) 763-3021
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We have purchased land on Highways A & W and are planning to build soon! Drive by and take a look at our future home!
“and his hand clave unto the sword...” 2 Samuel 23:10
August 23rd, 2009
This past week I buried one of my heroes, Dr. David L. Cummins or to me and Jane, “Dad Cummins” and to my children, “Papa.” I know that it has much to do with this period in life, but it just seems that I don’t have many heroes left. Unfortunately, too, we’re living in a post-heroic age. Young adults are much less likely than their parents to have role models, yet it’s important for young people to have heroes. It’s a way to teach them by spiritual and moral example, so that we can point to someone as an ideal.
Dad Cummins was that for me. He touched my life when he became my pastor when I was about twelve years old. My own father had dropped out of church, but for some reason I kept going...even though many times, all I did was cause trouble. My first major interaction with him that I recall was when he asked me to be his “adopted son” for a Father-Son Banquet. A few years later when I had gotten involved in both drugs and alcohol, he still reached out to me. On one occasion when my own home became dangerously violent, I hid out at his home until things had cooled off.
Dad Cummins was a giant of a man with a voice to match. He had five daughters who all later went on to also marry pastors. Coming from a violent, substance abuse home, I didn’t have many healthy examples in my life. God used Dad and Mom Cummins, and many other committed believers to help keep me from becoming just another statistic.
His life is as big as he was. He pastored several churches throughout the country, was a church planter, held Bible Conferences and during the last twelve years of his life (he was 80) served a missions agency and encouraged missionaries throughout the world. His thumb prints are all over my life.
Dad loved his wife. He truly loved to do things that pleased her. It was almost humorous to see this big man almost giddy with love for Mom Cummins. As I lived with them for several years, I saw that it wasn’t for show...it was real. They rarely if ever argued. He also loved his five daughters. He was their knight in shining armor and protector. Heaven help the person who did them wrong! Many a young man had the fear of the Lord instilled in his heart when dating one of Dad’s daughters.
Dad was committed to expository preaching and instilled in me a love for it too. He worked hard to truly understand a passage so that he could share what God’s Word said to his church each Sunday. He didn’t force the text to say what he wanted it to say. He shared what the Lord under the inspiration of the Spirit had already written there. Though he never graduated from college, he was an avid student of the Word. I remember being spellbound on more than one occasion as he’d break open the Word of life for us. God’s Word became a little clearer under his careful handling of Scripture. He’s the one primarily to blame for my own love of books. I would sit in his huge study for hours as he typed or worked and ask him about author after author. He was a walking encyclopedia of the great preachers and Bible students of the past. And he took me to my very first book sale. I never knew that they had such things. A preacher’s books are his tools but those tools can be very expensive. Dad taught me how to have a full tool chest on a budget. One rarely saw him without a book in his hand or nearby. And he knew the Book of books inside and out.
Dad Cummins was there for me at some of the darkest periods of my life. It’s said that “the Church is the only army that shoots its wounded.” On one occasion I had been emotionally and verbally brutalized by another pastor. Looking back it was one of the cruelest things that has ever happened to me and it was also at a point in my life when I was already searching and seeking to anchor my own faith...I was very spiritually fragile. If it had not been for Dad Cummins, I no doubt would have walked away from the Church. I was several hours away and returned from this “attack” in the middle of the night. As I walked in the door he gathered me up in those big arms and I just sobbed uncontrollably. His patience as I searched for my own faith helped me persevere and later go into the ministry.
Dad wasn’t perfect. Like all heroes, he had some chinks in his armor. He struggled with both a temper and patience. He wasn’t a good “waiter.” The man who walked with the Lord also needed the Savior. I remember many times his sharing with me that he’d never regretted being too kind to someone but he had oft regretted the other. As he struggled with normal people issues of ministry, he’d share that his biggest struggle was with “Dave Cummins.”
Those words, “and his hand clave unto the sword, are from a wonderful account in 2 Samuel of one of King David’s soldiers persevering in a heated battle. It was the text that Dr. C.I. Scofield used when he preached the funeral of D.L. Moody. Scofield was referring to Moody’s faithfulness to Scripture, the “Sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17). Years ago someone carved an open wooden Bible, about the size of a family Bible, inscribed those words on its open pages, and had given it to Dad. It was one of his prized treasures. It also wonderfully summarized his life. As his family gathered at his dying bedside, sang hymns and read Scripture to him, Dad was faithful to his last breath as he entered the presence of his Savior. His hand truly clave to the Sword.
Heroes aren’t perfect but they certainly help us as we too seek to be faithful and model godliness! If you don’t have a hero, find one that will help you in your own walk with the Lord...and by God’s grace, let’s all seek to be one for the young people who are following us!
