God is working behind the scenes long before any of us notice. That is the thread running all the way through this first episode with my friend Dan Green, and by the end of it I think you will see it as clearly as I did.

Dan is two years into a stage four diagnosis. He is still in treatment. And while we recorded this conversation, he was sitting in a chair receiving chemotherapy - not his first, and not his tenth.

Prefer to watch? This episode is also on YouTube.

A DREAM THIRTY YEARS IN THE MAKING

When Dan retired in 2018, he went looking for Mark chapter 10 for over three decades. Years earlier, he had heard about an RV ministry that travels the country working at youth camps, Christian conference centers, and homeless shelters. Since he loves working with his hands and loves to travel, it seemed like the perfect fit. So he searched to see whether it still existed. It did.

He and his wife prayed about it, bought a motorhome, and a few years later they went all in. They sold everything they owned, including their retirement home, and went out on the road full-time to serve the Lord.

There is a man in Mark chapter 10 who could not do that. He came running to Jesus, dropped to his knees, and asked what he had to do to have eternal life. Mark tells us Jesus looked at him and loved him before He said a single word about money. Then Jesus asked him to sell what he had - and the man went away sad, because he had great wealth.

Dan and his wife did what that man could not.

THE PHONE CALL THAT WAS NOT ABOUT DAN

Out on the road in Arizona, Dan got a call from his middle daughter. She was crying. Her ten-year-old son had been having headaches, a scan had been done, and there was a tumor at the back of his brain. Surgery was scheduled for the next morning.

The next day, driving north, that little boy asked his grandpa to pray for him before he went in. Dan pulled a forty-four thousand pound motorhome onto a freeway on-ramp so they could stop and pray together.

Then they drove from Arizona to Washington State about as fast as that rig would go. In Oregon, his daughter called again. It was cancer.

THIRTEEN MILES

Weeks later, when his grandson was finally allowed home, the little town where they live threw him a welcome and a walk-a-thon to help the family. Dan walked thirteen miles around a high school track that day, lap after lap, because each lap raised money. They put his picture in the paper.

He had stage four cancer inside him the entire time. Nobody knew, least of all Dan.

HOW GOD IS WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES

Now look at how God is working behind the scenes, even while Dan could not see any of it.

A CT scan appeared on his calendar that he had never scheduled. Somebody simply called and told him he had one the next day. His own words about it were, "This is a God thing, because I didn't know that it was even scheduled." Afterward, the results came onto his computer screen on a Friday evening, which is not how those things normally arrive.

Consider those thirteen miles as well. God gave that man the strength to walk thirteen miles for his grandson on a day when stage four cancer was growing inside him. Dan had no idea he needed that strength. Jesus did.

And here is the piece that is easy to rush past. Dan did not go looking for God when the news came. He already had a deep relationship with Jesus, built over twenty-five years of getting up at four thirty in the morning with his coffee and his Bible. So when his daughter called him crying, he already knew exactly what to do. He pulled the rig over and prayed.

He already had somewhere to take it.

WHAT DAN WOULD WANT YOU TO KNOW

If you are not in a storm right now, this is your moment. Build your relationship with Jesus today, while things are calm, because the faith Dan was about to need he already had. He was not scrambling to find Jesus in the worst week of his life. Instead, he simply turned to the One who was already standing right there.

And if you are in the middle of it right now, unable to see one single thing God is doing - that does not mean He is not doing anything. It means God is working behind the scenes, and you cannot see it yet. That is all it means.

Jesus does not wait for us to understand what is happening before He starts taking care of us.

WHAT YOU WILL HEAR IN THIS EPISODE

• A thirty-year dream, and what it cost Dan and his wife to say yes to it
• The phone call that changed everything - and it was not about him
• Praying with a ten-year-old on a freeway on-ramp
• Thirteen miles, and the strength he did not know he needed
• A CT scan nobody scheduled, and the Friday evening that followed

YOU ARE NEVER ALONE

Whatever is happening right now that you cannot see and cannot understand, Jesus is already in it. God is working behind the scenes in your life tonight, exactly as He was in Dan's - out ahead of him long before he knew there was anything to be out ahead of.

If you do not have that relationship with Jesus, or you had one once and it has gone cold or weak or angry, please visit our Accepting Jesus page. It is the most important page on this whole site, and everything Dan shares across these five episodes runs straight through that one decision.

You are NEVER ALONE. Never.