Stopping to Think

About Stopping to Think

Thoughts on the Bible, theology, culture, books, and whatever else is making me think willdole.substack.com (https://willdole.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Will Dole

Category

religion & spirituality · religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

4 Apr 2022

Latest episode

26 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

105 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Oct 2026

   You Can’t Please Everyone

   My oldest daughter wrote this story for school. I really enjoyed it, and asked her if I could share it with you. She graciously agreed. (you can read another of her stories here (https://willdole.substack.com/p/jimmy-and-the-lion?r=nuyp3&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web)) You Can’t Please Everyone by L.E. Dole There was once a poor miller (we’ll call him Walter) who always aimed to please everyone. One day he was going to town to sell his donkey. With him went his son (we’ll call him Lewis), a youth who was obedient to a fault. On their way to the village, they passed a cluster of gossipy and extremely opinionated women. The bossiest of the group, Jenny Inyourbusiness, stepped forward to give them some advice. “Why would you walk when you can ride?” she called out. So Walter put Lewis up on the donkey and they continued on. Soon they went by the house of Old Man Grumpybeard, who was sitting on his front porch and smoking a pipe. “You lazy boy!” he yelled irritably, “Why don’t you let your poor father ride?” So Lewis got off and Walter got on the donkey. An hour had passed when another traveler overtook them on the road. He looked at them in disgust. “You cruel man! How can you ride when that lad can hardly keep up?” As he rode off Walter pulled Lewis up on the donkey with him. By now the poor creature was feeling horribly overloaded. The pair was almost to town when the same rider from earlier came back riding down the road. “That animal is so exhausted you might as well carry him!” he scoffed. Walter, wanting to please, and Lewis, not being too bright, hopped off the donkey. They tied the donkey to a pole, hoisted him up onto their shoulders, and continued on their journey to town. Before long they were within a stone’s throw to town with only a bridge between them and the village when an assembly of people across the river saw the spectacle and burst into hysterical laughter. The donkey, who was already tired of this rude treatment, was spooked by the noise and started to struggle against the ropes. He kicked and struggled until he broke through his bonds and fell into the rushing water below. As he struggled his hooves tragically struck the heads of Walter and Lewis, killing them instantly. As for the donkey, he swam downstream and finally clambered out onto a grassy bank where he lived a long and peaceful life, undisturbed by fools who try to please everyone. Editor’s note: I could have subtitled this “a lesson in leadership.” Stopping to Think is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willdole.substack.com/subscribe (https://willdole.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   12 Oct 2026

   SLY-lights

   I recently published an article with Lifeway Research on Bi-Vocational Ministry (5 Things Bi-Vocational Pastors Wish You Knew (https://research.lifeway.com/2026/08/20/5-things-bivocational-pastors-wish-you-knew/)) and will be writing some occasional posts here in the coming months considering the concept of bi-vo ministry. Some will be prescriptive, some observational, some personal narrative. This is the one of the latter. SLY-lights In the previous post (https://willdole.substack.com/p/underserved-opportunities?r=nuyp3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true)in this series I discussed some of my earliest ministry opportunities, and I’m basically going to pick up where I left off there. So if you haven’t read that post…you might want to before reading this one. In early 2010, South Lake Youth Ministries (SLY) began planning another worship tour for the Summer of that year. At the same time, I was talking non-stop to Andie—the girl from the internet who I found endlessly interesting, and who would eventually become my wife. This tour was a lot more realistic in terms of pace, compared to the tour of the previous Summer. We spent four days each in four towns, with a full-day for travel and set up between each, and no one (especially idiot me) was allowed to come/go during the time. You were either in or out. I was very much in, with both feet, this time around. In prep for this tour, we traveled to churches in each of the host communities to gather support for the tour, and spent time in local churches, doing what we called “pitching and preaching”—one of the other team members (usually the young lady who handled a lot of the trip coordination) would “pitch” the idea by explaining what we were planning to do, and then I would stand up and “preach”…which at this remove I would probably characterize less as preaching and more as trying to take verse or two out of context and guilt-trip people into seeing why if they didn’t want the young people in their community to go to hell, then they had best support what we were trying to do. When the tour rolled around, I was again preaching one night in each of those stops—and while I’m sure those sermons were still objectively bad, the feedback of “I was helped” continued to come in. This was, to me, the sort of thing that makes a person scratch their head and go… “hm.” During that trip I had a long conversation/experience that will be left for another time, but the result of it was Wayne, the director of South Lake Youth Ministries (SLY), essentially inviting me to come on staff with SLY. After about 7 and a half minutes of prayer, I was pretty certain that I was supposed to take that opportunity. That was a problem, though. Because talking to Andie all the time had moved to an “official” long-distance relationship (another story for another time), and I was planning to move to Iowa in August of 2010. I was driving out there in July, and had at least one job interview lined up, with hopes of more. Instead, when I went out, I had to break the news to Andie that I was pretty sure I was supposed to stay in Idaho and work with SLY. Providence What I could never have planned, nor would I have even hoped to pray for, was that God was already working in Andie, via a couple of conversations I would have had no way of knowing about, to consider the idea of her moving, instead of me. And so it was, that when I said “I don’t know what this means for us—I don’t want us to end, but I understand if this is a deal-breaker…” that is was not, in fact, a deal-breaker. She flew out to Idaho over my 20th birthday, which was also the day when it was publicly announced that I was going on staff with SLY. Seven months later she would move to Idaho; four months after that, we were married. There’s a whole lot more to that story than I’m going to get into, but at the same time I went on staff with SLY I also started taking classes though the Rocky Mountain Bible Mission’s Bible Training Center (BTC) in Missoula, Montana. Through these classes, and working with SLY to help rural churches, the Lord made clear to me that rural church ministry was where I was supposed to be. I thought at that point I was going to be in parachurch work long-term, but it became evident to me within a couple of years that I wasn’t really wired for that. I had had thoughts of moving to the city to be a church planter, because that was the sexy thing to do at the time. But it became obvious to me that the city idea was my pride thinking I needed something “bigger and better” and through BTC I was meeting pastors who were smarter than me and more godly than I was likely to be anytime within the next few decades, and here they were investing in rural people, rural churches, and rural places. If God had raised me in a rural place, and given me those instincts, why wouldn’t he want me to stay there? It was a clarifying time. It was also clarifying on another front, because in that position with SLY I was support-raising, trying to raise money so that I could leave of my Post Office job and the dreaded status of “bi-vocational.” I just knew I needed to be “full-time” in ministry. And then Jim Hunter, one of my BTC teachers and a pastor whom I greatly admire to this day, asked me what seemed a very rude question: “why do think God has prevented you from raising full-support?” Now, looking backwards a decade and a half, there is a very simple human-centered answer to that question: he prevented me by not forcing me to actually learn how to raise support. We didn’t raise enough funds to live on because I was completely inept (I may also have simply lacked the network for that to be a reasonable goal at that time). But that really only answers the how, not the why. And I didn’t want to consider the why. How, if God wanted me in ministry, could it even be possible that he would only want me to do it “part-time”? That question sat like a burr under my saddle for a very long time. We’ll pick it up again in the future. If you want to keep following this and aren’t subscribed, please do so below to have new posts come to your inbox. Stopping to Think is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willdole.substack.com/subscribe (https://willdole.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   5 Oct 2026

   Lead Us Not Into Temptation

   This is part of a series of communion meditations working through the Lord’s Prayer, the previous post can be found here (https://substack.com/@remsenbible/p-209000058) Lead Us Not Into Temptation Today, as we consider the Lord’s Prayer, we come to the sixth petition — “lead us not into temptation.” The first question I have, when I read that, is: isn’t this a silly request? I mean, obviously God isn’t leading his children into temptation, right? In James 1:13 we are exhorted, ‘Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.’ But there is a world of difference between whether or not God, who is Good itself, will tempt you with evil (he won’t), and whether or not he will allow you to be tempted, or even guide your steps so that you are so tested (this he will do). In the Scriptures we see that God is providentially in control of every temptation. Consider Job, a man who was upright and blameless in all his ways—according to God himself! And Job chapter 1 tells us that God suggested to Satan that Job would be a good man for testing and tempting through the removal of all his earthly goods, most of his family, and his health as well. So the Lord clearly does have some important role to play in the hard, evil, and tempting things that come into our lives. And consider your own life. Are you ever tempted? Of course you are. Now, let me ask you—would it be more comforting to think “well, God has nothing to do with this, this is all the devil’s doing, I hope maybe God can help me out of it”; or would it be better to know, as the Scripture teach, that God is in control of every single event. That if a trying or tempting circumstance comes, that he is in complete control? It is only in knowing that God is in complete control that we can find confidence like that of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability…” It is from this confidence that we can pray, “Oh Father, do not put in my path temptations that would cause me to fall. Do not let me tempted beyond the capacity you have given me through your Spirit to resist, or to flee. I want to be faithful to you.” We are praying here, not that no temptations ever come, but that the Lord would preserve us from temptations which would overwhelm us. And as we pray this, we pray fully aware of the many times we have been tempted and have fallen. We pray painfully aware of our sinfulness. But we also pray remembering the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus who was tempted by the devil in the desert and remained faithful. The Lord Jesus who was tempted in the Garden, and remained faithful. The Lord Jesus who was tempted and tried in every way as we are, and yet did not sin. Instead, he went to the cross as a sinless sacrifice in our place, bearing our sin and our guilt and our shame, in his body on the tree. By his wounds are we healed, by his shed blood are we forgiven. Through faith in him alone do we receive forgiveness and life. Thanks for reading Stopping to Think! This post is public so feel free to share it. Stopping to Think is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit willdole.substack.com/subscribe (https://willdole.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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