My Adventure with J.L.

My first real exposure to J.L. was in 1999 when I traveled to Africa with my pastor and great friend of J.L.’s, Mark Fox, through New Directions International (NDI, now Feed the Hunger). That trip changed my life!

Little did I know that less than four years later I would join the staff of NDI. I worked with J.L. for eight years and was his personal assistant for two and a half of those years. When I learned of J.L.’s passing on December 28th of this past year, I was stunned; but I also rejoiced for him because he had arrived at the place for which he longed the most. I have learned so much from him, and I still haven’t fully realized his impact on my attitudes and actions. But let me attempt to honor a great man who made a deep impact on me with a few things I will never forget.

1) J.L. relentlessly served God. He was so profoundly committed to sharing the message of Christ to the entire world. When I was his assistant, I would get on average 25 emails a day from him. It was either an item on which I needed to take action for him, or copying me into some correspondence of which I needed to be aware. He would say he needed to “hit the ground running” or “redeem the time” to explain his perpetual state of working. J.L. didn’t wait for someone else to do the work—he liked to do it himself. I remember one gentleman who was part of NDI when it first started and reconnected with J.L. after several decades. He told me, “I have never forgotten that in the very beginning, J.L. made the cleaning schedule for the building. He always took a turn cleaning the bathrooms. I went to him and said, ‘J.L., you shouldn’t have to clean the bathrooms, there are plenty of us to do it.’ He said, ‘The day I am above cleaning the bathrooms is the day I have lost understanding of Christ’s message.’”

2) When he preached, his messages stirred your heart. J.L. was one of the few men who studied the Bible in such a way that when he went through a text, he made sure it went through himself. He didn’t waste words, even though he spoke and wrote at enormous length. I used to joke with him about his habit of boldfacing, underlining, italicizing, capitalizing, or indenting everything he wrote. But he felt it all had significance for his listeners. And many people would attest that they learned more from J.L.’s preaching than from any other preacher.

3) J.L. encouraged everyone to thrive in Christ. People came to J.L. to be encouraged, and he sought out people to encourage. He would send uplifting notes and books as gifts to people to help them better follow Christ. He was interested in people—not because of what projects they could fund, but because he cared for them and wanted to see them be all they could be in Christ. He was authentic.

I’m thankful that God allowed me to share some adventures with him. I remember one time we were flying on a domestic Haitian flight to conduct a crusade in a distant city. Our flight was long delayed when the pilot runs in to the small terminal and says, “We have to go now, no time to load any luggage, just bring what fits on your lap and let’s go! If we are not in the air in 10 minutes then we can’t go. The airport there does not have electricity, and I can’t land in the dark.” The 40 or so passengers scramble onto the plane and off we go. It’s an uneventful flight; that is, until the sun starts to set. I begin looking out the cockpit window for a landing strip, but none is in sight. The sun disappears behind a mountain, and within seconds we are in full darkness. I look at J.L. for my cue, but he is hard to read. With no time to spare, the runway comes into view. Our wheels touch down, it’s fully dark, and J.L. nudges me, chuckles, and says, “Scott, we cheated death one more time!”

I’ll miss J.L. But I’m most thankful that God arranged a season of my life to watch J.L. live his daily life up close. That’s the best way to learn from someone. And for him, it was all about Jesus. I watched carefully, and I am now more Christ-like for having spent time with him.

In Christ’s hope,

Scott Hahn