Check mate and I didn’t even know I was in the game. 

You may think I am writing some of this material and trying to be cute. Wanting to write in a way that is attractive to you. So I can keep you reading my blog.  I tell you that I want to write accurate and true, that there is no room in this for joking around or making things up. When I write that I have been check mated by God I am quite serious. And as far as you continuing to read this blog, I know that God is directing your footsteps. He will have those He wants with him to read this, and enjoy it, and share it with others. This is what I mean when I say God, Jesus Christ is in control.

I have no way out of my direct connection to God. Not that I want out. No, I want in. I want to be closer to God, closer to Jesus The Christ.  But at the time of this tree incident, I felt I was doing okay. Not always achieving what I wanted to achieve but all and all life is good. I pretty much did what I wanted whenever I wanted. God changed that. He check mated me. Now my life is not my own. Now I know that my life never really was my own. God is Sovereign over all that He has created. I am owned by Him. The difference is; now I know it. Before I did not.

Now I think about God night and day. Everything revolves around Him. Yes, I am free to come and go as I want. But I take not a step, move not in any direction without thinking is this the right thing to do. Will God appreciate this. My life is my life but it is now a life given over to God. I do so willingly. He has shown His appreciation of my efforts through many blessings I receive daily. Oh yes, that is part of the walk with God. He takes care of things, even little things, that smooth out the road before me. I will tell you more about this as the years roll by.

When I moved around that tree stump and went over to sit down on it, I had a few minutes to think about what just happened. I needed to cool off, I was hot from all that work. As I sat there I enjoyed the cool fall day. I wasn’t cold but was cooling off, there was no wind, emotionally I was a train wreck. But the Sun was out and I was soaking in the warmth of the Sun even as I was cooling off from the work. I looked up and saw a glorious sky. Blue it was without a cloud to be seen. The grass seemed so green and the sky so blue and the smell of it all was wonderful. Those who fell trees know what I am talking about. The oily residue from the chainsaw mixed in with the fresh air, decaying wood from the sawing of the tree and the sense of accomplishment all seem to come together as if to say: Life is good.

So I started to think about how that tree moved and why. But those thoughts soon gave way to thinking about what I believed in:

 I use to think God was far off. I remember as a kid thinking that if I said a prayer it must take time to reach God’s ears. You know, leaving my lips and traveling across space on its way to heaven. As a kid I use to think God probably has a secretary, an Angel, that first receives the prayer and who determines the priority of the prayers. Separating the emergency prayers from the mundane. Giving to God those prayers that needed His attention first. And when He had time, He could answer the other prayers whenever He wanted. But the tree taught me I was completely wrong about all of that.

The moment I put my hand on that tree and started a conversation with Jesus, I was in prayer. I did not know this at the time. I learned it later. The moment I spoke out loud these words; Jesus, I don’t know if the Bible is true or not… God was listening. The moment I said I need help with this tree, God responded immediately by moving the tree away from my hand. There was no time delay. No Secretary Angel interfered. God was there and He acted. No time delay of my prayer winging its way to Heaven before reaching God’s ears. My tree taught me that even though I could not see Him, feel Him, smell Him or even accidentally bump into Him as I worked around the tree, He was standing right there beside me the whole time.

Now I imagine that Jesus was simply holding the tree in one of His hands, strike that, with the power of His Spirit God held that tree in place as I worked so hard to push it physically over. He was the cause of it not falling in the first place. Now I know God put those words in my mouth. Now I know God caused me to put my hand on that tree. Now I know God raised that tree up as it was falling. Now I know God balanced the tree on its cut base. God showed me He was listening when I yelled “Wait, wait, wait.” . God proved His existence to me when He stopped the tree from falling while it was still in mid air, stood it back up, without me giving Him further guidance. 

No further guidance: You see, all I said was; Wait, wait, wait.”. I did not say to the tree stop. I did not say swing left or right. I did not say reverse direction and stand yourself back up. No, I said none of these things yet the tree, from my words “Wait, wait, wait” seemed to understand , seemed to think for itself, to stop in mid flight, and go back to where it was. You see? God did all of that. I had nothing to do with any of it except to watch and learn from my LORD and Master. He did these things to prove to me He was real.

I will never be the same as I once was. Nor do I want to be.

Here is some other interesting things I learned from this tree incident. When the tree reversed itself and returned to an upright position it had nullified gravity. Isn’t this one of the first Laws of Science? That gravity effects everything. Nothing is immune to its effects? Are not all our scientific work equations based upon this scientific rule that work is measured by what we have to do to overcome gravity? Yet God, pays no attention to our silly scientific rules. He showed me He has the ability to “float” a tree in mid air and even the power to reverse its momentum and stand it back up without even breaking a sweat. Not only that, but Jesus has the ability to raise just the tree and not effect the me, the grass, the ground, or even the sawdust laying at the bottom of the tree. None of these things moved, just the tree. And He did it in front of my eyes without making a sound. He didn’t even grunt in the effort.

It has been 5 years since this tree moved. I tell you I have had to come to all the conclusions I have offered in this blog over this 5 year time frame, I knew none of this at the time of the event. This I believe is what Christians call Sanctification. That is, we start growing in the knowledge of the ways of Jesus when we first accept Jesus Christ as the Son of God. When we show our belief in Him. And then we spend the rest of our lives growing in the knowledge of His being. We are to continue to grow spiritually into the men and women of Christ Jesus. This takes time. 

In fact, after this tree incident took place I spoke of it to only two people and both of them do not really remember the discussion. I cannot explain why this bothered me so much at the time. I do know that I still did not want to be a Bible thumper even after the tree incident, which is why I started a private study of the Bible without consulting anyone else and maintained this study for over a year. Didn’t go to church. Didn’t preach to people. I just kept what I saw to myself until I could get a handle on it. Till I could be comfortable with explaining to others that which is unexplainable unless God is in it.

I know many of you will not understand how there can be any more to say about the cutting down of this tree, (which Jesus Christ raised back up onto its cut base even as it was still in the air and in the process of falling downward). After all, millions of trees have been felled since the beginning of time. The tree harvesting process isn’t that difficult to understand. But since God helped me with this tree and since He changed my life so completely during and afterward, it should not be difficult to understand why I want to share these details in detail.

To my way of thinking, God the Creator of everything has graciously announced His presence to me. (And also now to you – as you read this). I could go way outside my personal knowledge and suggest that this tree situation may be one of the ways the Lord is announcing his return. . . 

There are three other chunks of information I want to share with you: 1. How I came to use a Bible verse when I placed my hand on that tree. 2. What I was doing with my life prior to even reading the Bible to be able know that verse. And 3. I want to share what I have been doing with myself since this tree incident back in 2012. However, before I go into all of that, I still need to share my thoughts and deeds immediately after the tree arose.

So, I am standing back behind the tree. The tree has just reversed direction and is rising back up to it’s cut base. I remember how hot I was, sweat running down my back, arms and dripping from my face. I remember first feeling then seeing the tree fall away from my hand as my hand was resting on it’s bark. As I finished those words that I already told you I said,  you could not have excited me more if you had stuck my hand in an electrical socket. I was buzzed, shocked, afraid and happy all at the same time when that tree started to fall.

I almost forgot to jump back out of the way of that falling tree. But I did move away, and after arriving back at the same tree I had been messaging myself from, I spun around to see that the falling tree looked like it would hit my tractor and trailer. When I threw my hands up and yelled wait, wait, wait I was not thinking about who I was yelling at. I did not think about God, or Jesus although I was already mentally trying to figure out what just happened when the tree pulled away from my hand. But to say at that moment I was thinking about God would not be true, my analytical mind was already searching for a reason why that tree started to fall after I spoke a few words – when for the previous hour I could not get it to budge.

I tell you I did not think about God until I arrived back to the tree in time to see it stop falling in mid air and start coming back at me. Then I began thinking about God. 

I have cut down many trees. I am used to seeing the trees fall away. I have often seen the details of the bark of the tree getting slowly  smaller as the tree falls away. But I remember so clearly seeing the details of the bark getting larger as that tree rose back up towards me. It is weird I suppose, but that bark made an impression on me. I was staring at the bark, watching it get bigger as the tree came up, I did not even think to get out of the way if the tree continued past its upright position. Somehow I just knew it was going to stop. If I had placed my hand out as I did when I said those words to Jesus, I know that the tree would have stopped right at my hand.

So after the tree stopped moving. I stood there quietly and did not move a muscle. A tear did form in my eye as I searched for an explanation in my mind. But I had none. I knew my life had just been changed. I have played chess a few times in my life, I always lose, but there is a move called checkmate whereas the game is over. I knew I had been checkmated. Even at that early stage of this tree situation I knew I no longer was in control of my life. As I stood there feeling, not thinking, these thoughts it suddenly occurred to me that God was still with me, that He was standing there somewhere close by, and He was waiting for me to make the next move.

Can I speak candidly with you about this moment? This is the moment when this whole tree situation came to a head that day. The moment, when I knew without a doubt, I was talking to God. The moment when I would speak out loud to my Creator and knew I was doing so. Even now as I write this I feel my head start to hurt, tears are near my eyes, and I am so very embarrassed that even today I have not done enough for Him, all the good that I have tried to do since this moment I, like the Apostle Paul before me, count as dung. Nevertheless, God was waiting for me to say something. I could not just walk away.

A child of television I am, all my life I have enjoyed the actor John Wayne. No matter what situation he found himself in he always carried himself tall in the saddle. Never backed down. Even in the movie The Shootist, he went to his death in dignity. That is all I could think of in this checkmated moment. Be cool, be calm, don’t let on that your even talking to God. So, fake that I was and probably still am, I slowly got down on one knee, looked in the direction that the tree was falling (and arose from) to see if it was going to hit my tractor. Which of course it wasn’t even close to falling on my tractor. Then I stood back up, took a deep breath, slid my hands into my back pockets as confidently as I could and said these most stupid words, words that will haunt me all the days of my life. It’s okay Jesus, you weren’t going to hit my tractor.

The tree, immediately began to fall right back to the ground. I had not touched it again. All I did was step back a pace as I watched it go down. I knew it would not hit me. 

Even as I write these words to you, whoever you are, I must confess that as I walked around the tree on that day to take a sit on its trunk, I was not even then fully cognizant that I just interacted with God. No, my mind was filled not with the wonder of God but with trying to figure out how what just happened, happened. I was busy analyzing. Truth be told absolutely, I was trying to get myself out of a checkmated position. I had yet to accept the change to my life that God had brought.

I had yet to accept that God had won.

The tree went down and I sat down on it. A friend of mine happened to stop by and I wondered if I should tell him of what just happened. You see, all my life I never – ever pictured myself as a Bible thumper. In just a matter of minutes of my experience with God, here comes someone I could tell. But the desire to not be a Bible thumper was a strong one, I gritted my teeth in anger to myself, as I thought about how stupid I was behaving. After all it is not like people interact with God through the normal course of one’s life. Besides, this friend of mine is family, he is religious, he is going to Cedarville College, he is a Christian, certainly he would appreciate the event that just happened to me.

My friend had a bit of a walk in front of him, I was out in a field and he could not drive out to me without leaving tracks in the yard. So as he got closer I tried to figure out just where I would start or what  I should say about the event. This is not easy for me because this is not a subject I would ever talk about in normal conversation. Even as he approached I had my doubts I would even say anything. Still, this is God that I had a run in with; how could I not speak of such a thing?

Well, I told him. He just looked at me for a moment, scratched his chin and said: “Yeah, God does some really strange things. Well, I got to be going. I came over thinking you were Paw cause you’re dressed just like him. But since your not him I’m going to go on over to his place. See ya.”

Away he walked. I just sat there on that tree and watched him go. I could hardly believe what just happened. I had expected so much more of a reaction. I had worked myself up emotionally. Truly I did expect some big enthusiasm out of my friend. I had built up – in the time it took my friend to cross the field – a vision in my mind that He would sit with me and ask me questions and I imagined myself walking him through an explanation. That my friend would be as excited as me and that maybe I would better understand what just happened through this interaction with him. I guess I expected with him being a student at Cedarville he would certainly be able to help me understand what just happened.

As my friend drove away I was emotionally drained. Sitting on that tree and knowing I had just had confirmation that God was real, Jesus was real and how big of an idiot I have been not really believing all my life and now I have my proof and was able to share it. What an emotional high knowing God truly exist was being juxtaposed against an emotional low of seeing how little impact my story had on my friend and a Christian. ( Later my friend told me he didn’t know if I was playing a joke on him or what. Because what I was telling him was so out of character for me.)

Well, I had a mess to cleanup. That tree needed to be loaded into my trailer and carted off to my house. I decided to put it out of my mind for awhile, get the wood home and then in the quiet of my house I would think more about what just transpired. 

So, I get a lot of the tree picked up and placed in the trailer. I was using a home made double axle trailer. Probably 12 foot long and a little over 4 1/2 feet wide. It has 3 foot sides on it too. I would imagine I probably hauled 6 loads of wood back my house. The rest of the bits and pieces ended up in the woods out back on the property. I spent several days gathering up the wood.

After I got my first days wood unloaded at home, I was able to sit and think about the tree. I have a analytical mind. And enjoy reasoning out difficult problems. So I began what turned out to be a long study about this tree situation. But on this night my focus was on what my encounter with God meant, but before I tell you that, I think you should read a little more about the event itself.

I guess I am going to tell you a little about what I was going to tell my friend on that day.

There were no words given to me by God. No thunder and lightning. Nothing special to mark the occasion except that the tree reversed its direction from falling down to lifting up. The action of the tree was quiet. No noise.  (See my earlier post to understand why I am writing about a tree.) The day started out like this: Sunny with blue sky, crisp and chilly. No wind to speak of and about half the fall foliage was already on the ground. The grass was still green and it was wet. So walking out to the field made your feet very wet and you would hear a crunching of some of the leaves under foot. This was a very good Friday for gathering fire wood. When you work hard cutting and lifting tree trunks you naturally like it when the air is cool.I arrived about 10 in the morning.

The tree I was after was situated between two other trees. So as I approached the site I was looking at a cluster of trees. Later I recognized that my tree was in the middle of two other trees and all three taken together looked like they formed a triangle of trees. You can see what the area looks like by going to YOUTUBE.COM and searching for Larry Splain’s tree. I took a video of the site about a year or so later when I was told the homeowner was going to pull the stump and maybe cut down the other trees. I wanted to preserve for myself what it all looked like.

I used my Stihl chainsaw to cripple cut the tree I wanted. I only had one direction available for the tree to be felled. I ran my tractor and trailer up to the tree and parked them just to the right of where I expected the tree to fall. The rig would be parallel the tree after the tree came down. It would make it easy to load the trailer too as I wouldn’t have far to walk with the wood. I then stepped behind the tree and made my relief cut. I cut that tree till there was only 3/4 inch of wood left uncut. This 3/4 inch was to act as a hinge for when the tree fell. I do not cut trees all the way through because when they fall you cannot control where they bounce. The hinge of wood is just enough to blunt any attempt by the tree to bounce uncontrollably.

Problem was, the tree was sitting so perfectly balanced that after the cut, it just stood there. This tree was about 23 inches thick at it’s base and easily 80 foot tall, maybe more. It is a very big tree for here in central Ohio. But I have cut bigger and I knew that I could cut the hinge a little bit more, which I did. Now the hinge is probably 1/2 inch thick. Knowing this I figured I could just push against the tree and get it rocking. Once that tree moved far enough off center I knew from past experience she would come down.

I pushed. Nothing moved. I pushed some more. Still nothing moved. Now I stand 6 feet tall and weigh in around 245. I used to lift weights when I was younger. Been lifting heavy loads all my life. I was shocked to say the least when after an hour’s worth of very hard pushing all I could see move were the littlest of branches and all they were doing is just wiggling. My back, up between my shoulders was really burning. Sweat rolled off my forehead and down the back of my shirt. I got so warm that I threw off my coat. Every few minutes of pushing I would take a break, I would walk over about 3 paces to the one tree opposite of where my tractor stood, place my upper back against the tree and give myself a little back message against the tree trunk.

Looking back at that tree I would get mad at myself and tell myself if I would just push harder it would go down. So after several trips back and forth to my message tree, I thought maybe I could get a rope or chain and fasten it to my tractor and pull the tree over. Problem was that I had neither. Both were at home and I really did not like driving 4 miles home and 4 miles back all the while leaving this tree unattended. It would be just my luck that one of the grandkids of the woman who’s property I was on would be standing there near the tree when the tree came down. No sir, I just couldn’t take the chance.

My wife is a long distance runner and was currently away from home on a fifty mile training run. No chance for me to call her and have her come over to babysit the tree while I run back to the house to get a chain. Also the homeowner was not on site either so I figured getting this tree down was all on me. I even contemplated driving the tractor up between the two other trees and using the bumper to fell the tree. But, there is much danger in doing that. Should the tree fall backwards instead of forwards I would be trapped behind the wheel and between both trees. Besides, the homeowner had an old hammock strung up between the trees and probably 10 miles of rope wrapped around those trunks, I didn’t want to fool with that option anyway.

So back to pushing I went. Madder and madder I got with myself. Why did I keep giving up the pushing of the tree? If I just would try a little harder I know it will move… Maybe I should go ahead and cut through the base… I did grab the piece of wood that came from the cripple cut and jam it into the relief cut, pounded it with a sledge hammer. But it shattered and the tree still stood rock solid.

Finally, in desperation, I thought of that verse in the bible; Whatever you ask for in my name I will do. (Later I found the verse: John 14:14) So I placed my left hand on the trunk of the tree and said: Jesus, I don’t know if your Bible is true or not. . .

I want you to know about how I came to know Jesus Christ is alive. This is a republishing of my early blog post. If you read this it will start you on a series of blogs leading up to where I am at today. Just follow the links. 10/22/19.

In the fall of 2012 I had an encounter with God. It happened when I was out cutting down dead Ash trees. The tree I had cut with my chain saw would not fall down no matter what I did and in frustration, I put my left hand on the trunk of the tree and said these words: 

“Jesus, I do not know if if your Bible is true or not, but it says somewhere in it that whatever I ask for in your name you will do. Well Jesus, I need your help getting this tree dow . . . ”

That is as far as I got with my words. The tree, that I spent over an hour trying to fell down, suddenly began to fall over. I jumped back about 3 paces and at an angle away from the rear of the tree. Spun around to watch the tree fall and as I looked it occurred to me that the tree was about to fall on my Massey Ferguson 135 tractor. Without even thinking, I ran back to the tree with my arms out in front of me and said “Wait, wait, wait.”.  That was all I said.

The tree was about 80 feet long and I guess it would weigh in about 8,000 pounds. Maybe more. I never stopped to figure it out. But, that tree was nearly to the ground when it stopped moving in mid air, and began to lift itself back up as it returned to the upright position on its own cut trunk.

I was standing right behind the tree. Looking straight at it as it returned to an upright position. I did not think to move out of the way or nothing. I just stood there. Frozen in the moment. Not able to think of anything except how that tree just did what it did.

As I stood there thinking it suddenly dawn on me that I had asked Jesus for His help. The tree was lifted up by Jesus. And more importantly, Jesus was still there with me as I knew I didn’t lift that tree up and I had yelled wait, wait, wait so he must be waiting on me. So I got down on one knee, looked to where the tree was headed when it was falling, I realized it was the angle that I backed away to that caused me to think the tree was going to hit my tractor. From a position directly behind the tree where I was now, I knew it was going to fall right where I wanted it to fall.

I stood back up and put my hands in my back pockets, and speaking directly to the tree said the most stupidest thing I could say to the Lord. I said, “It’s okay Jesus, you weren’t going to hit my tractor.” And without a further word or action from me that big old tree just fell to the ground with a thump.