1: It was November of 1988, and Terry Looper was on his way to Las Vegas.
Terry owned 10 percent of the company that was about to be sold.
“Once the papers were signed, I should’ve been on top of the world,” he writes in his book Sacred Pace: Four Steps to Hearing God and Aligning Yourself With His Will.
“I was not just a millionaire as I’d always hoped, but a multimillionaire!” Terry recalls.
“My addiction to success and my lust for money couldn’t have been a better match for this startup world,” he recalls. “I did deals all day long. When one was done, I was already anticipating the next three or four, absolutely absorbed with the prospects and possibilities of more.
“Like twenty-four-hour talk radio, my mind never turned off,” Terry notes.
Until it did.
2: A few weeks before boarding the flight to Las Vegas, at thirty-six years old, on a Saturday morning, he had suffered a nervous breakdown.
“I truly thought I had lost my mind,” he recalls. “Worst of all, I wasn’t sure I would ever get it back.”
With the sale of the company, he had achieved his goal and earned a huge payday.
“Yet the money didn’t remove the hollowness inside,” he writes.
On that Saturday morning, Terry was unable to get out of bed. “It felt like the oxygen had been turned off in my brain, making it impossible for me to even lift my head from the pillow,” he recalls. “This was more than just a physical sensation. It was emotional, spiritual, and mental. A shutdown on every level.”
At one point that day, he managed to finally crawl out of bed. Kneeling beside his bed, “more scared than I’d ever been,” he cried out, “Lord, I can’t go on like this. I’ve done a miserable job of trying to run my life by myself. You need to take control, because I’ve screwed everything up. . .
“Thankfully,” Terry remembers, “after my anguished prayer that Saturday in October, my brain did flicker on again. “But it was only a flicker.”
The next day, he was ordained as an elder at his church. His wife, Doris, and his sister chose his clothes and escorted him to his seat. “That’s how debilitated I was,” he explains.
In the days immediately after his breakdown, Terry took a week off from work.
“I also visited a psychologist,” he notes, “who gave me a book on burnout. When I read that, I learned two things: 1) I had indeed burned out, and 2) it would happen again if I didn’t change my ways and do some serious therapy.
“Clearly, my issues ran deep,” Terry writes. “I needed far more help than anyone around me knew how to give. So Doris and my sister found a therapist in the Yellow Pages who, providentially, turned out to be a man of strong faith and an expert at ushering people through their deepest insecurities.”
After the sale of the company, he began going to therapy. “Intense, deep therapy, twice a week,” he shares. He told his therapist: “I’ll do as much work as I need to.”
“Being scared out of your mind has a way of changing your mind, doesn’t it?”
The therapist told Terry it would take a lot of time to unpack his pain. “He wasn’t kidding,” he notes.
What surprised him most during this difficult time?
“How much I grew to love Scripture,” he recalls. “The Word of God was undeniably recalibrating my heart and mind, breathing life into my soul. For the first time ever, I felt excited to open my Bible each day; it was speaking to me in profoundly practical ways I hadn’t noticed before. . .
“I found that guarantee in the Bible where Jesus told His listeners, ‘Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light’” (Matt. 11: 29–30).
In time, Terry’s life began to change.
“I found that as long as I stayed within the parameters that are in every Christian’s owner’s manual (the Bible), my life not only ran more effectively,” he writes, “but I started seeing the kinds of results—relationally and spiritually—I’d been seeking my entire life.
“I was becoming less impulsive in my decision-making. Less distracted by dollar signs. And definitely braver in the face of my fears, especially my fear of displeasing others.
“Plus, I felt better,” Terry recalls. “Others saw a difference, too, first and foremost Doris and my daughters. But then also my friends, and eventually my colleagues.”
He experienced a profound new outlook on life, “and I gave therapy all the credit,” he recalls.
Then, one day, Doris remarked that God had really changed Terry’s heart.
“I finally put two and two together,” he writes. “Therapy wasn’t the only reason my life was different. Jesus had clearly done a work inside me as well.
“With the mental fog lifted, I could now see that Saturday a year ago was a turning point. My day of salvation,” Terry notes. “When I had gasped that genuine, pleading prayer at the bottom of my burnout, I was born again; I simply hadn’t realized it.
“For an entire year, I didn’t know! This has puzzled some people. ‘How could you not know, Terry?’ they ask. “The moment of salvation is usually as obvious as a lit-up fire truck coming at you with its sirens on!”
“All I can say is, my slow discovery shows the extent of my spiritual blindness and denial,” he reflects. “I was so ‘accomplished’ at religious activities that I assumed I’d been a Christian for most of my life. I mean, with my résumé, how could I not be? I looked the part through and through! Weekly church attender since childhood. Regular tither. Even church elder.
“What I lacked, though, was the kind of transformation that only Christ can produce: a change of heart from the inside out. Once I surrendered to Him as the only One who could rescue me from myself, I began the lengthy process of shedding my well-worn ‘cultural Christianity’ and living in the reality and security of my new identity.
“I was a child of God—forgiven, loved, accepted.”
3: Terry had discovered a newfound identity in Christ.
“Jesus was no longer a convenience,” he observes. “He became a deep consideration and my Friend—someone I looked to for counsel and could be completely transparent with about my insecurities.
Terry writes: “I quit compartmentalizing Him as a ‘for Sundays only’ entity and actually started engaging with Him day after day, wanting to know Him, eagerly studying His life and words, interested in what He thought about the things I was facing. . .
“I tried to put His Word into practice,” he explains. “I tried to slow down and listen for the Holy Spirit’s whispers in my day-to-day life. And I was changing.”
For decades, Terry had been moving at warp speed.
More, more, more. Faster, faster, faster.
One of his biggest discoveries was that the Lord is always slower to answer than Terry wanted.
Why? “I believe one reason is He wants us to develop more trust and dependence on Him,” he writes.
“That was definitely an area of prayer for me in 1988, even as I yearned to move ahead with whatever God had in store,” Terry notes.
“I made it my habit to sit quietly at the beginning of each day, prayerfully asking the Lord, ‘What’s next? What is Your plan for me?’ I’d then read from my Bible and a devotional before proceeding with my day.”
During this period of waiting and prayer, two ‘beautiful’ things occurred.
“First, God kept drawing me to a verse within Scripture that spoke very practically to my fear: ‘Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths’ (Prov. 3: 5–6).
“I felt very personally heard by the One I’d been praying to all this time—and deeply reassured,” he observes. “It was true that my desires couldn’t be trusted if I was concerned with what I wanted.
“But for nearly three years I’d been operating at a slower pace and actively seeking the Lord for my next move, which meant I could rely on the Guide and Helper.
“He had given me at the moment of my salvation, His Holy Spirit, to lead the way. It was right there in black and white!” he exclaims. “If I submitted myself to the Lord’s wisdom, He would simultaneously direct my steps and ensure that my heart’s desires echoed my heavenly Father’s desires for me.
“That was the burst of faith I needed to rest in the Lord until He advised my next move.”
The second beautiful thing: Terry slowed down enough to shift into “neutral.”
“That’s how I thought of it,” he recalls. “For the first time ever, I quit insisting on having things my way and moving ahead with my plans.
“Rather, I became ambitious for God’s will, and His alone, whatever that might mean for my future,” he writes. “I now wanted God’s will over my preferences and was ready to do whatever He decided.”
For Terry, it was a shift from praying, “Here’s what I want, God, please help me,” to “Lord, what do You want me to do?”
More tomorrow.
________________________________
Reflection: Where am I chasing success or control instead of seeking clarity, guidance, and alignment?
Action: Take five minutes today to slow down, sit quietly, and ask: “What’s next?”—then listen before acting.