Since my first teaching job at Hanalani Schools on the Island of Oahu, Hawaii, in 1998, I’ve wanted to do nothing more than teach. In fact, in nearly every job or role I’ve had since then, teaching has been a primary part of it.

 

Let's fast forward - in the early summer of 2025, I stepped down from a leadership and training career in the heavy-duty diesel and transport refrigeration industry to take care of my father, who has been in declining health for several years and now requires full-time care. Prior to this, and for nearly a year, I began to seriously consider a new direction: the potential of pursuing full-time Christian ministry, mainly that of teaching the Bible, became something I knew I wanted to do. I'm still in the midst of this process, and what this desire actually becomes has yet to take shape, but this website is the beginning of this new journey towards that end.​​ 

 

​I've spent some 20+ years of my life working in some capacity in the diesel and transport refrigeration industry. Prior to this, I was actually a middle and high school teacher. Seems like a lifetime ago. My transition into the trades is another story altogether, but suffice it to say, this line of work became much more than just a career for me. Learning to work in this industry ultimately became the crucible I needed. It exposed my ongoing love affair with my own immaturity, but it also cultivated in my heart a genuine desire to embrace the need for personal responsibility, the need for objectivity and authenticity -- things that ultimately were necessary for my true conversion to Christ.​​

 

But why these things, and why objectivity? I think looking back, my identity for so long was wrapped up in acceptance and validation. I needed people to like me. I lived in a world ordered by how I felt about myself too. I recall a teacher and coach of mine in high school saying this all the time to us: "You are now becoming the person you will one day be." This is one of those self-evident rules for life, but for me, I lived as if I was somehow the exception to the rule. I don't mind admitting it either, because it's the truth. But here's what the reality of working in the trades would show me: this mindset will sabotage any hope of being a good diesel technician, something that would change my life forever.

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Here's why. Believe it or not, disciplined, objective thinking is one of the hallmarks of a good diesel technician. In fact, technicians who fix things the right way don't get lucky; they simply learn to think objectively and apply facts and truth. They don't try to be the exception either; rather, they work hard to know the rules and apply them to given situations. I’ve known plenty who simply try to bluff their way through a diagnostic process, and it usually results in a great deal of embarrassment; more importantly, in many cases, it results in catastrophic equipment failure. It can be the smallest details that can create some of the worst failures too.

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The same kind of practical logic can be true for the disciple of Christ. Objective truth matters much more than we think, regardless of our opinion, circumstance, or how "we feel" about it in the moment; we simply can't manipulate truth and reality to fit something we want to be true. No matter how much we try to project what we want others to think of us, the truth of who we are always reveals itself. This of course doesn't stop us from trying, right? 

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This brings me to the matter of discipleship, and what it means to truly be a student of Jesus Christ. Discipleship, specifically Christian discipleship, can be defined as a lifelong process of following Jesus Christ, learning His teachings, and allowing the Holy Spirit to change our character to become more like Him. It is much more than mere intellectual assent to the Gospel, and while it may involve a public profession or confession of a belief in Christ, this is not the defining attribute of Christian discipleship. This would be the transformation of character through the renewing of our minds - Romans 12:1-2

 

To many professing Christians live as if these are all valid ideas for discipleship-more specifically, and without realizing it, they fail to see how the role their self-deception actually has in their current station in life. 

 

One of my favorite Christian writers is World War 2 era German author and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In what is probably his most popular book, The Cost of Discipleship, he makes this simple yet powerful observation. "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." This sounds incredibly profound, and for the average Christian it might also cause them to feel a bit uncomfortable. Bonhoeffer acknowledges that a believer's discipleship to Christ does include the potential of literally sacrificing his or her physical life for Christ, but this likelihood is also very remote for most; hence, it is not really the source of the discomfort I speak of.

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However, when discipleship is understood as being an intentional choice to willingly and daily "die to your own sense of self-worth and ambition," it then can become an extremely uncomfortable reality. In fact, this expression of discipleship to Christ does not really comport with how we actually practice discipleship to Christ. 

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This, though, is why the trades are so important to me. Why I carry the name as part of the website. It literally became the place where the roots of genuine conversion to Christ took hold of me. I began to see things more objectively. Facts, principles, rules, and the Word of God really matter.

 

The years working in the industry exposed much of my subjective worldview, and exposed the self-deception inherent in my mishmash version of Christian faith. 

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The website's name “heavydutymike.com” is indeed a reminder and a reflection of the years spent working in the heavy-duty diesel and transport refrigeration industry and how I still draw upon the practicality and objectivity they subjected me to. This career was used by God to reshape my thinking about a relationship with Biblical truth. I spent years teaching the crafts too but I'v never forgotten the years being a knuckle dragging grunt, working 3rd shift in a pit, changing oil, tires and wheel seals, even dropping motor coach lavatories at 2 in the morning. 

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I'm thankful that God allowed me to find my way into the trades. I'm even grateful for the modicum of success I found in those years working in the trades. But there has been no life accomplishment or career achievement that comes even remotely close to the experience of being a parent to my two children, Noah and Kate.​ I praise God for the blessing, opportunity, and privilege of loving them, learning from them, teaching them, as we all learn to be faithful disciples of Christ, together.

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I'll let you in on a little secret: much of the content of this site, the blogs especially, is a kind of extension of what we as a family have been collectively learning over the past 10 years or so. I think all three of us, now, more than ever, realize that the path of hardship and adversity is God's preferred way of instilling in each one of us the necessary self-discipline, perspective, and character needed to humbly conform our hearts and minds into His image. - 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

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We live in a society and culture where we take for granted our Christian faith. We simply don't trust Christ because we don't need to. It's America; we'll just entertain, buy, or podcast our way out of our problems, right? The fact is, too many people live as if Jesus saves from sin, but apart from that, we've got the rest.

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I think the root cause for this reality is that we have a terrible relationship with the Word of God. I'm not just talking about taking time to read it, but specifically, the methodology and practice of interpreting and applying biblical truth to our lives.

 

Let's be honest, for too many, the Bible is treated like a book of magic spells in a Hogwarts library, and not God's spoken Word to us in written form. Too often, we relate to it like it contains secret hidden truths that require special anointing to know and understand.

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I think that reason for this is that we've either never been taught the proper way to interpret Scripture, and/or we've been taught and modeled the wrong way, and we've just run with it. For whatever reason, the perpetual dumbing down and oversimplifying of Scripture has produced a carelessness about biblical interpretation. So while you'll often get a unity about the need for Scripture in the life of the believer, you'll get anything but unity when it comes to interpreting that same Scripture. 

 

Here's the good news. God's Word contains objective truth that we can, and must learn how to properly draw out of the text. This is the space that I want this project to exist in. I want to bring objectively sound, scholarly accessible bible teaching to the forefront of people's thinking.

 

This is how the Holy Spirit communes with us too. Not through our emotions or felt needs, or even our experiences and how they shape us; it's not through hidden signs or spiritual premonitions either, but through the "rightly dividing," that is, cutting to the core meaning of the written text of Scripture.

 

This is something that people must be taught now. Few churches preach the Word in a way that models good biblical interpretation. Instead, they are learning how to subjectively relate to God's Word, and they do a terrible job of it at that.

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They also must be taught that there is no set of special requirements, like some kind of existential super-spirituality or a God-ordained gift, needed to understand Scripture. Studying the Word of God with scholarship, integrity, and skill is for every believer to learn and understand.

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The 16th-century Protestant reformers introduced us to a word that we have forgotten in the 21st: Perspicuity-  it's a word that simply means clarity, clearness, or plainness. However, when the reformers applied it to the Scriptures, they specifically meant that the essential truths of sacred Scripture, that is, those necessary for salvation and sanctification, are plainly obvious to us in the text of the Word of God. In other words, we don't need an intermediary or anything special to know what God is saying. We may reject the truth, or ignore it, but our lack of embracing truth is not because it is hard for us to understand. No, we have our disobedient sin nature to blame for this.

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So, while there may be difficult portions of Scripture that are not easy to interpret, the core essentials required for knowing Christ and knowing how we are to live as His disciple are plain and clear to each and every one of us. 

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The bottom line here, heavydutymike.com, is a place to learn the practical aspects of being a true disciple of Jesus Christ through cultivating a proper relationship with Scripture. Indeed, we have everything necessary for life and godliness through a knowledge of Him (Christ). - 2 Peter 1:3

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Many thanks for taking the time to stop by and read about me and what heavydutymike.com is all about.​​ 

 

May God richly bless you.

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​Soli Deo Gloria, – ‘Glory to God Alone’

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​~Michael C

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