The Sweet Spot: How Pastor Tim Davis Discovered Purpose Through Hardship
Tim Davis is 61 years old, and he's spent nearly every one of those years inside a church. But he'll tell you the truth about his life without flinching: he was performing. He knew how to say the right things and hit every mark expected of a preacher's kid — and he loved the applause that came with it.
His family relocated to Jacksonville on New Year's Day, 1980, when his father took over as president of Trinity Baptist College (now Trinity College of Jacksonville), and Davis became even better at playing the part. He built a life he was constantly praised for. His singing ministry carried him around the world. He made plenty of money designing pools, and he became a powerlifter and bodybuilder. With every achievement came more attention and applause.
"I became addicted to praise," Davis says.
"And when I say praise, I don't mean praise for God. I mean praise for me."
Davis’ efforts all went into chasing this praise, not God’s purpose.
From Bitterness…
In 2025, the life he’d built on his own pride and ego collapsed. Davis had a heart attack, his kidneys failed, and he ended up in the emergency room with a port placed in his chest. He lost his singing voice, his career, and his money. All things he’d built his identity on. He went from feeling limitless to spending every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday hooked up to dialysis for five hours.
Davis felt like God hated him. Furious and bitter, he begged God to give his old life back. God didn't.
"God had brought me to a place of humility that was so frustrating,"
he remembers. Davis was convinced he had nothing left to offer.
He asked his wife, Lisa, why God wouldn't just heal him. She was honest: God had already healed his heart and soul, which mattered most. Though Davis had grown up as a Christian, he’d now begun to genuinely surrender his life to God, understanding titles and possessions meant nothing.
Over dinner with friends, Davis admitted how unsure he was about the future. The last thing he expected was an invitation to become the Plaza pastor at Trinity’s Hammond Campus — someone stationed in a busy area to pray with people, counsel them, and talk with them about Jesus.
Davis pictured the plaza, where the play area and café stay full of moms looking for a cool place to sit while their kids played safely nearby. He wondered how he could possibly fit in. Still, desperate for income, he said yes.
His first day was terrifying — hundreds of kids, dozens of moms, and Davis standing there as one of the only men in the room. But something clicked. He's been married to Lisa for almost 39 years, and as the father of three daughters, he was a girl dad through and through. God had been quietly equipping him for this role long before he ever knew it existed.
To the Sweet Spot
Ask Davis how it's going now, and he'll light up talking about how the Holy Spirit moves through his conversations every day at the plaza. Through tears, he described a father who'd just sat in his office and said yes to Jesus.
Davis calls this being in the sweet spot, God's designed purpose.
"When God puts you in the sweet spot, and He works through you effortlessly," he says, "you just want to run around the building and scream and holler and shout and praise God."
Davis is also building a new legacy. His heart has changed, and his family sees it too. Every step he takes closer to God, they draw nearer too. They talk about God together now, and he sees a whole new foundation forming.
Life is still hard. His body is failing, but Davis isn't shaken. He suspects God isn't finished with him yet, and he plans to keep showing up. When people come to him overwhelmed by their problems, he encourages them to set that weight aside for a moment and remember something bigger: God has a plan that includes a better version of them that they can't see yet. Getting there sometimes means walking through what Davis calls a refining fire.
"Don't think of this refining fire as God's anger and wrath on you," he says. "Many times, He's just trying to get out of you what He doesn't want in you."
His advice for anyone in a hard season: don't stay angry at God for the refining. Let it happen. Trust God’s love. He is with you there, and he knows what's waiting on the other side.