Letters from a Fathers Heart

God has been abundantly gracious to me in all that he has provided. Between living in a country as great as America to being born into a family with a rich heritage and more than sufficient wealth. I have certainly had all the benefits a man could ever ask for. Even with this abundance, I have spent much of my life asking God for more. I have sought Him to change me spiritually, to make me feel better, and for circumstances to go well. And even though I have had so much, he has answered and provided much of what I have asked for. I have also beseeched God on behalf of my family as well. I have asked God to bless them and bring pleasant and meaningful circumstances into their life. I could speak to the goodness of God for a long time indeed. Haven’t we have all been given so much for us to be grateful for, and I am so very grateful for every member of my family and all that God has blessed me with.

But Jesus has been knocking on my heart lately and asking the question. His voice comes to me and says, “do you want me?” Of course my immediate response has been, “yes”. I want him to change me into His likeness, I want Him to heal my marriage, I want Him to provide the peace and joy that He promises. Of course I want Him. How silly of a question is that. Yet He continues and repeatedly has been asking, “do you want me?”

Slowly I have begun to understand what He is asking. I have been grateful for what He has given to me and I have grown to love God for what He provides for me, which is all good. What I am coming to realize is that I have been seeking for atonement from God and not necessarily reconciliation. We often use these words interchangeably, but I have begun to see them most differently. His atonement for me has put me in a place so that I am free of judgement. I have sought what Jesus can do for me and provide for me, but I have not really wanted Jesus or to be reconciled into a deep relationship with Him. Now a lot of what He gives me is good. He provides eternal life, peace, and comfort. He allows me to have joy in the midst of sorrow and strength when I am weak. These are all very good things … But they aren’t just Him.

In the second half of Mark 5, we have the story of two people that learned the difference between atonement and reconciliation. Between wanting what Jesus can give to us, and simply seeking to have Him. I see myself in them. The woman that was unclean because of her hemorrhaging and Jairus that had a sick 12 year old girl. Both were seeking Jesus for a healing. They both had faith, and they both believed in Jesus. They may have even seen Jesus as the Messiah. But they wanted Jesus for what He could give to them. Jesus interacted with both of them in such a way to make them decide if that is all they wanted Jesus for.

When the woman touched Jesus, He immediately stopped and called her out. He made her show herself and admit who she was and what she had done. He wanted her to decide if she only wanted his healing, or did she want Jesus and did she want to follow Him. By making her admit she had touched Him, she had to confess for breaking the law. Being unclean, and touching anyone, let alone a Rabbi, she was putting herself at risk. Jesus wanted to know if she thought He was worth stepping out and standing out for, or if she would slip away with her healing.

Now this all happened while Jesus was on the way to heal Jairus’ daughter. Jairus was getting the great Rabbi that heals people to come and see His little girl. But on the way, Jesus had stopped. Scripture doesn’t say how long they were stopped, but it was long enough for Jairus to get crushing news that his girl had died. He must have thought, “Jesus, why did you stop?” Imagine how dejected and/or angry he must have felt. But Jesus ignored all of that and told Jarius, “just believe.” Jesus was asking Jarius if he wanted his daughter healed or did he want Jesus? Did he believe in Jesus because of what Jesus could do for him, or did he really want Jesus regardless?

We follow these stories with Jesus walking on the water in Mark 6. This is the time the disciples go out ahead of Him, and He sees them struggling against the wind. He goes out and walks to them, and they become afraid seeing a man walking on the water. But what does say to them? “Have courage! It is I. Do not be afraid.” He tells them not to be afraid, but He doesn’t tell them they will be OK, nor does He tell them it is shallow and they can walk, He doesn’t even say He will calm the wind and solve their problem. He makes no promise of safety so there is no need for them to be afraid. No, He tells them not to be afraid because He is there. That’s it. They have Him, and that is reason enough not to be afraid. Let me repeat that, and let it sink in. He told them to not be afraid, not because they would be safe, but simply because He was there with them.

This is what I am learning is the difference between atonement and reconciliation, and it is what Jesus has been asking me. I know it is abstract and I am not good at describing what this means, but I am beginning to see it clearly and I am growing to want Jesus. I have loved all that he has given to me, and I look forward to what He will give me, and that He has promised me in scripture. But I am learning to simply desire Jesus. I will get all of His other promises, but having Him is beautiful. I am being transitioned from one seeking God for what He can give me, to one that simply wants Him. He is far more satisfying. He is what I need to seek.

Having Him is far better than having what He provides. May you seek Him with all your heart and find Him satisfying.

Jesus gives us the great commission. This command, to go into the whole world and preach the gospel, also says to teach people all that Jesus taught the disciples. Evangelicals would consider all that the rest of the NT authors wrote as needing to be taught as well.

So, I was discussing the merits of social justice with a friend from the Christian Right. He opposes social justice and believes we need to focus on preaching the gospel. As I woke up early the other morning, I was thinking about how part of what James wrote fits so well with what Jesus said as one of his final teachings. It ties together faith and works. James 2 teaches that the justification process has a works component. And while many have argued how James and Paul can be teaching the same gospel, we must wrestle with both sides of this tension. I have come to see how James takes his cue from Jesus in Matthew 25 when He clearly teaches salvation is demonstrated by acts of …

⁃ Feeding and clothing the poor (welfare?)
⁃ Showing hospitality to strangers (foreigners?)
⁃ Take care of the sick (healthcare?)
⁃ Visit those in prison (justice reform?)
Or summarized as taking care of the “least of these.”

As Jesus taught this, there is no faith component in His discussion. It is simply, those who do this inherit the kingdom, and those that don’t are thrown into fire with the the devil and demons. This goes right along with James who said that we are justified by works and not by faith alone. This is uncomfortable teachings for us, especially in the US. But, while there is tension in this, compared to Paul’s strong language that my efforts are like dung, we still have very clear teaching that somehow our “works” of caring for the physical needs of those that need help is a social side of the Gospel.

So this is where I see that some of the very last teachings of Jesus, and those that indicate who does and does not go to heaven, are teachings of a social gospel. The efforts of the social gospel are efforts to bring about a just social order where people that need help get the care that compassion compels us to provide. Evidence of this came early when in Acts 2 it speaks of people giving freely to those in need. And what is so amazing is, that in light of this amazing effort to care for one another (fulfilling Jesus’ command to love one another as He loved them) that unbelieving people came to faith EVERY DAY. This demonstration of sacrificial love (modeled by Christ Himself) is “preaching the Gospel.”

So what I see is that when Christians are willing to sacrifice our own resources (time and money) and show we are willing to forego our own pleasures to help those that are disadvantaged, that this speaks to the unbelieving in ways that words can never accomplish. This is what makes the social component just as important as the spoken/written component of the gospel. Preaching the Gospel by itself is faith without works, and that does not justify anyone, but makes us goats and not sheep.

So I have concluded that efforts at social justice are exactly what Jesus was talking about that demonstrates what sheep do. This is why I find it so hard to believe that so many Christians (like my friend) don’t see this, as it clearly lines up with what Jesus taught us about how to show the love that He commanded us to show, and that this love is what will show all men that we are true followers of Jesus (John 13:35).

As I have wrestled with myself in my own head, and with others on social media, I have tried to express myself about the Gospel, the church, and politics. I have been very unsatisfied with my grasp on why we all find ourselves where we are given my knowledge of the people involved. It all seems so clear to me, and yet some of my friends, who are so much like me, see it so differently, and equally clear. I have not felt like I really understood the motivations of myself and others like me. And these motivations are usually not known or understood by us, and this has been on my mind a lot. Since opposite conclusions are being drawn with similar information, observation, and like background and beliefs, I have been at a loss to understand why there is a divide where one normally won’t find one.

I woke up early this morning and could not stop thinking about it and so I got up and thought I would write down my thoughts. This normally helps me clarify and then set aside any preoccupation I have. And maybe it has.

I am wondering if this is tied to the spiritual path God has taken me on lately. I have come to appreciate the need for the Gospel to inform my thinking of myself and my relationship with Jesus. This change in how I view what Christ desires for me, and from me, has also impacted how I see the world. I think this may be why I do not see politics like so many in my demographic circles. Here is an early effort to document my thoughts.

We boomers, and really some Gen-Xers, tend to be nostalgic. At least those that I associate with, tend to be anyway. We look at our upbringing and we think ours was the best. As we look back, we had better music, better movies. There was imagination and creativity that is not seen today. We were freer and safer, did things and went places as children with out care and often without supervision. Parents had strong discipline and seldom took the side of the child in a behavior dispute with teachers or neighbors, but that somehow felt right. Anyway, I could go on, but you have all seen the memes explaining what we did when we were young and implying how it was better. We just look back and are quite proud of who we were as a people and a nation. The world seemed like it was a good place, and for us it was. And while this was true for my circle of friends, I now know it wasn’t true for everyone.

While still very nostalgic, I see this world as horribly broken more today than ever before. Part of this stems from me seeing myself as FAR more sinful and broken, but also I have learned that the world is a lot bigger than my little piece of it and it is a lot more colorful than the world I grew up in. I was blessed to have lived as a child in a fairly ideal environment and at a time and place that was unusual, at least for me and those like me. This is why MAGA is so appealing. We would like to get America back to what it was when we were growing up. I know as a parent this desire to have my kids be raised like me was strong. It is why they had to suffer through me making them watch shows I grew up with and listen to music I thought was great. It was me being nostalgic about the past, and the desire to make America what it was for younger me is strong and powerful. I get why so many desire this. I think this drives our politics today.

Younger people today do not share my sense of nostalgia about their childhood. I know my kids don’t, but to my surprise as an adult, neither do many that are my age. Most blacks that grew up in the 60s and 70s don’t look back on their childhood with the same wonderful and rosy view that I do. Many families that did not live with me in the suburbs don’t look back and feel the security that I did. Many of these people do not want to take America back to what it was, but see a better future where it is going because there is only one way to go from the bottom. I think this different image of the past is why we feel differently about the future.

It gets complicated for some of us as Christians. If we were fortunate, and grew up in the ideal environment I did, we see the America, and world, as getting worse and on the decline. It is so hard to remember what it used to be like and how we used to live and not yearn for that day again. Some of us were so very fortunate to have experienced this and wish so much for our kids and grandkids to have the same kind of life. But we have to grapple with the truth that this was not everyone’s experience, and we know from our theology that this world is fallen and broken and ravaged with sin. We look at a more distant history and see that through most of time, man has always abused man. This little slice of history in suburban America in the 60s and 70s does not fit our understanding of the history of sin in the world, and it is out of place and out of step with our theology. But somehow we mistakenly believe our experience is how life should be and we are grasping and clinging to get it back.

How we view of America, and how our theology informs what we expect and hope for, is what I believe is at the root of this chasm I feel between my friends that see our current political landscape differently. I see myself as far more broken and in desperate need of the Gospel today than I did most of my life. So I look back at the church, then and now, and I see a comfort and ease that has created a false “goodness” in ourselves that is driving the younger person away as they seek a more authentic response to the sin, brokenness, and evil around them. I have traveled the world and seen this brokenness in such vastness and have been overwhelmed by the sinfulness of man and how that leads the few to dominate and oppress the many. Seeing man’s inhumanity to man has forced me to see the futility of political solutions and driven me to my knees and wrestle with a sovereign God that continues to tolerate us.

It is this backdrop for me and my journey with Christ that I come to the US political arena with. I do not see a culture war that can be “won.” We may change laws and we may make it easier to be a Christian, like when I was growing up, but that is not the war we Christians are fighting. The war we are fighting is not one culture against the other. It is not us vs baby-killing Democrats. We are waging a war against sin and evil both inside and outside of us. There are no laws that will impact this. There are no laws that can change a man’s heart. Only the hope of the Gospel has any impact on the evil in this world. We are so very fortunate to live in a democratic republic where we have a voice in choosing our government and need to vote for a just and right government, but we cannot put our hope for change there. It is a seductress mistress that calls out and temps us, and so we must be cautious of the political arena. We must cling to the Gospel for change. Seek to promote Christ and his incredible care for those that are hurting. These hurting soles surround us in the church and outside of it. We must put others interest as more important than ours and be willing to sacrifice our comfort and convenience for others, just as Christ did for us. We must promote and protect hope, the hope of Christ to others, and not the false hope of turning America back to what it used to be by political means. That is not how the world of my childhood was created, and it won’t get it back.

Now why does this all impact why I say that we as Christians should not support Trump? Well, what we support we endorse. What we endorse reflects our values. Our values reflect on Christ and the gospel. Trumps policies are great for the culture war, but his character, and how it reflects on us, is harmful to our efforts to promote the gospel in the fight against the spiritual war. And this is finally where I see the difference between those that I wondered why there is a difference. It is not moral high ground, it is not a spiritual elitism, it is not really a character problem. It is a difference in the importance of wars. I know my Christian friends think they can fight this culture war AND fight a spiritual war. But I believe that to fight in the political one, will weaken the fight in the spiritual one.

We all have this flesh that we drag around with us, and it lures us, and our sinful heart, to be deceived in so many ways. So while I am quite convinced I am right, I am not arrogant enough to believe I am not self-deceived, are you? Let us all, with true humility, continue to seek God’s wisdom and ask, where shall I battle today, and can I win a war on two fronts?

Ya, I know the title is like, duh!!! But when I think about it, I work pretty hard to make people believe that it doesn’t. It is summer time, and that means I often shower multiple times a day, put on deodorant, and even cologne, all in an effort to make people think that my sweat doesn’t stink. What is amazing is that there are a LOT of people that all do the same thing.

What is even more amazing is when Mom says something like, “are you going to shower before we go?” I actually get defensive and indignant that she is telling me that I stink. I know I do, but I work so hard to try and hide it, that I can sometimes start thinking that I don’t stink. So when I am told I do, I become offended.

Not only do I, and others, hide our stink physically, but many of the churches and Christian circles we have been in, have do the same thing spiritually. I want to walk through my spiritual life trying to hide the fact that what comes out of me stinks. By stinks, I mean that we are full of sin (yes, the 3-letter word beginning with s). We walk around in relationships trying to hide from everyone that I am one stinky ball of sin. This effort to make it appear that I am much better than I really am, and minimizing the old man in me and his impact on my life really impacts my relationships with others and with God.

My children, we are all in relationships. Some are now in more permanent commitments, but we are all trying to find those that we can bond with grow with. I love each of you more than you can possibly imagine and I am so very proud of each of you, so this letter is an attempt to help you learn early, what I have learned so late, that will make real relationships so much easier.

When I engage in relationships trying to hide that I am a sinful mess, I have problems. If the person I am close to points out something that looks like sin, this goes against what I am trying so hard to be, and what I believe I am, which is “good”. So this hits hard against my false reality and causes me to become defensive and argumentative. This creates tension between me and the one I want to be close to and keeps us away from oneness. This tension stays there as I will tend to be defensive whenever someone tries to communicate to me and point out how my sin is causing them pain. I will be consumed with trying to prove I don’t stink rather than being concerned about the pain I am causing. This is corrosive in relationships.

What I have learned lately is that being open and willing to admit that I have sin in abundance (that I stink) is freeing rather than embarrassing. I think this is what Jesus meant by saying that the truth will set you free. When I am open and admitting that I am selfish, arrogant, too independent, and prideful I don’t have to worry about being defensive when my sin is pointed out. Rather when this is told to me, I simply say, “wow, that is ugly, I am sorry my sin has caused you pain.” I am able to focus on the other (as Jesus has commanded us to do) rather than focus on my great coverup. This changes the discussion from confrontation to repentance and can bring oneness to the relationship.

The truly great part of this is that all I have to do is take my sin to Jesus and he says, “I know, I have been waiting to change you” and His love envelopes me and I am free to grieve my sin and seek Jesus to bring more of the new man out and remove more of the old man. I am not loved any less for my sin, but rather I fall deeper into relationship with my friend AND Jesus by acknowledging my ugliness and seeking Jesus to help heal me.

This freedom opens the door for much deeper closeness both horizontally, with others, as well as vertically, with Jesus. But what has been the most amazing is how freeing it is. I have a really ugly natural man that continues to rear his head and take control. But it is not my job to remove it, it is Jesus’ job, because I cannot do it. My job is to be open and real and swim in the deep waters with Jesus where it is not safe. This allows me to be open to hear of my sin, because there is no fear of it, it does not condemn me. It has been taken care of on the cross and Jesus loves me no less because of the sin.

Taking a Gospel approach to every day is transforming me. It is renewing my relation with your mother and others. It has brought me freedom like I have never known and I encourage each of you to seek communities where this Gospel approach of openly acknowledging all of our sinfulness is present. Bring this into those relationships you are in, and let the freedom of not hiding the stink of sin in your life.

Don’t buy into the idea that you need to posture yourself as having it all together spiritually. Put the spiritual cologne away and own your stink and dive into relationships with the humility that will make them better.

Love Dad

This is a title that I would have NEVER thought I would write. While I have always liked active things (hiking, skiing, climbing, playing sports) I never liked preparing for such activities. Thus, I look like what I do today because I never did any exercise unless it was something fun. After 6 months of Crossfit, I do like exercise now and am doing it regularly, so this has really changed my life. 

But I was also a night person, and now I am waking up each day without an alarm clock between 5:00 and 6:00 each day and am work at 7:00. This too has been a significant change in me. This shift back in April has been such a foundational change in me, that it is hard to even imagine how radical of a turn I made AND have sustained, which honestly is the big surprise. I have always wanted to be different, and planned so many programs that would revolutionize my life. I would implement them and they were awesome for a while, but I would always fail.

This was a deep pattern in my life, especially spiritually. Have always had a passion to be a great and wise follower of Jesus, but I have always been bad at spending time with Him. I have had a lifetime of starts and fails in my devotional life and the gaps between my efforts got longer and longer. It is hard to be like someone you don’t spend time with. While I knew a lot ABOUT Jesus, I didn’t know Him very well. So I developed a life that was built on knowledge and not relationship. 

The pattern of starting a new “program” and failing after a few days or weeks was a pattern in many areas of my life. I wanted to Love my wife better and serve her. I wanted to exercise and be in better shape. I wanted to be a better father and spend more time, and better time, with my kids. I had great aspirations and great ideas and I was challenged by reading and listening to people that told me of the importance of doing all of this and I wanted it all so badly. It seemed like I ached for it. So I tried harder and harder, but ended in more and more failure. And this is where my great lie comes in.

This is a lie that I have bought into most of my life. It is hard to recognize because it makes sense. It fits with what my ears like to hear as my hurting and broken heart is looking for an answer and it latches on with a death grip. It explains why I fail, and leaves me hopeless and frustrated, and that is exactly where the Father of lies wanted me. This lie seems so trite and small, but many lies have the power to be life altering, if you believe it. This lie is, “Randy, you are just not a disciplined person. It is part of your personality.” It makes sense, and it is true. I am not, by nature, a disciplined person. Clearly some people are and some aren’t, so it seems my gene pool is simply shallow here and I can’t do anything about it. This is just how God made me for some reason. And everyone has a “thorn in the flesh” and mine, I guess, is that I am not disciplined. 

It sounds so logical and it fits my life experience and it seems very clinical, so it must be true. And I guess the real issue is that I didn’t believe I could change, because no one can change their personality, right. But the issue with lies is that they don’t stand alone, they start multiplying. So I am not disciplined and now I can’t change that, I am what I am, and God made me this way. See, now it is getting personal, and I start to remove responsibility from me to others for why I am not what I know I should be. Lies build on one another and, for me, each is filled with darkness, and I feel like I have been sitting in a room and the lies get darker and darker and they compound and pretty soon it is hard to see truth in the darkness. 

What does this have to do with Crossfit? Well Crossfit has been a light into that darkness of lies. I have changed. I am doing something I have always wanted, but never been disciplined to do. Actually, Crossfit has not been the light, but it has been Jesus. I have no ability to be disciplined enough to do Crossfit, but Jesus has changed me. All the reasons for my successful change here do not add up, and so I give all credit where it is due, Jesus and His ability to change what I could not. 

You see, all my other efforts have been me. I am not sure it was an intended teaching of the churches I have gone to, but I learned it from church, culture and family. When you know what you need to do to be different, mussel up and do it. I know they always meant for it to be Jesus, but somewhere along the way, it became that Jesus would only pick up where my efforts failed. I mean why waste His time changing me when I can do most of it myself, right? This makes me feel better about myself (I can change me) and I don’t have to “bother” Jesus when He has others that need Him more. Of course I would have never voiced this or thought it consciencely, but I have now realized that is how I was acting. 

The problem with this approach, besides that it doesn’t work, is two-fold. First, it makes me look and feel better about myself than I should, and secondly, it puts me on a par with Jesus as having some power to change a person. 

I like being good. I also like taking credit for being good. The better I think I am the more content I am. This is the deception that I bought into. It is a lie, because I am NOT good. My capacity for sin and self deception grows each and every day. And the better I am, the less I need Jesus. See how this feeds my ego and my pride? I mean, if I can change much of what I need to without Jesus, and and I am not all that bad anyway, then I am well on my way and better than most. What arrogance this all is for me. How egotistical. Again, I would never had said I believe this, but it is how I act, and we all know that our behavior tells us more about what we believe than our mouths do. I was lessening my need for Jesus so that I could be more equal to Him. Equal, but not like. Big difference.

So Crossfit, and what God is teaching me through a regular diet of my need for the Gospel everyday of my life, were bolts of light into the darkness of my lies and self deception. I was changed by Jesus and BAM, suddenly I see the deceit. Suddenly I recognize the lies. I am a pitiful human and a worse believer and I, for the first time, identify with Paul when he says a he is chief among sinners. A little light pushes away darkness and the light allows me to see clearly what was so contorted before. 

That shaft of light is also hope. With all of this revelation I have been made aware of, I feel like I should be devastated and curled up in a corner in the fetal position. But I am not. I have more hope than I can recall having in years. I look forward to having my hear pierced and challenged at church as God speaks through faithful men. I go to Crossfit most days, and in a microcosm of the whole lesson, I love to be there in pain and misery as I work out. I love hating Crossfit! Just as I love it when Jesus rips into my flesh and exposes another sin, because NOW I have hope that He will heal it fully. 

This is how Jesus used Crossfit to bring light into my darkness and revel how I had distorted the faith in an effort to feel good about who I am. Now I don’t feel good about who I am because Jesus has shown me that I am far more sinful than I ever imagined, and He is far more loving than I ever dreamed.

Colossians 1:29 – To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me.

While you, my children, are not all wild and crazy about politics, these are some thoughts I have had as I see believers engaging in politics and discussing what they believe and why. Hopefully you and others will come to find a place that allows you to be involved and honor Christ as the same time.

**Aliens

1 Peter 2:11-12 [11] Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. [12] Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

We do not belong here on earth, nor any particular country on earth, but we are strangers and aliens in this world. We must remember that while we live here, we do not belong to this world but rather to the Kingdom of heaven.

**Our citizenship is in the kingdom

Philippians 3:20-21 [20] But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, [21] who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Not only are we aliens, but as Christ followers, our citizenship is in Heaven and not here on Earth or the US. We must make sure that we keep our first priority as foremost, which is to be citizens of Heaven before our citizenship in America. This means we honor Christ before we honor our country and make sure that we make citizenship into THIS kingdom as welcoming and attractive.

**Did our current leaders and their decisions catch God by surprise?

Romans 13:1 Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

There is no authority in any government that is a surprise to God, nor one that is not placed there by God. We must remember that God is not interested in making sure that this county keeps to its heritage, nor stays easy for us to live out our Christian lives, but rather that He is about drawing the lost to Himself and making us more like Him. This is done through His sovereignty and wisdom and may not, and most likely IS NOT, the way we might do it. I think He has earned our trust, so I am willing to give it to Him. 

**Is our conservatism/liberalism an idol?

For those of us that tend to be passionate about politics and government, or the desire for the lack of it, it may well be a good and regular practice to look at ourselves and ask ourselves, and God himself, if our desire for government and it being “right” has replaced Christ as our first love and become an idol. 

**Where your treasure is …

Is America being a “Christian” nation a treasure for us, or do we feel our treasure threatened. Some of us have great lives and live very well, and I know I am concerned about my future and how much money I will have to live it. I, and all of us, must make sure that we don’t allow this to become a distraction from responding to God in a way that is pleasing to Him.

**Why are you surprised at their behavior, they are sinners?

When we think of our Government and how they do things, why are we surprised that they behave in ways that are selfish and in their own best interest … Unless they have been redeemed by Christ, they are slaves to sin and have no option. To expect differently from them is to expect them to go against their nature. 

**We were enemies before God called us.

Colossians 1:21-22 [21] Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. [22] But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.

This is probably my most important point. While we might feel that the “other party”, or Radical Islam, or atheists, or anyone else is out to destroy our “Christian nation”, we need to remember that we too were just the same. Before WE were redeemed we were Enemies of God and his purposes, and without His grace in our lives, we would be no different than those we get so angry with. Let us be humble and remember the phrase, “but by the Grace of God, there go I.” We would do well to remember that we are certainly no better than those Republicans/Democrats, and probably worse without God choosing to bestow His Grace on us. Let’s be civil in our discussions, listen to the other point of view and learn, let’s be Gracious in our speech, and “Walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel.” Let us be salt and light and reflect Christ’s love for us all in all we do so that He is made Famous and we can be used by Him to draw others to the Grace we are so unworthy of. Let us put Christ before politics and make sure we remember that “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.”

Years ago, i was challenged to write letters to you kids, to Mom, and my parents.  This site is an outgrowth of that challenge.  Today i was reminded of the letter i wrote to my Dad 8 years ago.  I share this with you all now, not to make you sad, but to rejoice in the great, great legacy of Faith that we were so privileged to be born into. We do not deserve our heritage nor can we boast in it, but we can rejoice in it’s blessings and give God the thanks and the Glory.

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Dear: Dad

There were times on the lake in Washington and Oregon.  There were weekends at Cherokee in Texas.  Water was also present in Florida at our home.  Water of a different kind in New Mexico and Colorado was part of our family times as well.  You provided many great times for our family and did so all around the country.  I was blessed to be given so much from you, but all of that does not begin to tell all that you gave me.  Far more important to me is what I was given in a way of strength, confidence, and heritage.

There are few things in this world that you can truly count on, but I always knew growing up, that my Dad could be counted on.  There was very little that you couldn’t handle from my point of view. No matter the issue or problem, I always felt that you could not resolve or make better.  Much of my confidence in the power of God is a direct result of how you demonstrated your ability to handle any situation.

I will always be grateful for how you allowed me to do so much and always believed that I could do anything.  From operating a track press to driving vehicles of any kind, some would think you were crazy, but I, for one, am glad you told me how competent I was by giving me opportunity to succeed.

Of all that you provided for me, however, the commitment to God and doing what you believed he wanted you to do is by for the greatest “gift” you have given to me.  No matter what the issue was, it was always clear that you would follow what you thought was right, and was willing to go “all the way” for what you believed in.  Providing this as an example to me has been such a deep and rich blessing in my life, and has allowed me to know that I can do the same and be successful in doing so.

I am so very rich for all that you gave to me, both memories as well as examples.  Thank you for a life lived with strength, confidence, and rich with heritage.

For His glory and in His service,

Your Son

My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Proverbs 6:20

As my Mom lies in a hospital bed at home on hospice care, I was reminded of a letter I wrote to her over 8 years ago.   I share it with you all now as a tribute to her and what God did in and through her.

I love you, Mom!!

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May 7, 2005

Dear Mom:

I see myself running down the basketball court of an unnamed gym. I am only in 6^th or 7^th grade and I had just scored a basket.  From the top row of a short set of bleachers, I can hear you cheering for me and yelling encouragement.  This is not an isolated memory, and as I grew up in High School, even though you were not able to come and sit in the stands to cheer at my games, I always carried with me your support and encouragement for my athletic endeavors as well as any of the other challenges I strived to accomplish.

Support breeds encouragement.  Encouragement breeds confidence.  Confidence breeds ability.  These are the gifts you have given to me as I grew and matured under your care.  My home was always a place for me to be myself and where I was safe to be who I was.  I always enjoyed being in my home and spending time there.  It was always open and available to my friends and I always felt free to invite and bring anyone to my home.  This openness taught me to serve and be available to others.

I was blessed by the consistency in my home.  One of the most important and most prevalent memories I have of you as I was growing up, is you sitting in the living room with your Bible and usually a copy of “The Daily Bread”.  If I did not see you sitting there, I saw evidence of you having been there before I got up.  The consistency of seeing you seeking God on a regular basis has always been a cornerstone for me to serve God day in and day out.  This legacy is something that I believe has left an indelible mark on me and my walk with God.  I cannot thank you enough for demonstrating for me this level of consistency in walking with God.

There is so much of who I am that can be traced back to you and your love and care for me as I grew up.  I cannot begin to express how much I appreciate all of your efforts and your love and dedication to me.  I am so blessed by God to have you as a Mom.

For His glory and in His service,

Randy

My son, keep your father’s commands and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Proverbs 6:20