There once was a powerful army who seemed unstoppable. The general of this army had set his sites upon a small kingdom that he believed he could conquer very easily. He sent a messenger ahead of his army to the king of the village to offer them the chance to surrender as their army would be greatly out numbered. After the messenger delivered the terms of the general’s offer the king called his best solider into the court room. He looked at his finest example of a military leader and said to him, “Fall on your sword,” the man instantly and without hesitation did as his king commanded. Then the king called his second best solider and commanded the same, again without hesitation the solider fulfilled the command of his king. The king then looked at the messenger and said, “I may only have a few but every man I have is willing to give all he has for me.” The messenger returned to the general and said, “Sir we can not defeat these men because they are already dead.”
My name is Jamie Strickler and I am here tonight to talk to you about being part of a team. I understand that your football team comes fourth; faith is first then your family then your education then football. But none the less in any of these priorities you are functioning as a part of a team. And as a part of these teams you are expected to do your part with intensity, respect, commitment, and trustworthiness. It doesn’t matter if you are complying with the wishes of your heavenly Father, your earthly father, your professors, or your coach. It is all team work.
In the story I told you of the small kingdom did you find it surprising that men would take their own life with out question? You see when each man joined the king’s army they gave their up their former lives to server a higher righteous calling. I hope that none of you will ever have to face that dilemma. I know that most likely coach Youngblood will never as you to fall on your sword for the team, although after three a day practices if may have felt like it. But none the less you are asked to do your part on this team without question or complaint and to the best of you ability. The quarter back isn’t to be worrying about the linemen and the linebackers are not to be worrying about the safety. Each man should be focused on his job and trust that everyone else is doing the same. This selflessness my friends is what makes a team champions.
Waldorf College is a school of the church. It is expected that Jesus the Word of God will be part of your team. There is no greater power. The power of Christ is what I am willing to die for without question. You see we are all apart of the body of Christ in which Christ is the head.
The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. (1 COR 12:12)
Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. (1 COR 12:27)
We are all members of His team. And as part of His team we are all expected to do our duty without question or complaint. Whether you believe it or not and whether you know it or not, you have been called here by God to be student athletes. God is using this period in your life to shape each of you into the man He is calling you to be. In Matthew chapter 25:31-46 Jesus tells of the separating of the sheep from the goats. The sheep are the ones who believed in Jesus and did his work feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty and so on. The goats are the ones who may have professed belief but then didn’t do the work of Christ. Low and behold it was the doers that were saved and not the professors. Believe me as a student there are some professors that I would like to condemn to hell but I don’t think that is the kind of professor Jesus meant. You are the doers. God has called you here to play football for His glory. This is a school of the church! And He is not asking you to hand out Bible tracts or give some over emotional prayer in public. He is calling you to perform with the gifts he has given you, your talents as a student and as an athlete. He is calling you to serve His team without question or complaint. I know that each of you is up for the challenge because you wouldn’t be here if that weren’t the case.
Don’t mistake what I am saying. I am not talking about winning every game. Although that is obtainable sometimes it isn’t the way in which we learn the most. We can learn something from every defeat in our lives. Mostly I have learned that if God isn’t in it I will loose in the end. What I am talking about is playing your guts out for the glory of God and your team. Giving everything you have focusing on your duty alone for the good of the team. If you win you win as a team and praise God, if you loose you loose as a team and praise God. Either way there better not be anything left in you gas tank when you walk off the field.
When I was young I was the fat kid and was bullied mercilessly. I know you can’t tell it by my masculine physique toady. Every punch to the gut and every bloody nose was a reminder to me that I didn’t live up to some standard. I spent most of my life trying to live up to the standards of this world. My senior year of high school I was 5’ 9” and weighed 195lbs with 8% body fat. I was a two time all state wrestler and I was terrified to loose. My fear expressed itself as anger and I broke fingers, cracked ribs, and gouged eyes, anything to win. I competed with a hate and a rage that became way out of control. You see if I lost then I would confirm the fact that I was a looser but if I won then I confirmed that I was a winner. Not for my team not for God, I was god. God had called me to be a wrestler for His glory to teach and shape me but I used His calling for self glorification and revenge. In pursuit of my own glory the inevitable happened I got hurt and place sixth in the state tournament behind 5 guys I had beaten earlier in the year. I had lost. It sent me into a drunken spiral that I didn’t soon recover from. I found new gods power and money. At the age of 22 I was making over 150k a year. I was working 70 hours a week performing for the love of power and money. When I wasn’t working I was drunk because of the pressure, guilt, shame, and fear that I would someday not perform well. Well it happened. I was working as a business manager with a car dealership working on commission. When the 911 attacks took place the car business died. 70% of my income came from the finance charge of the loans I was putting together. Anyone care to guess how much commission is paid to the business manager on a 0% loan? I took a $30,000 pay cut the first year. And eventually took a $100,000 a year pay cut. My wife and I lost everything: our house, our cars, everything. One night I was driving home from a party so drunk that I could only focus with one eye. God came to me that night and told me that I could no longer live the way I had been living. My life was never the same after that. I returned to school, finished my BA in Religion graduating magna cum laude and as part of three national honor societies. I now attend Luther Seminary in St. Paul MN. on a full academic scholarship. Not for me but for God. You see sometimes you don’t know Jesus is all you need until He is all you have left. I encourage you to learn from my mistakes. Fear of failure and being filled with hate and revenge is no way to live your life and it most certainly is not how you serve God or your team.
God will use your academic ability as well as your athletic ability mold and shape you. Your God given talents will take you places in this world. Tomorrow is your first chance to give your abilities to God. When you step on that field be apart of God’s team. Over all God’s team is a small one but each member of His team is willing to give their life for Him and their team mates. Sounds like a championship team to me. Tomorrow learn from my mistakes, put yourself aside for the glory and love of God and your team.
(Ephesians 4:22-24) You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Play tomorrow like you are new men and apart of an eternal team. Play your guts out and may Almighty God bless you and keep you safe. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Justifying Grace
Below is a speech I made during a Walk to Emmaus Weekend. For more info on Walk to Emmaus go to http://www.gracehouse.org/
Justifying Grace Talk:
In the nineteen-fifties a cake mix company came up with a new mix that only required the addition of one cup of water. The cake mix was a complete failure. Although in blind taste tests it always surpassed its competitors the company could not get people to buy the product. The company’s marketing department decided to ask shoppers in the cake mix isle of a grocery store why they chose other mixes over theirs. The result was shocking. The only reason that people refused to purchase the mix was that they believed that if it only required one cup of water that it must not be any good. The company immediately changed the recipe and the mix sold like the proverbial hot cakes. What did they do to the recipe? The mix now required one cup of water and one egg.
My name is Jamie Strickler and this talk is entitled “Justifying Grace.”
Fist a little about myself. I am a forgiven sinner crushed by the law and resurrected by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have been married to Suzanne, better known as Zanny, for eight years and we have three children: Joey 6, Ally, 5 and Gabby 1. I spent nine years as a finance director at some of the larger car dealerships in Iowa before God called me to be a preacher. In the last two years I have completed my BA in Religion from Grand View College in Des Moines IA, graduating Magna Cum Laude, and now I attend Luther Seminary in St. Paul MN on a full academic scholarship. While completing my undergraduate degree I served at Hope Ministries’ Bethel Rescue Mission, in downtown Des Moines, as a night chaplain.
Introduction:
Justifying Grace tells the story of how an individual responds to God’s calling of them into a relationship with Him. It is the moment when we realize that we do not merit the relationship; it’s not something we work our way into. We come to this realization when we understand that God accepts you as you are to then make something new out of you. God accepts your unacceptability. Justifying Grace is the Holy Spirit turning us around, it's our awakened awareness, our eyes being opened to the love and companionship of God; the Holy Spirit making God’s claim on you irresistible and changing you from the inside out. In the Old Testament God used the prophets to call His people’s wicked, unfaithful hearts back to a genuine relationship with Him by reminding them of His covenant.
As we have heard, in the Prevenient Grace talk, God is constantly pursuing us, sometimes referred to as the hounds of heaven. Throughout the Bible we hear of God calling His people into a mutual love relationship through a covenant. In the Old Testament times when two parties wanted to make a covenant with each other they chose a covenant representative from either party. Each covenant representative would bring an animal and sacrifice it before the other party. The animals represented each party’s willingness to die to up hold the covenant.
In the New Testament God makes a New Covenant. He sends Jesus, His very Word, as a sacrificial Lamb to die for the forgiveness of sins and as an act of His law convicting sinners in an attempt to call them back to Him. Those who believe in His promise are counted as righteous, or in a right relationship with Him. Through His grace God sends the Holy Spirit to create in you a new heart through faith. And how does this faith happen? This faith happens through the hearing of the Word of God.
Romans 10:17
17Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
In His mercy God sends a preacher with the Word of God on his tongue to deliver to sinners a message that releases the Holy Spirit and causes faith to come to life inside of the repentant sinner. Our relationship with God happens by faith in Jesus Christ.
Romans 10:14-15
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"[a]
In the first part of my talk I told you of a cake mix company and how they sold their mix by giving the consumer more of a part to play in the creation of the cake. Well God is like the cake mix company. He wants to give you a very tasty cake. But as humans we have a hard time believing that all we have to do is add one cup of water or just believe in Jesus. Men always want to have control in their lives and a relationship with God isn’t any different. But the truth is that the cake company doesn’t need our help to complete the cake. But to sell our rebellious minds on the mix God lets us believe that we have a part to play, saying yes when he calls.
When the Holy Spirit has created enough faith within you to accept the fact that God’s grace is more than you could ever hope for you are said to have had a conversion. St. Paul calls it being crucified with Christ or putting the old self to death.
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me
The more you hear the Word of God the more your faith grows. Through faith you gain a better understanding of yourselves and gain the desire to care for the needs of your brothers and sisters. You come into a fuller understanding of God’s purpose for your life. Please understand that from faith comes good works. You don’t do good works then have faith. Your relationship with God isn’t something you merit, remember the cake company.
Romans 3:20-26
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,[a] through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
No one will be justified by the law in other words by how well you serve or pray. You can no longer lean on your own strength and understanding to follow Jesus. You must pull away from yourselves so that the Holy Spirit can do His work inside of you. If you think you have control over your sinful body, try to invoke that control the next time you have diarrhea or try to stop your heart from beating or hold your breath.
Humans can’t always trust their emotions. I’ll be honest some days I wake up and I don’t feel saved. Those are the days when my faith must cling to the promises of Jesus; “My body broken for you, My blood shed for you.” By remembering Jesus’ finished work on the cross I know that regardless of how I feel, God is at work in my life. God is infinitely patient, even through your days of unfaith, He is there working in your lives putting to death the flesh and raising up the spirit.
Romans 6:4
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
God’s grace is the enabling factor for the change in your life. What are some disciplines that you may practice so that God’s graciousness grows in you? We have already discussed the importance of the hearing of the Word of God therefore church attendance is important. Even if the sermon on a particular Sunday isn’t any good, even if the choir is off key and even if your child is disruptive you still hear the Word of God proclaimed and your faith is the better for it. Some other disciplines that involve the Word are prayer, scripture reading, meditation, and doing what you were called to do. By doing what you were called to do I mean loving your neighbor. God doesn’t need your good works, something about Him being all powerful, but your neighbor does. If your neighbor needs help moving then go help them move. Don’t go with some ulterior motive of converting them. That only leads to trying to merit souls for the Lord and that is way beyond your ability. You show them God’s love and grace and let God do the converting. You might be surprised; your neighbor might ask you why you are such a helpful friend. That question is God opening the door for you to discuss you faith. Never try to pry that door open. Hard human hearts won’t allow it. Trust me I’ve tried it.
Let me tell you the story of a homeless man named Al. Al was the third and unwanted child. He was tied to a bed until he was two years old. At the age of six his parent sent him to a mental institution where he was molested. At the age of eight he was sent to reform school where he was molested. At fourteen he ran away and was selling his body on the streets to pedophiles to earn money for food. At sixteen his parents allowed him to come home where he raped his older sister and younger brother. Al has done time in jail for kidnapping a woman during a car jacking. Al is a hopeless alcoholic on the streets of down town Des Moines. Try as I may I just couldn’t convince Al of God’s love. I learned that I didn’t have that power. My job was to love him right where he was and not for what I wanted him to be. I was to love him, answer his questions about God when asked, and pray for him daily. When I say I have tried to break down the door I have. But through that experience it was me that God was changing not Al. I still talk to him on the phone about once a month and pray for him daily. I’m doing what I was called to do.
I have learned a semester of Greek in the last three weeks so let me share a word with you. Agape. It is one of the three Greek words for love. Agape is the love that God has for you. It is a love so deep that the finite human mind can not comprehend it. Agape is what you’re receiving this weekend. The kitchen crew, the agape team and even the people of the Emmaus Community have written you letters to let you know about this agape. Believe me it is a rare occurrence in this world to see it in action.
So when you return to your lives remember this agape, remember that you are called to love your neighbor. That is your calling, your vocation. In his essay “On the Freedom of a Christian” Martin Luther said, “Don’t go looking for crosses to bear, a man who has a family has cross enough.” Our crosses are the people God calls us to care for. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! De colores!
Justifying Grace Talk:
In the nineteen-fifties a cake mix company came up with a new mix that only required the addition of one cup of water. The cake mix was a complete failure. Although in blind taste tests it always surpassed its competitors the company could not get people to buy the product. The company’s marketing department decided to ask shoppers in the cake mix isle of a grocery store why they chose other mixes over theirs. The result was shocking. The only reason that people refused to purchase the mix was that they believed that if it only required one cup of water that it must not be any good. The company immediately changed the recipe and the mix sold like the proverbial hot cakes. What did they do to the recipe? The mix now required one cup of water and one egg.
My name is Jamie Strickler and this talk is entitled “Justifying Grace.”
Fist a little about myself. I am a forgiven sinner crushed by the law and resurrected by the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have been married to Suzanne, better known as Zanny, for eight years and we have three children: Joey 6, Ally, 5 and Gabby 1. I spent nine years as a finance director at some of the larger car dealerships in Iowa before God called me to be a preacher. In the last two years I have completed my BA in Religion from Grand View College in Des Moines IA, graduating Magna Cum Laude, and now I attend Luther Seminary in St. Paul MN on a full academic scholarship. While completing my undergraduate degree I served at Hope Ministries’ Bethel Rescue Mission, in downtown Des Moines, as a night chaplain.
Introduction:
Justifying Grace tells the story of how an individual responds to God’s calling of them into a relationship with Him. It is the moment when we realize that we do not merit the relationship; it’s not something we work our way into. We come to this realization when we understand that God accepts you as you are to then make something new out of you. God accepts your unacceptability. Justifying Grace is the Holy Spirit turning us around, it's our awakened awareness, our eyes being opened to the love and companionship of God; the Holy Spirit making God’s claim on you irresistible and changing you from the inside out. In the Old Testament God used the prophets to call His people’s wicked, unfaithful hearts back to a genuine relationship with Him by reminding them of His covenant.
As we have heard, in the Prevenient Grace talk, God is constantly pursuing us, sometimes referred to as the hounds of heaven. Throughout the Bible we hear of God calling His people into a mutual love relationship through a covenant. In the Old Testament times when two parties wanted to make a covenant with each other they chose a covenant representative from either party. Each covenant representative would bring an animal and sacrifice it before the other party. The animals represented each party’s willingness to die to up hold the covenant.
In the New Testament God makes a New Covenant. He sends Jesus, His very Word, as a sacrificial Lamb to die for the forgiveness of sins and as an act of His law convicting sinners in an attempt to call them back to Him. Those who believe in His promise are counted as righteous, or in a right relationship with Him. Through His grace God sends the Holy Spirit to create in you a new heart through faith. And how does this faith happen? This faith happens through the hearing of the Word of God.
Romans 10:17
17Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.
In His mercy God sends a preacher with the Word of God on his tongue to deliver to sinners a message that releases the Holy Spirit and causes faith to come to life inside of the repentant sinner. Our relationship with God happens by faith in Jesus Christ.
Romans 10:14-15
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"[a]
In the first part of my talk I told you of a cake mix company and how they sold their mix by giving the consumer more of a part to play in the creation of the cake. Well God is like the cake mix company. He wants to give you a very tasty cake. But as humans we have a hard time believing that all we have to do is add one cup of water or just believe in Jesus. Men always want to have control in their lives and a relationship with God isn’t any different. But the truth is that the cake company doesn’t need our help to complete the cake. But to sell our rebellious minds on the mix God lets us believe that we have a part to play, saying yes when he calls.
When the Holy Spirit has created enough faith within you to accept the fact that God’s grace is more than you could ever hope for you are said to have had a conversion. St. Paul calls it being crucified with Christ or putting the old self to death.
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me
The more you hear the Word of God the more your faith grows. Through faith you gain a better understanding of yourselves and gain the desire to care for the needs of your brothers and sisters. You come into a fuller understanding of God’s purpose for your life. Please understand that from faith comes good works. You don’t do good works then have faith. Your relationship with God isn’t something you merit, remember the cake company.
Romans 3:20-26
Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,[a] through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
No one will be justified by the law in other words by how well you serve or pray. You can no longer lean on your own strength and understanding to follow Jesus. You must pull away from yourselves so that the Holy Spirit can do His work inside of you. If you think you have control over your sinful body, try to invoke that control the next time you have diarrhea or try to stop your heart from beating or hold your breath.
Humans can’t always trust their emotions. I’ll be honest some days I wake up and I don’t feel saved. Those are the days when my faith must cling to the promises of Jesus; “My body broken for you, My blood shed for you.” By remembering Jesus’ finished work on the cross I know that regardless of how I feel, God is at work in my life. God is infinitely patient, even through your days of unfaith, He is there working in your lives putting to death the flesh and raising up the spirit.
Romans 6:4
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
God’s grace is the enabling factor for the change in your life. What are some disciplines that you may practice so that God’s graciousness grows in you? We have already discussed the importance of the hearing of the Word of God therefore church attendance is important. Even if the sermon on a particular Sunday isn’t any good, even if the choir is off key and even if your child is disruptive you still hear the Word of God proclaimed and your faith is the better for it. Some other disciplines that involve the Word are prayer, scripture reading, meditation, and doing what you were called to do. By doing what you were called to do I mean loving your neighbor. God doesn’t need your good works, something about Him being all powerful, but your neighbor does. If your neighbor needs help moving then go help them move. Don’t go with some ulterior motive of converting them. That only leads to trying to merit souls for the Lord and that is way beyond your ability. You show them God’s love and grace and let God do the converting. You might be surprised; your neighbor might ask you why you are such a helpful friend. That question is God opening the door for you to discuss you faith. Never try to pry that door open. Hard human hearts won’t allow it. Trust me I’ve tried it.
Let me tell you the story of a homeless man named Al. Al was the third and unwanted child. He was tied to a bed until he was two years old. At the age of six his parent sent him to a mental institution where he was molested. At the age of eight he was sent to reform school where he was molested. At fourteen he ran away and was selling his body on the streets to pedophiles to earn money for food. At sixteen his parents allowed him to come home where he raped his older sister and younger brother. Al has done time in jail for kidnapping a woman during a car jacking. Al is a hopeless alcoholic on the streets of down town Des Moines. Try as I may I just couldn’t convince Al of God’s love. I learned that I didn’t have that power. My job was to love him right where he was and not for what I wanted him to be. I was to love him, answer his questions about God when asked, and pray for him daily. When I say I have tried to break down the door I have. But through that experience it was me that God was changing not Al. I still talk to him on the phone about once a month and pray for him daily. I’m doing what I was called to do.
I have learned a semester of Greek in the last three weeks so let me share a word with you. Agape. It is one of the three Greek words for love. Agape is the love that God has for you. It is a love so deep that the finite human mind can not comprehend it. Agape is what you’re receiving this weekend. The kitchen crew, the agape team and even the people of the Emmaus Community have written you letters to let you know about this agape. Believe me it is a rare occurrence in this world to see it in action.
So when you return to your lives remember this agape, remember that you are called to love your neighbor. That is your calling, your vocation. In his essay “On the Freedom of a Christian” Martin Luther said, “Don’t go looking for crosses to bear, a man who has a family has cross enough.” Our crosses are the people God calls us to care for. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord! De colores!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Lessons learned amoung the homeless!
One of the greatest life shaping experiences I have ever had in my community was serving as a chaplain for Hope Ministries’ Bethel Rescue Mission. Bethel is a men’s rescue mission in down town Des Moines and is a faith based mission. In other words they do not take any government funding so that they can talk about Jesus. Ninety-five percent of their funding comes in the form of individual donors and five percent in the form of local business support. Not only was I introduced to a whole new cultural, one that is at times ignored by our society, but the experience changed my life forever as it changed the meaning of the phrase “the least of these.” I encountered horrific stories of child abuse, molestation, alcohol and drug abuse, all resonating from broken families. I still have nightmares today about some of the stories I heard. Although horrifying this experience shaped me to have compassion for the truly broken people in our society, as well as tolerance for those who are mentally or intellectually incapable of caring for themselves, let alone the children they have birthed. Five of the most tragic lives that I encountered and had a sever effect on me were the lives of “A,” “B,” “R,” “J,” and “JF.” I use only their first initials for confidentiality reasons.
“A” was one of the first men I encountered at the shelter. He was the third child and was unwanted. When he was two his parents tied him to a bed and fed him only beans, at six they committed him to a mental intuition where he was molested by a staff person. After committing some childhood crimes he was sent to a reform school where he was molested by a staff member. He escaped from this school at fourteen and sold his body on the street to homosexual men for food money. His parents let him move back home at sixteen where he had a sexual affair with his older sister and his little brother. A has been in and out of jail all his life. He is now fifty and cannot stay sober for one minute because he can’t face where he has been or what he has done, and is completely without the skills it takes to live in today’s society. Yesterday he called me and is in jail again for another alcohol related crime.
So, what do I do with this man? Through A God has showed me what it means to be a truly broken person. All that I though I knew about what these men needed went out the window when I heard his story. So, I asked A, “What can I do for you?” He answered, “Give me a hug.” So I held him for about fifteen minutes as he cried like a child. I wish I could say that this cry was cleansing and cured his ails but it didn’t. I learned that God sent me to the mission to change me not for me to change these men, as changing them fell under the category of miracle, a category that belongs to the Almighty. Dealing with A has shaped me to realize that I cannot save the world but I am called to do my part. My part is to see when the law, whether secular or God’s law, is crushing a man and bring him the message of comfort that comes through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Although God didn’t cure A, He was able to give him comfort and a promise to cling to through me. For fifteen minuets that day A was safe and let go of what has been building in him for years. For all I know this may have been the only fifteen minutes in his life where he has ever felt safe and loved. Those fifteen minutes gave A a reference point from which he could draw hope and security. He now knew that someone in the world loved him for who he really was, a broken child in a man’s body. He admitted to me on the phone that when he is in despair he remembers that moment. I do as well. I never really took time to consider the feelings of others; I only wanted them to know how their actions affected me. For the first time in my life I was thinking like a pastor, shepherding and loving my flock regardless of their wandering.
B is a handsome man of Native American descent. Alcohol is B’s poison but it is not his problem. For B alcohol is just a symptom of a deeper issue. B has an older sister who experimented with sex at the tender age of eleven. What good sister wouldn’t show her little brother what she had learned? At the age of seven B was having a full fledge sexual affair with his sister, not to mention interceding on behalf of his mother as his alcoholic father beat her. It’s no wonder that B is now a closet homosexual. He is searching for the loving father he never knew, he feels like his sister has stolen his innocence, and has given up on loving women because he couldn’t take the burden of not being able to protect his mother. He hates himself so he drinks to numb the pain which causing him to loose good jobs and rendering him homeless, broken, and hiding the only part himself that he feels is good. B, like A, is in need of a savior and has adopted alcohol as an escape.
This was my first contact with a closeted homosexual. Nothing I had learned in church about sexual immorality seemed like what he needed to hear. In fact B had heard it all already and it only made him despise himself the more. It is one thing to have a pious opinion on homosexuality and quite another to be responsible for delivering the Gospel promises of Jesus Christ to a person afflicted by this feeling. My experience with B shaped how I feel about gay people. Through B, God shaped me from an attitude of intolerance to an attitude of tolerance. You see this experience sent me to the scriptures where I found that sexual immorality is no greater a sin than drunkenness, adultery, or murder. Society puts sin into a hierarchy but God does not. Again I was reminded that my job wasn’t to tell B how to live his life or that he was a bad person. My job was to love him unconditionally and accept him as a child of God right where he was because being or not being gay wasn’t going to get him into heaven, faith was. I let go of my insecure homophobia and hugged B tight letting him know that Jesus and I loved him just the way he is, he doesn’t have to live up to some standard for God to love him because Jesus lived up to the standard for all of us. B found new comfort in the Bible and I had another part of my ignorant flesh put to death.
R is an interesting story. He has a BA in business from Syracuse University, which he earned while climbing the ranks of the IBM Corporation. The plague of addiction to alcohol, drugs, and homelessness do not discriminate; their victims come from all walks of life. R discovered that cocaine kept him alert longer which gave him more motivation to sell IBM products until his habit out weighed his income. He then tried to rob a liquor store, was caught, and spent seven years in jail for armed robbery. It is amazing to me how much drug use changes people. To meet R today you would never know that he had a violent bone in his body. And he doesn’t apart from the drugs. R is no longer a coke addict but alcohol has become his vice to escape the failure and embarrassment of his past. He has tried many recovery programs but they only help him stop drinking which is the symptom and don’t attack the problem his shame. Or maybe it’s R who can’t face his shame. Either way like the other men R is in need of a Savior.
My experience with R allowed me to see that I could be duped. There were times when I would swear that R believed in the promises of Jesus and wanted to deal with his past but each time I would get to close the next time I would see him he was drunk. I was humiliated several times when I went to bat for R with the staff and he would end up doing what they said he would, get drunk.
It was hard to love R unconditionally but I feel this was the lesson that I was to learn. God showed me that people will fail you constantly and you must love them any way. Jesus loves me every time I fail Him. Unconditional love doesn’t sprout in a person naturally; it is something that is endured and shaped over time. In these situations society has two different effects on people, either they become hardened and pessimistic, or they learn to love the person and not their actions. Through the grace of God I learned compassion and unconditional love.
J is another interesting story fraught with tragedy and joy. J is a U.S. Marine veteran of the Vietnam conflict. He was thrown in to a jungle at the age of eighteen, given a gun and told to kill or be killed. Not only that but that he was doing so, or as he was told, out of the love of his country. Imagine his confusion when he was spit on and called baby killer when he returned home. He had lost his sense of trust in everything he thought was good and right in the world and had gained a server hate for himself. He had met a girl in Phoenix and moved to Grinnell Iowa to live with her. In her home surroundings he found out that she had a multiple personality and was an intravenous drug user. Her dominate personality must not of like him because she kicked him out and he hitch hiked to Des Moines. A truck driver picked him up on I80 and drove him to the mission which he had no previous knowledge of. God must have a lot of angels that are truck drivers as this story is very common. J was sick and I feared he had pneumonia so I took him to the VA Hospital. The good news was that he didn’t have pneumonia; the bad news was that he had contracted the HIV virus from his girlfriend and it had developed into full blown AIDS. The doctors told him to go home and get his affairs in order he was going to die.
What do you tell a man with a death sentence? J was not a drug user or an alcoholic and he sure as hell didn’t deserve this. I love J very much and he became very close to my family and I. I held him as he cried for quit some time, it was all I could do to comfort him, I had no great words of advice. Through his tears he asked me to tell him about Jesus. What he wanted to know was if he was condemned to hell for murdering all those people in the war. He felt like a leper because no one would touch him. So, I showed him the love of Jesus by being sure to hug him each time I saw him and I even brought my then six month old daughter for him to hold.
Previously to meeting J I had thought that AIDS was a disease for gay men and drug users and it scared me. Through my experience with J I learned that in the darkest times of our lives comfort comes through love and God is love. There are no atheists in fox holes; surprisingly this whole world is one big fox hole. My fear of AIDS was gone, now I just hate that wicked disease.
J thought he was the only one of his brothers and sisters still alive, he was wrong. I found his older brother in a suburb of Chicago and when we contacted him he was in Des Moines to see J in less than five hours. He had been searching for J for quite some time. Through a miracle of God J’s body started to kill the HIV virus. His case was featured in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) and they are trying to duplicate his results as I write this paper. Within seven weeks J became well enough to travel to Illinois where he now lives with his brother. We still talk on the phone ever other week.
Jf is another interesting character and maybe the scariest. Jf is one of the biggest men I have ever seen standing six foot seven and weighing about two hundred sixty pounds. Jf is an ex-gang banger from Chicago and came to Des Moines under contracted to kill someone until he had a change of conscious. He came to the mission not knowing what to do with his new found sense of right and wrong which is where I met him. He wasn’t very fond of me, or any other white person for that matter, at first but little by little we found that we both possessed a similar interpretation of the Bible. I know it seems strange to believe that a gangster hit man was schooled in the Bible but the fact is that he was raised in a very Christian home. Jf disappeared for about two months after we started to get to know each other and when he resurfaced he showed up in my office a broken individual. He told me that he had returned to Chicago and had gotten back into drugs. The last two month had seemed like a blur but two days prior he came down from a meth induced high and had nothing in his pocket but a bus ticket to Des Moines and a rock that had “Jesus Rocks” inscribed on it. I had given him that rock months ago. He then shut the door to my office and asked me how to surrender to Jesus. I hooked Jf up with a recovery program and he is now working with at risk kids in Des Moines. Jf, the ever tough guy, never told me that he loved me but he did say that he would “kill a nigger for me,” which I think comes just as close in his heart.
Racial prejudice was a big thing in my up bringing. I was taught to think of black people as a lesser being. Not by my parents but by my peers. My experience with Jf changed all that. I know this unconditional loving and accepting thing seems to be a reoccurring theme here but that is exactly what it was, not just for me but Jf as well.
There were several men and women I had contact with that helped shape my life through my experience at Bethel: Ja, A, C, Ri, C, l, Am, T, J, K, P, E, the list goes on but this is a paper not a book.
As I reflect on the way God used my experience at Bethel to shape me I have identified three major themes; unconditional love, destruction of prejudice, and the unyoking of societal law.
Unconditional love, wow this was a lesson involved in every testimony I have to tell. Jesus loved everyone especially the lepers, the poor and the prostitutes. I encountered all three at the mission and found my heart broken for each of them. To truly ache for the needs of another person, I believe, is one of the most important lessons a Christian must learn.
The destruction of my prejudice against homosexuals and blacks still amazes me. I am surprised at how little I see color as a road block to unity and sexual preference as just another sin, no more, no less. The true spirit of Jesus unites people. I have preached in an entirely black, intercity church and felt more loved and at home than I do, sometimes, in my own congregation.
I am now free to love others as Jesus loves me. When Jesus said, “love others as I have loved you,” he wasn’t commanding anything. That would make Jesus just another law giver like Moses. Jesus didn’t come to make new laws; he came to fulfill the law so that we wouldn’t have to be held accountable for our adherence to the law. The law exists not for our salvation but to make us aware that we are sinners. When Jesus said, “love others as I have loved you,” He was showing as a faction of the freedom that belief in Him gives us. Now that we are saved by faith, we are free to love everyone and are unyoked from the burden of the stereotypes that society dictates. Now that I am not judged by the law I am free to follow it. This is the Gospel message.
“A” was one of the first men I encountered at the shelter. He was the third child and was unwanted. When he was two his parents tied him to a bed and fed him only beans, at six they committed him to a mental intuition where he was molested by a staff person. After committing some childhood crimes he was sent to a reform school where he was molested by a staff member. He escaped from this school at fourteen and sold his body on the street to homosexual men for food money. His parents let him move back home at sixteen where he had a sexual affair with his older sister and his little brother. A has been in and out of jail all his life. He is now fifty and cannot stay sober for one minute because he can’t face where he has been or what he has done, and is completely without the skills it takes to live in today’s society. Yesterday he called me and is in jail again for another alcohol related crime.
So, what do I do with this man? Through A God has showed me what it means to be a truly broken person. All that I though I knew about what these men needed went out the window when I heard his story. So, I asked A, “What can I do for you?” He answered, “Give me a hug.” So I held him for about fifteen minutes as he cried like a child. I wish I could say that this cry was cleansing and cured his ails but it didn’t. I learned that God sent me to the mission to change me not for me to change these men, as changing them fell under the category of miracle, a category that belongs to the Almighty. Dealing with A has shaped me to realize that I cannot save the world but I am called to do my part. My part is to see when the law, whether secular or God’s law, is crushing a man and bring him the message of comfort that comes through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Although God didn’t cure A, He was able to give him comfort and a promise to cling to through me. For fifteen minuets that day A was safe and let go of what has been building in him for years. For all I know this may have been the only fifteen minutes in his life where he has ever felt safe and loved. Those fifteen minutes gave A a reference point from which he could draw hope and security. He now knew that someone in the world loved him for who he really was, a broken child in a man’s body. He admitted to me on the phone that when he is in despair he remembers that moment. I do as well. I never really took time to consider the feelings of others; I only wanted them to know how their actions affected me. For the first time in my life I was thinking like a pastor, shepherding and loving my flock regardless of their wandering.
B is a handsome man of Native American descent. Alcohol is B’s poison but it is not his problem. For B alcohol is just a symptom of a deeper issue. B has an older sister who experimented with sex at the tender age of eleven. What good sister wouldn’t show her little brother what she had learned? At the age of seven B was having a full fledge sexual affair with his sister, not to mention interceding on behalf of his mother as his alcoholic father beat her. It’s no wonder that B is now a closet homosexual. He is searching for the loving father he never knew, he feels like his sister has stolen his innocence, and has given up on loving women because he couldn’t take the burden of not being able to protect his mother. He hates himself so he drinks to numb the pain which causing him to loose good jobs and rendering him homeless, broken, and hiding the only part himself that he feels is good. B, like A, is in need of a savior and has adopted alcohol as an escape.
This was my first contact with a closeted homosexual. Nothing I had learned in church about sexual immorality seemed like what he needed to hear. In fact B had heard it all already and it only made him despise himself the more. It is one thing to have a pious opinion on homosexuality and quite another to be responsible for delivering the Gospel promises of Jesus Christ to a person afflicted by this feeling. My experience with B shaped how I feel about gay people. Through B, God shaped me from an attitude of intolerance to an attitude of tolerance. You see this experience sent me to the scriptures where I found that sexual immorality is no greater a sin than drunkenness, adultery, or murder. Society puts sin into a hierarchy but God does not. Again I was reminded that my job wasn’t to tell B how to live his life or that he was a bad person. My job was to love him unconditionally and accept him as a child of God right where he was because being or not being gay wasn’t going to get him into heaven, faith was. I let go of my insecure homophobia and hugged B tight letting him know that Jesus and I loved him just the way he is, he doesn’t have to live up to some standard for God to love him because Jesus lived up to the standard for all of us. B found new comfort in the Bible and I had another part of my ignorant flesh put to death.
R is an interesting story. He has a BA in business from Syracuse University, which he earned while climbing the ranks of the IBM Corporation. The plague of addiction to alcohol, drugs, and homelessness do not discriminate; their victims come from all walks of life. R discovered that cocaine kept him alert longer which gave him more motivation to sell IBM products until his habit out weighed his income. He then tried to rob a liquor store, was caught, and spent seven years in jail for armed robbery. It is amazing to me how much drug use changes people. To meet R today you would never know that he had a violent bone in his body. And he doesn’t apart from the drugs. R is no longer a coke addict but alcohol has become his vice to escape the failure and embarrassment of his past. He has tried many recovery programs but they only help him stop drinking which is the symptom and don’t attack the problem his shame. Or maybe it’s R who can’t face his shame. Either way like the other men R is in need of a Savior.
My experience with R allowed me to see that I could be duped. There were times when I would swear that R believed in the promises of Jesus and wanted to deal with his past but each time I would get to close the next time I would see him he was drunk. I was humiliated several times when I went to bat for R with the staff and he would end up doing what they said he would, get drunk.
It was hard to love R unconditionally but I feel this was the lesson that I was to learn. God showed me that people will fail you constantly and you must love them any way. Jesus loves me every time I fail Him. Unconditional love doesn’t sprout in a person naturally; it is something that is endured and shaped over time. In these situations society has two different effects on people, either they become hardened and pessimistic, or they learn to love the person and not their actions. Through the grace of God I learned compassion and unconditional love.
J is another interesting story fraught with tragedy and joy. J is a U.S. Marine veteran of the Vietnam conflict. He was thrown in to a jungle at the age of eighteen, given a gun and told to kill or be killed. Not only that but that he was doing so, or as he was told, out of the love of his country. Imagine his confusion when he was spit on and called baby killer when he returned home. He had lost his sense of trust in everything he thought was good and right in the world and had gained a server hate for himself. He had met a girl in Phoenix and moved to Grinnell Iowa to live with her. In her home surroundings he found out that she had a multiple personality and was an intravenous drug user. Her dominate personality must not of like him because she kicked him out and he hitch hiked to Des Moines. A truck driver picked him up on I80 and drove him to the mission which he had no previous knowledge of. God must have a lot of angels that are truck drivers as this story is very common. J was sick and I feared he had pneumonia so I took him to the VA Hospital. The good news was that he didn’t have pneumonia; the bad news was that he had contracted the HIV virus from his girlfriend and it had developed into full blown AIDS. The doctors told him to go home and get his affairs in order he was going to die.
What do you tell a man with a death sentence? J was not a drug user or an alcoholic and he sure as hell didn’t deserve this. I love J very much and he became very close to my family and I. I held him as he cried for quit some time, it was all I could do to comfort him, I had no great words of advice. Through his tears he asked me to tell him about Jesus. What he wanted to know was if he was condemned to hell for murdering all those people in the war. He felt like a leper because no one would touch him. So, I showed him the love of Jesus by being sure to hug him each time I saw him and I even brought my then six month old daughter for him to hold.
Previously to meeting J I had thought that AIDS was a disease for gay men and drug users and it scared me. Through my experience with J I learned that in the darkest times of our lives comfort comes through love and God is love. There are no atheists in fox holes; surprisingly this whole world is one big fox hole. My fear of AIDS was gone, now I just hate that wicked disease.
J thought he was the only one of his brothers and sisters still alive, he was wrong. I found his older brother in a suburb of Chicago and when we contacted him he was in Des Moines to see J in less than five hours. He had been searching for J for quite some time. Through a miracle of God J’s body started to kill the HIV virus. His case was featured in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) and they are trying to duplicate his results as I write this paper. Within seven weeks J became well enough to travel to Illinois where he now lives with his brother. We still talk on the phone ever other week.
Jf is another interesting character and maybe the scariest. Jf is one of the biggest men I have ever seen standing six foot seven and weighing about two hundred sixty pounds. Jf is an ex-gang banger from Chicago and came to Des Moines under contracted to kill someone until he had a change of conscious. He came to the mission not knowing what to do with his new found sense of right and wrong which is where I met him. He wasn’t very fond of me, or any other white person for that matter, at first but little by little we found that we both possessed a similar interpretation of the Bible. I know it seems strange to believe that a gangster hit man was schooled in the Bible but the fact is that he was raised in a very Christian home. Jf disappeared for about two months after we started to get to know each other and when he resurfaced he showed up in my office a broken individual. He told me that he had returned to Chicago and had gotten back into drugs. The last two month had seemed like a blur but two days prior he came down from a meth induced high and had nothing in his pocket but a bus ticket to Des Moines and a rock that had “Jesus Rocks” inscribed on it. I had given him that rock months ago. He then shut the door to my office and asked me how to surrender to Jesus. I hooked Jf up with a recovery program and he is now working with at risk kids in Des Moines. Jf, the ever tough guy, never told me that he loved me but he did say that he would “kill a nigger for me,” which I think comes just as close in his heart.
Racial prejudice was a big thing in my up bringing. I was taught to think of black people as a lesser being. Not by my parents but by my peers. My experience with Jf changed all that. I know this unconditional loving and accepting thing seems to be a reoccurring theme here but that is exactly what it was, not just for me but Jf as well.
There were several men and women I had contact with that helped shape my life through my experience at Bethel: Ja, A, C, Ri, C, l, Am, T, J, K, P, E, the list goes on but this is a paper not a book.
As I reflect on the way God used my experience at Bethel to shape me I have identified three major themes; unconditional love, destruction of prejudice, and the unyoking of societal law.
Unconditional love, wow this was a lesson involved in every testimony I have to tell. Jesus loved everyone especially the lepers, the poor and the prostitutes. I encountered all three at the mission and found my heart broken for each of them. To truly ache for the needs of another person, I believe, is one of the most important lessons a Christian must learn.
The destruction of my prejudice against homosexuals and blacks still amazes me. I am surprised at how little I see color as a road block to unity and sexual preference as just another sin, no more, no less. The true spirit of Jesus unites people. I have preached in an entirely black, intercity church and felt more loved and at home than I do, sometimes, in my own congregation.
I am now free to love others as Jesus loves me. When Jesus said, “love others as I have loved you,” he wasn’t commanding anything. That would make Jesus just another law giver like Moses. Jesus didn’t come to make new laws; he came to fulfill the law so that we wouldn’t have to be held accountable for our adherence to the law. The law exists not for our salvation but to make us aware that we are sinners. When Jesus said, “love others as I have loved you,” He was showing as a faction of the freedom that belief in Him gives us. Now that we are saved by faith, we are free to love everyone and are unyoked from the burden of the stereotypes that society dictates. Now that I am not judged by the law I am free to follow it. This is the Gospel message.
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