11/26/2025
Thank You and Until
I will admit, I am melancholy today. This blog has been my friend since 2012 and today I bid it good bye. I have, over the years, discovered a little sanctuary place in my office. I sit at my desk and I look out my office window to a huge oak tree that is right outside my office. It has been here years before me and will be here years after me. I have spent a great deal of time meditating on what I have just read in the Word with my eyes set upon that oak tree. Today, as it prepares for winter it has dropped most of its leaves. As the last of the leaves fall it reminds me that my time at JBC is quickly coming to an end. It is a great reminder to me that while the tree looks dead, it is none the less, full of life and just preparing for next spring when God will once again bring it’s leaves back to manifest the life it has. Right now, the acorns drop and seek to give life to new trees. While I am not sure what God will bring in the Spring for Nancy and I, I am grateful to be full of life and simply waiting on what God will do next in our lives. Wow, that was pretty sappy, pun intended, but it is an image that will stick with me. I am truly grateful for that oak tree.
As we close out this blog, we have been sharing our thanks to the many “not in vainers” that God has blessed us with in our lives. Back when I first began writing this little blog I entitled it, “Not in Vain”. It was taken from my dad’s life verse, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be ye steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for you know that your labor is not in vain.” I Cor 15:58. I Corinthians 15 is the great chapter about the resurrection. Paul ends the chapter with this exhortation encouraging us that we should live our lives in this manner due to the fact that this life is not all that there is. We will be resurrected and we will live eternally and so how we live now, matters eternally. As I end my time writing this blog I wanted to recognize those who have lived their life in light of eternity and have lived as “not in vainers”.
The “not in vainers” that God has used the most to shape my life have been my family. Words cannot express how grateful I am for placing me in the family that he did, for giving me the family that he has, and for the extra family God has given me. My dad, mom, brother, and sister have all been huge instruments of God’s grace in my life. I am the baby of my family and I have received all the rights and privileges that being the baby entitles you to. My parents took one look at me as a baby and immediately recognized their need for God and so I was blessed to grow up in a family where both my mom and dad were new believers. Their growth in Jesus shaped their influence on me. Their constant involvement in church and in the Word was used by God to grow within me a love for him, his word, and his church. Their decisions to do better than their parents in their marriage and their parenting allowed me to grow up in a home full of peace, encouragement, and love. Their efforts were not in vain as all of their children have grown up to love Jesus and to serve his bride faithfully.
God blessed me, again, by giving me an extra family of in laws who also love Jesus and have placed their family first. My mother and father in law have been amazing examples of the love of Christ in my life. God has chosen to place us near them for almost 40 years. They have shown me great love and their walk with Jesus and their love for his church have been a great extension to what God started in me through my parents. All of their children love Jesus and that has given us all a great bond of helping and investing in each other’s lives.
While I pray that my wife and I have influenced and helped shape my children’s lives, I know that God has used my children to shape my life. In their own way, each of my children have been used by God to draw me close to himself. Sometimes, I will admit, it was in prayer as I worried about their foolish decisions but he has also used each of them through the wisdom he has given to them. Their confidence and trust in the Lord is a reminder to me of what it means to walk by faith. As I see my son walk in ministry, or my oldest daughter love on her kids, or my youngest walk by faith I am encouraged to be steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord.
On Sunday my wife and her two fellow church lady friends sang a song about being set free from prison. I could not resist poking a little fun at these three very conservative ladies and them singing about their prison sentence. What prison have they ever been in? My wife snarked back that she has been in prison some 40 years with me! I, will admit, it was a great line (even if all the ladies did laugh a little too hard at it). My wife is, in my eyes, the greatest example of a “not in vainer” and one of the greatest pastor wives I have ever known. She walks by faith, seeks to continue to be obedient to Jesus, is faithful in prayer and reading the Word, and has been very patient with me. God has certainly blessed me with Nancy. While we are constantly reminded of how different we are, God has seen fit to knit our hearts together around those things that are most important in life and in death. We are knit together with a love for God, his church, ministering to others, and our families. I know that we both walk towards this next chapter in our lives with some trepidation...all of those hours in a small house together...but I thank God for the gift of my wife and thank her for loving Jesus and for allowing me to love her so imperfectly over the years.
Thank you to those who have read this blog. I would like to end it the way I began it, by thanking God for not only being a great heavenly Father but for giving me my dad. He was the greatest example of a man of God. He worked hard at serving others, he continually grew in Christ until the day he went to heaven, and he was always in my corner. While he was never a pastor, he always gave great advice about ministry and he always pointed me to Jesus first. He chose to always live his life in light of his life verse, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” His life was not lived in vain and I trust he and my heavenly Father will say the same about mine. Until.
