“He gave His son.”

Posted on by Fireproof

John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, but have eternal life.”

A verse many of us know and probably memorized growing up.  Have you really ever thought of the depth of it though.  (Honestly, I hadn’t until Eli was born, and the depth continued to grow deeper with each of our kids.)  It was just another verse in Scripture that I would recite during a service or someone would speak on and I would go, “yeah I’ve heard this message before.”

This year though is different, as I think upon Easter and look back at pictures of Eli sleeping in my arms these few words make me want to break down.   Looking at his face, recognizing his innocence makes me realize how much I have taken God’s love for granted.  It feels like a major slap in the face from God as I try and process what this verse really means for you and me.  (I am going to ask you to let your emotions run a little bit now and maybe even shed some tears.  Let God stir your heart.)

A new translation of this verse keeps coming to my mind, “For God so loves the world, that he sacrificed His one and only.  For God so loves Josh, for God so loves Eli, for God so loves you.”

Could I personally give up Eli if it meant saving others?  If it meant saving the world?  I would like to think I would give up my own life for those I cherish, but I can’t imagine sacrificing my child.

In our country we have men and women who will sign up for our military knowing the sacrifice that may be required of them.  To give up our own lives many of us would say we would do it without a doubt.  “God, I will sign MY name on the dotted line, but to give up my kids, you don’t know what you’re asking.”  Can you imagine God asking of us to give up our child’s life to save our city, our church, others, strangers even.

I am truly struggling with this thought right now.  I know I care for others, I even love others, but I can’t fathom the depth of love it would take to offer any of my kids up for others.  To willingly watch them suffer, to see the pain in their face,  to see their blood shed.  I don’t think, actually if I’m going to be blunt, I know I couldn’t do it.

12374871_1098178626889792_5569784334676026566_oI can only imagine Eli crying out, “Daddy, this hurts.  Daddy, Help.  Daddy, if there is any other way, please.”  Yet, God in his infinite love for you and me, allowed Jesus, His son, to go through this agony.

Now my mind is racing thinking upon this thought of God’s love, the wheels are spinning in my mind, the smoke is pouring out from my brain as I consider this.   My thoughts now turn from God’s love to how much Jesus himself loves you and me.  The love he must have had, that He would willingly lay down his own life, out of submission to His Father’s plan.

John 15:13, “Greater Love has no one than this, to lay down his life for his friends.”

That he would be the perfect example of the verse he shared with his disciples. The reality hits that Jesus didn’t just talk about this type of love that he had for others.  He didn’t just offer up some kind words and say,  “do as I say, not as I do.”  He actually lived it.  When he talked about laying down His life, it didn’t just sound good, he actually did it.  When he talked about forgiveness, he followed through, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

Jesus lived out what he taught.  He is the ultimate example.

I want to be the same way for my kids, I want to live out what I say.  I want to be an example of love.  I want to be an example of forgiveness.

This Easter take time and consider God’s love, Christ’s example, and what it means to you.  I know I personally will never celebrate Easter the same way again.

In closing there is a worship song out that we all have probably sung, “Oh how he loves us.”  Take a moment, think upon those words from the perspective of a DAD.

Fearfully and Wonderfully made

Posted on by Fireproof

November 30, 2015

It had been a normal day for us, at least as normal as it could be when your wife is days away from giving birth.  We were now at the point of weekly doctor visits and ultrasounds.  We were dealing with the sleepless nights as well as Lindsey getting to the point of “just get this kid out of me already.”  That afternoon we went and had her appointment, they did some bloodwork and told us everything looked good, and that the following Monday they would induce her for the baby to be born.  So we went home and started our day.  We decided it was probably a good idea to go ahead and decorate for Christmas because once Eli was born we figured nothing would get done.  So that afternoon we went out and bought a Christmas tree, came home, got some dinner, and got to work.  Feeling a little exhausted, at around 10 or so we decided it was time to call it a night.  The tree was up, the lights and ornaments were hung, so if nothing else, at least  that was done.

As we went to go to bed we grabbed our phones and both noticed we had voicemails from an unknown number.  Linds decided to check hers first, and as she did the tears started to flow.  I had no clue why, but she went on to tell me it was a message from her doctor saying to get to the emergency room as soon as possible.   WHAT???? We were just at your office this afternoon and you told us everything was good.  On the way to the E.R. we were able to get a hold of the doctor who told us for some reason that night she couldn’t sleep, so she got up and chose to go over test results once again.  As she went over Lindsey’s numbers one more time, she noticed that according to the data, Linds was going into preclampsia and that her liver was shutting down.  Not quite the news we expected.  Now I don’t usually freak out, but that night, I may have a little bit, especially as we get to the hospital and they are waiting for us and begin telling us all the medications they were going to put her on as well as test to be run.  All I remember is them saying, “This one is for seizures, this one is for blood pressure, this one is for this, this one is for that.”  Seizures, High blood pressure,  and the list went on…. Yeah I got a little scared.

So I did all that I know to do, I began to pray.  During that night the Lord continued leading me to Psalms 139 and I just kept reciting it over and over.  Through it I learned just how true the words are that this child, that we had prayed for, was truly in God’s hands.  He knew all the emotions I was going through and none of this was catching him off guard.  I didn’t know all the answers or how everything was going to turn out, but I knew God kept saying “He is my child, even before you knew of his existence, I had already been planning his life.  Every aspect, every detail… is in my hands.”

YOU HAVE SEARCHED ME, LORD,
AND YOU KNOW ME.
2 YOU KNOW WHEN I SIT AND WHEN I RISE;
YOU PERCEIVE MY THOUGHTS FROM AFAR.

3 YOU DISCERN MY GOING OUT AND MY LYING DOWN;
YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH ALL MY WAYS.

4 BEFORE A WORD IS ON MY TONGUE
YOU, LORD, KNOW IT COMPLETELY.

13 FOR YOU CREATED MY INMOST BEING;
YOU KNIT ME TOGETHER IN MY MOTHER’S WOMB.

14 I PRAISE YOU BECAUSE I AM FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE;
YOUR WORKS ARE WONDERFUL,
I KNOW THAT FULL WELL.

15 MY FRAME WAS NOT HIDDEN FROM YOU
WHEN I WAS MADE IN THE SECRET PLACE,
WHEN I WAS WOVEN TOGETHER IN THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH.

16 YOUR EYES SAW MY UNFORMED BODY;
ALL THE DAYS ORDAINED FOR ME WERE WRITTEN IN YOUR BOOK
BEFORE ONE OF THEM CAME TO BE.

All I could do was pray and trust.  As the hours past, her blood pressure would rise, machines would beep, heartrate would go up and all i could do was sit there helpless, watching and waiting.  Then the guy with the epidoral came in and he just wanted to talk, and on and on he went.  All I kept thinking was, “dude, help my wife.”

IMG_4257Labor went on for a little over 13 hours and then our little miracle, Eli Miycah was born.  Healthy as could be, but man did I have a scare put into me over the whole thing.  Not only a scare but a whole new perspective over the passages that David wrote so many years ago about each child being fearfully and wonderfully made.

Every aspect, every detail is in the hands of a mighty God.   What an awesome and mighty God we serve.  And the reality that truly hit home that night is that even if something happened that night, that God is still in control.  Not a moment went by that he was unaware of.

I Prayed For This Child

Posted on by Fireproof

1 Samuel 1:27

“I Prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.”

So even before our son Eli was born, we knew that God was involved.  Let me explain.  Going back to 2014, Lindsey and I decided we wanted to start a family.  To be honest, we really, really, really wanted to have a child. We were super excited to be parents, and really felt that God was telling us it was the right time.  Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined that there would be complications.  Every one around us started having kids, or announcing that they were expecting.  I will never forget Christmas 2014, going to family’s house and as we arrived, her cousins came walking out wearing one of those t-shirts announcing that they were having a child.   Your first response of course is excitement for them, but after about 10 minutes I noticed Lindsey was missing from the room.  Searching around the house for her, I found her crying in the basement bathroom.  As a guy of course I had no clue what was wrong.  She explained to me the heartache she was feeling, don’t get me wrong, she was excited for her cousin, but also hurting feeling something was wrong with her.  At that point,  we started to seek medical advice.

During that time, for some reason I started to read 1 Samuel chapter 1.

5 But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her, and the Lord had closed her womb. 6 Because the Lord had closed Hannah’s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. 7 This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. 8 Her husband Elkanah would say to her, “Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don’t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don’t I mean more to you than ten sons?”
9 Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on his chair by the doorpost of the Lord’s house. 10 In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. 11 And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.”
12 As she kept on praying to the Lord, Eli observed her mouth.
17 Eli answered, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him.”

In this story, you have a few characters, but I want to focus on 2 of them today, Hannah and Eli.  First off was Hannah, the barren wife who was irritated and heartbroken about her situation. In her deep anguish, she never gave up hope.  Year after year she would cry out to God for a child; weeping so violently that the priest thought she must be drunk.  Talk about some crying going on, I can only imagine.  The second character in this story is Eli, the priest.  He hears her weeping and with empathy goes to her, and I love his simple response, “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant what you have asked.  Such a simple, profound answer.  Not a ton of words, but just a faith that God would answer.

Now as a pastor I have learned that there are times when I put my foot in my mouth and it comes across as preaching at my wife.  So here I am reading this chapter, I couldn’t wait for her to get home so that I could share it with her.  Trying to console her and express that we truly just needed to leave it in God’s hands.  Well it didn’t quite come across that way, but this did become our prayer.

As time went on we kept getting more bad news from the doctors and of course during this time,  more people around us kept finding out they were pregnant and expecting.  It seemed the more wood kept getting thrown on the fire if you know what I mean.  With each announcement, the more anguish we began to feel.  We were trying to keep the faith and trust that God was in complete control but at the same time going, “God, why not us?”

Fast forward to the end of March,  Lindsey is now having crazy stomach pains.  The doctors start running blood work and all kinds of tests to see what is going on.  (By the way, WEBmd and a wife who works in the medical field equals worst case scenarios) They decide to run an ultrasound to seek some answers, hopeful for anything.  They find that Lindsey is full of cysts on her ovaries. Needless to say, not a good answer for anyone, trying to have a child.  Again we just continue praying for this child, trusting God even in the midst of these answers.

Finally one day, Lindsey comes home at her breaking point, totally heartbroken, completely in tears.  She had just gotten a call from the doctor that morning with the news that we were to stop trying, go back on birth control for a bit and wait a few months and then try again, but they really didn’t have any other news for us than that.  So here we were, being told, try for three months, stop for three months, try for three months, stop for three months; pretty much what it came down to was the doctors saying, “Good Luck, but don’t get your hopes up.”

I just kept going back to that story in I Samuel and the idea of others around having kids, Lindsey being heartbroken thinking something was wrong, and continuing to have faith that God was in control and hearing our prayers.

So that afternoon when she walks in with the birth control in hand, for some reason unknown to us, God showed up.   Before she started back on birth control, luckily, for some reason, she decided to take one last pregnancy test.  Talk about a shock, she came running and screaming, thinking I had somehow played a cruel joke on her.  She just kept screaming!!!  “Josh, what did you do? That’s a second line!”  In my mind, I just kept thinking this is crazy, no way!  This was not supposed to be possible. So she started chugging water so she could take another one just to be sure.  Well in the midst of all this as she is running down the stairs my best friend Sean shows up at our back door and he could tell by just looking at her face.  To be honest though, as I want to do in this blog, all I could say to him was, “Hey you want a beer to celebrate?”

IMG_4109

We learned though in this whole experience that even when things don’t look possible in the eyes of the world, even in the eyes of doctors, that God is still in control and that he hears our prayers.

Little did we know that when they ran the ultrasound, one of the cysts they saw was actually our future child.  Maybe this was God’s way of teaching us to just cry out to him!