Good evening! I
want to wish a great evening to each of you our friends and family and the
friends and family of our son-in-law Chris … I hope to meet all of you tonight.
Who ever knows what to say when you are asked to toast the
bride and groom? It’s even a bit
more daunting when you are expected to
toast the bride and groom … and its most daunting to be asked to do it at the
wedding reception rather than the rehearsal dinner like I did for my eldest
daughter Ashley. I was also asked
by Alli to keep my remarks brief ... sadly, she knows me all to well. I was reminded early on after Chris
proposed and Alli accepted that there really are only three things expected
from the father of the bride ... who knows what they are? Yes! To pay up, show up and shut up. I
think I’ve managed to do all three respectably well, at least to this point ...
certainly better with this wedding than the last. But alas, I’ve held my tongue for long as I can.
Only 2.5 years have elapsed since my daughter Ashley married
her middle school sweetheart Matt Rousseau. Seems so short but then again not when I look back on all
that has transpired in that time.
Alli graduated from college … served two years as a missionary teacher
to two classes of precious kindergarteners in Caracas, VZ. She met, dated and now ended up
marrying Chris. Ariel moved from
being a lowly university freshman in pre-nursing to the verge of commencing her
last year of clinical nursing at FSU and has served on summer mission teams to
both Miami last summer and in Paris concluding just a few weeks ago. She’s gone from wide-eyed freshman to a
significant leader in the Cru community at FSU. And my youngest, the homeboy Andrew, will be starting his
senior year at Chiles next month and entering college in just 12 months. I turned 50 years old four months after
Ashley married, was told just prior to her wedding that I needed a knee
replacement [not that I have had that surgical procedure yet … because I was
too young, well at least in my own mind]; lost about half my hair; have to take
a handful of pills every morning for conditions as varied as high blood
pressure to the disappearance of my thyroid gland [still a medical mystery] and
the aforementioned osteoarthritis.
I’ve gone from fitting into this tux to not even being close to getting
it on again to it fitting again … just barely … and that probably depends on
how one defines the word “fit.”
We’ve done the Dave Ramsey thing and gotten out of debt other than that
crazy house I built. We’ve
replaced our pool’s spillover spa … twice! Which is typical of real life … not everything that happens
is “good” at least as we’d like to define “good.” And yet, nothing happens in our lives that is not ultimately
chosen for us by our Heavenly Father.
I remember the angst my soul went through as my fiftieth
birthday approached two years ago [those who read my blog may remember that as
well]. Somehow Janna doesn’t seem
afflicted by these kinds of thoughts as she approaches a particular birthday
ending in zero [or is at least rumored to be approaching one]. She’s just lucky I guess … or perhaps
more secure in just where she fits in the cosmos a.k.a. in God’s eternal plan. I would probably do well to emulate her
more. But as we enter the
twilight of our lives it is hard not to begin shifting our focus to legacy.
Autumn, however, is a very different thing. Autumn is a time of harvest, a time where we realize that we cannot go back and do it all over again. It seems with each passing year that I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with autumn. It is almost like I want to stomp out into my yard and glue the leaves back onto the five massive live oak trees that adorn our property along with the dozen or so dogwoods.
Midlife is essentially a time of harvest. The leaves are off the tree and there is no putting them back. The world will not spin backwards on its axis and there is no turning back the clock. It's no wonder I love the spring so much. The weather is finally warmer after a long cold winter and the world is set for a fresh start. In our part of the country, the Bradford pears and dogwoods bud and then are covered with blossoms. Shortly afterward the azaleas explode with color lasting almost a month. It is a truly glorious six to eight weeks here when the gloom of winter yields to the grandeur of spring. And it changes our psyches. We begin to imagine the possibilities of our lives and everything suddenly seems possible. Not so with autumn. Autumn is the time when each of us in very important ways reaps what we have sown.
For most of our youth and early adult lives we have lived wondering just how it will all turn out. We spend countless days, months and even years planting, watering and weeding. We were looking forward. We envisioned the harvest but it was cloudy, unclear and even uncertain. But we kept working and refused to give up hope. This is the very position that Alli and Chris as well as Ashley and Matt find themselves in presently. And now all of the sudden we find ourselves spending more time looking backward than we do forward. It can be both disorienting and uncomfortable at first. When we've spent so much time planting, it almost seems weird and unnatural to harvest, but we have no choice really.
Yet for me this has also been a time of thankful reminiscence; but the fact is that none our children, no matter how spiritually inclined, have turned out just like we either imagined or dreamed. They make choices that we wouldn't make [even though so far they've all made better choices than I did at their respective ages (I am sure this is largely attributable to their mother) ... let's just hope this continues]. And I am still waiting for my first child to apply to medical school. They all share my faith but they don't share all my values. However, as time goes by, they seem to be coming around in that regard too. I finally have a house full of football-loving Seminoles [two degrees from the University of North Florida notwithstanding]. They also tend to become more candid about my weaknesses and failures and how they are determined to avoid them. So it is hard to look back at my life as a parent and even as a husband and be singularly thankful, because looking back honestly will include remembering many moments of weakness and sin.
No, we weren't always the parents or spouses that we wanted to be. Yes, we were dedicated to raising our kids to know and love God and we were always looking for ways to do that more effectively. We sought to make God's presence obvious in the lives of our kids and we talked much and often about the Gospel. We regularly shared our “highs, lows & devos” at the dinner table, which will likely be a memory our kids take with them as they start their own families. We endeavored to be faithful in correction, instruction and discipline. But in all of this there was one glaring and huge problem: we did it all as sinners. There were so many times that our sin got in the way of our parenting or even in relating to each other as husband and wife and father and mother. In midlife, these are the moments we tend to remember. Too often we were in the way of what God was doing rather than being a part of it. But now, there is little we can do about it.
My youngest child, Andrew, has a mere 12 months left before he heads off to college. His oldest sister, Ashley, is married, involved in a nursing career and is now pregnant with our first grandchild. There is probably little more that can bring legacy to the forefront of one’s thinking than finding out you are going to be a grandparent for the first time. I’ll never forget a statement my pastor Erik Braun made in a sermon this past year ... he said there are five things that you do in life and number 5 happened to be meeting your grandkids ... GULP! That’s on the not too distant horizon for Janna & me. If nothing else makes you realize that you are truly in the late autumn or early winter of life, becoming a grandfather will do it.
I will never forget when my middle daughter, Alli came home over her Christmas break during her senior year at UNF and we talked about her post-graduation job plans … typical dad thing to do AND she uttered the words that immediately strike fear into a daddy’s heart. She said that she was strongly considering serving overseas in Africa as a missionary teacher. I was floored and my initial reaction was to tell her in my most logical and argumentative eloquence just why that would be a very bad idea. Maybe later, but surely not now. She had no experience, no money, was not established, had no prospective husband though she did have a boyfriend. I could go on a long tangent here about how Alli ALWAYS seemed to have a boyfriend … they just never seemed to last very long as she could seemingly quickly rule them out as marriage material. Now being the good dad that I at least thought I was, I tried to quench a lot of these relationships before they could really get started … in the name of protecting the hearts of the young men of North FloridaJ Not that it seemed to make much of a difference to Alli. Alli is so very much like me in so many ways ... there’s seldom any winning an argument with Alli about anything ... and in our case it is almost like me arguing with myself. Anyway, I thought she had long since dropped the idea of being a missionary teacher until just a few days prior to Valentine’s weekend in 2010 when she informed Janna and me that she planned to drive to Southaven, MS [just south of Memphis, TN] for the annual NICS conference and be interviewed for overseas teaching positions. Janna agreed to go with her to discuss the possibilities with her but then God sent a very rare snowstorm deep into the Southeast U.S. [all the way to Dothan & the Florida panhandle] the Thursday/Friday she would travel. Suddenly I was being pressed to go as I am the only one in our family with much experience and proficiency with driving in snow. There you go … being from the Midwest sometimes comes in handy … again, this may depend on how one defines “handy.” However, it was during our two days at NICS headquarters that God showed Janna and me that His hand was all over this and that He had specifically chosen Alli to serve him in Caracas. How could I not let her go? And I began to more fully realize in the most tangible of ways that my kids were not my own, but they were His and He was calling the loan on this one. Why couldn’t He just call her to get married like He did with Ashley? That was hard enough. But to let her go all by herself to what was at the time the fifth most dangerous city in the world only to become the most dangerous city in the world within four months of her arrival … wasn’t that asking too much? Still, we had no choice … God had made His choice.
And then I now recall just a few weeks ago as I sat in our family room full of so many people that I know and love and that had faithfully sponsored Alli both prayerfully and financially over these past two years and watched and listened to her relate all the amazing ways God showed up in her classroom, in her school and in her relationships with both faculty and locals that she developed while there. Hearing her relate the stories of leading two young kindergarteners to Christ [one being from a Muslim family & then praying with little Sharin every day for the salvation of her parents until the school year ended] and discipling high school girls and influencing university students … remembering the week I spent in her classroom loving on her first class of twelve and watching the love, respect and almost reverence they had for her made we weep uncontrollably and my mind was flooded with my thoughts of how I would never have chosen this for her, and yet I had NEVER been more proud of Alli than I was just four weeks ago.
Ariel is a senior in the nursing program at Florida State University and has a steady boyfriend, who is a Gator [this again gets to point of our kids making choices that we wouldn't necessarily make or having different values than we have:)]. And yet Andrew Axsom is here today … the son of a pastor and fellow servant with Ariel on her two Cru missions. How cool is it to possibly meet your future life companion while serving Christ on the mission field?!? Yes, the leaves have just about all fallen off the trees.
Midlife is a reflective time. In our youth, even though we have not reached our goals, we tell ourselves that we have plenty of time left. But the more of life that we have in the rearview mirror, the more our dreams give way to reflection, and before long we are spending much more time looking backward than looking forward. We become regular spectators of the people that once were, rather than who is. And sadly, we don't always like what we see. The person on the screen of our memories struggles much more than we ever wanted to struggle. We wish we could go back and do things the right way, if only we could do it a second time. We wish we could have wiser eyes, more perceiving ears, clearer minds, softer tongues and more tender hearts. But there is no going back. And still somehow God is glorified!
Alli and Chris have a very unique relationship … at least from my vantage point. They are both prophetic in their ministry gifting. This has been a significant cause of alarm to both Janna and me. Yet somehow they make it work. Another God thing. So different is Alli from Ashley … goes all the way back to the nursery even. I remember the nursery nurse first telling us the evening following her birth of what an amazing set of lungs our new baby girl had. [I could tell the story of how I bought my first, and so far only, boat on the afternoon of her birth because she came so quickly and easily that I could keep the test drive appointment that I had scheduled the day before. That purchase knocked a lot more than just a few leaves to the ground from our family tree … it knocked huge branches to the ground and nearly killed our legacy when it was not much more than a sapling].
Janna got to learn a lot about graciousness through that whole situation as probably our young kids did as well. I know I learned some very painful financial lessons through paying what Dave Ramsey calls “stupid tax.” And God made sure that I learned that lesson over and over as He wouldn’t let me bail and sell. Because like a doofus I put the down payment on a credit card and so was immediately underwater on the boat only to find that neither of our vehicles could actually pull a boat. So more debt to buy a Chevy Blazer and suddenly this young intern just turning resident physician had pretty much spent more than his monthly raise would cover and he still had a house payment he could barely afford … and I began to realize why I was the only resident at the hospital who actually “owned” his own house … using the term “owned” quite loosely here. More like I was owned by a house, boat and car. And yet God faithfully sustained us throughout those stressful residency years … it’s bad enough to work 100+ hours/week but to be in financial bondage despite working like a slave … neither my finest hours nor much fun.
But back to our scheduled Alli story … remember that little baby girl with the huge pipes for lungs? Yes, that turned out to be nurse speak for “run for the hills” and “man do I ever feel sorry for you.” Another critical piece of information that they failed to teach me in medical school. No, Alli never took a pacifier then, later, now and probably never will. She also would not take a bottle … as an aside none of my kids would take a bottle [I guess they knew a good thing when they tasted it and wouldn’t take a cheap substitute in its place]. Nevermind that I had a limitless free supply of formula from the pharmaceutical companies … story of my life in a nutshell.
Yes God would use Alli to teach me many lessons in life. Why oh why couldn’t she be like her angel sister Ashley? Turns out Ashley was the world’s easiest baby … not that we realized it at the time … to the contrary, we thought we were God’s gift to parenting having read and mastered How to Really Love Your Child while pregnant with Ashley. All it took to have blissful children was keeping their emotional tanks full … well, the writer failed to give us a plan for the child with a gaping hole in her emotional tank … and Alli must have had a hole the size of Texas in hers! She would scream these bloodcurdling cries and could not be consoled. And suddenly as well as repeatedly, we became the couple that received these death stares from people around us at restaurants, malls, the beach, where ever …. Somehow we had suddenly become those parents that don’t really love their children. And we learned mercy and grace for others from Alli over and over again!
Speaking of spiritual giftings … Alli has always had a strong prophetic bent. She like her other two sisters came to Christ in repentance and submitted her life to Him at a very early age … I think four … and like Ashley, she had the privilege of being baptized in the Pacific Ocean while living in Hawai’i. But unlike Ashley she never seemed to have much patience with her supposedly Christian friends who were not living lives faithful to their calling. She would basically tell them that whenever they were ready to straighten up and fly right … to live a life worthy of their Savior she would again be their friend … but until then, don’t bother her. Ashley, on the other hand, tended to give grace to a fault and believe the best in others until long after any reasonable basis for it was over. It made for some interesting family dynamics. And, ever the prophet, Alli had a parental hypocrisy meter that was exquisitely sensitive AND she was seldom too shy to share her perception with us. This is where I think she is almost too alike with Chris … they will both need God’s supernatural grace as they grow together but it can make for an awesome testimony at the end.
Alli had the misfortune of growing up in the shadow of the “perfect” child … her sister Ashley ... and she struggled for most of her elementary school years to find a way out of Ashley’s oversized shadow. Seemingly everything Ashley touched turned to gold and her grades were exceptional. Alli did well, but never seemed to match Ashley’s accomplishments despite working at least as hard if not harder. We were still living in Hawai’i when Janna and I first realized that Alli suffered from ADHD. There were several conversations about medicating her … something Janna was emphatically against … oh, and by the way, we never told her any of this. It wasn’t till halfway through her junior year at UNF when she was neck deep in her education curriculum that Alli had the epiphany that she herself had a diagnosis. She called me at home and related her latest discovery to which I answered simply yes. She obviously thought I failed to get it and so she repeated that she “had ADHD ... you know attention problems” and again I said, “I know Alli.” One last time she most emphatically declared “No dad, I am talking about Attention Deficit Disorder ... you know when you have problems focusing.” One last time, I told her I knew that. Then there was silence. Finally after a long pause the indignant, prophetic Alli spoke up with questions of consternation as to “why didn’t you help me?” It was then that I reminded her that she graduated from Chiles High School with honors and with a weighted GPA over 4.0 and would soon graduate from UNF summa cum laude. She then almost cried out, “but Dad it was so hard.” To which I told her that it was good for her to have undergone the struggle. In many ways, her ability to overcome her lack of focus ... something we perceived as we watched her learning to read while hanging upside down from the back of our couch in our Hawaiian townhouse was like a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis, ever transformed and made stronger by the struggle. I reminded her that we never held her up to the same academic expectations that we have had for her three siblings because we could see how hard she worked, how very creative she was and the discipline in her life ... the 1 or 2 Bs she would bring home on her report card were good enough for us. But I also let her know then that we had kept a safety net under her at all times and that we would have never let her fail. We would have had her treated should the struggle have been too much for her.
This and her wonderful, athletic soccer skills helped make Alli into the terrific young woman she is today. God gifted Alli athletically and when she stumbled onto this discovery, her life was forever changed for the positive as she moved out of her sister’s shadow never to return. Soccer allowed her to make a whole new set of friends … friends that didn’t even know of Ashley, and Alli quickly became a leader for most and a Godly influence for all. For some reason God chose to shorten Alli’s promising soccer career with two devastating knee injuries during her sophomore and junior years at Chiles … which only seemed to motivate her more determinedly to recover. In retrospect, now it is much easier to see God’s hand in shaping Alli’s spirit to do the kinds of things He has called her to do such as venture out to meet a challenge like serving Him in Venezuela.
As Alli and Chris stand here tonight having made lifelong vows before both God and man, I think its fitting for me to close by encouraging them both as well as all of you with some of the words I shared with Alli the night before she flew to Caracas alone that very first time.
For Jesus, wisdom wasn't just downloaded from heaven. When He became a man, He didn't cheat. He gained wisdom through the same process that we are invited to employ. He knew what to say because morning by morning He opened His ears and heart and became a student. The wisdom of God comes to those who walk with God. And the path is neither easy nor safe. It is difficult to think of Jesus as having to gain wisdom. We tend to think of Jesus as always complete in every way. To see this clearly, we only need to remember that Jesus came into this world as a baby. He had to learn everything from scratch -- how to eat, how to walk, how to speak, how to read, how to live -- just as we do.
No one journeys the path to wisdom without significant obstacles and hardship. We will all face the temptation to rebel or perhaps draw back, yet if we hold fast, we will find the light of day. Remember that God loves to entrust even more to those of us who are faithful with what we have.
Faithfulness keeps our character from going bad. While the small things do not seem so very important in the moment, they have incredible ramifications over the long haul. It is not usually the great challenges that cause successful leaders to fail, it is often carelessness in the small things. There are countless examples in recent history alone from the Oval Office where the President of the United States is alone with an intern, on down to the televangelist caught fleecing the flock or visiting houses of ill repute, and finally all the way down to the business on the corner where the controller is embezzling funds. The 24 hour cable news cycle is replete with such examples. When it comes to character the details really do matter. In our quest for honor, we really do have to sweat the small stuff. Great leaders in a very real way come out of nowhere. We must never underestimate the weightiness of small matters.
Those of us who have had the privilege of living as a citizen in this country have, in many ways, lived in an unreal world. Our ordinary experience would appropriately be described as surreal by most of the 7 billion people who live on our planet. Though most of us have lived out “the American Dream” it has also been accompanied by a bit of delusion. Most of us have begun to feel that life comes with certain guarantees. We have even created a false theology that validates our false sense of security. Peace and prosperity have become expectations … and many have been dumbstruck over the last four years in America to see that this isn’t always the case. Concepts such as sacrifice and suffering were left to describe only those who were living outside the blessings of God.
We live in an era of peace and stability though even the edges of that have become progressively more frayed … recalling the two wars in which we are now engaged and the brutal attacks of 9/11 that precipitated them. But even still, we hire others to fight for us so that we can largely be left unaffected. I think this has led us to come to wrong conclusions regarding what the human spirit needs. You would think that what we need is certainty; the promise that everything is going to be all right; the guarantee that we’ll be safe. While I, like everyone else, would love to know that this is the life that God would choose to give my family and me, the security that we often seek is not necessary to living life to the fullest. And sometimes it can actually be the great deterrent to seizing our divine moments.
In I Samuel 14 we read about Jonathan moving with God in a situation where his father, King Saul and his army were paralyzed by fear in a standoff with the Philistine army. Jonathan was certain about some things, and at the same time he was able to operate in the realm of uncertainty. He called out to his armor-bearer and said, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.” You’ve gotta love that. In today’s vernacular he basically said, “Let’s go pick a fight. Maybe God will help.” Jonathan understood that not everything was guaranteed, that you don’t wait till all the money is in the bank. There are some things that you can know and some things that you will not know. He went on to say, “Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.”
He had such a clear perspective on reality. What he knew for certain was that God was powerful enough to get the job done; that it didn’t matter if was two of them against a thousand Philistines. His father’s apprehension to go to war with six hundred soldiers but only two weapons—that’s right, two swords—was reasonable, but not enough to excuse neglecting the purpose of God. And so if it were only Jonathan and his armor-bearer and only Jonathan with a sword, he would still move in line with God’s mission for them.
Some time before, God had spoken through Samuel his prophet to the whole house of Israel, “If you are returning to the Lord with all your hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve Him only, and He will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines” [1 Sam. 7:3].
God had promised Israel deliverance from the oppressive hand of the Philistines, and the way He would do it was by raising up an army of men who would trust in God and go to war against them. Jonathan was clear about one thing: he knew for certain that nothing could stop the Lord from saving, and God could use a lot of people or only a few people. The odds are irrelevant to God.
Jonathan had an unwavering confidence in God’s capacity. He had absolute trust in God’s character. He seemed resolute about whether God could be trusted. That was all settled for him. His focus was not, What is God’s will for my life? but How can I give my life to fulfill God’s will? He had no certainty concerning his personal well being. That he was moving in line with God’s purpose was the only certainty that he needed. He understood that to move with God is to accept a life full of uncertainties.
Imagine that you are Jonathan’s armor-bearer. He wakes you up from a deep sleep, and he tells you to follow him through a series of cliffs for the purpose of engaging the Philistines in battle. And in his invitation he explains that his best hope is that God might help them out. If I were the armor-bearer, I’d be inclined to say, “Wake me up when you know for sure.” Isn’t that what most of us would have done? Then we’d go back to sleep in the shade of the pomegranate tree, willing to set out once everything was certain.
Our wealth and abundance of human resources have positioned us to accept a paradigm that provision precedes vision. This has been the foundation of our building a no-risk faith. This is a tragedy because part of the adventure is the discovery that vision always precedes provision. It may seem like a stretch to many, but it is always right to do what’s right, even if it turns out wrong. And it is in this area that I think Alli and Chris are both particularly gifted and called. Theirs is a radical faith!
Jesus did the right thing when He left Gethsemane where He struggled to embrace the Father’s will and began a journey that would lead Him to the Cross. The consequence to Him was severe. Our response to His coming was to crucify Him. We should not be surprised, then, that a lifelong journey with God might bring us suffering and hardship. If the Cross teaches us anything, it teaches us that sometimes God comes through AFTER we’ve been killed!
But if we [and when I say we I mean all of us, but I especially mean Chris and Alli] are going to seize divine moments, we must accept the reality that we have no control over many things. We have no control over when we die or even how we die. We must instead take responsibility for what we do have control over – how we choose to live.
Jonathan wasn’t choosing to die, but he was choosing how he would live. He left the consequence of his actions in the hands of God. He chose to do something that he knew was right. Again, God was doing something in history, and Jonathan gave his life to it. This realm of uncertainty is also the place of miracles. Sometimes the miracle is wrapped around the person we become, the courage and nobility expressed through a life well lived.
When you move with God, He always shows up. It’s just difficult to predict what He will do or how He will do it. If you wait for guarantees, the only thing that will be guaranteed is that you will miss endless divine opportunities – that you can know for certain.
Lastly, I want to tell each of you along with Chris and to remind Alli of the very last thing I told her the night before she left … the difference between Jonathan and us is though Jonathan had no idea whether or not God would act on his behalf, in that particular engagement, he knew who God was. He knew if he would seek God, he would live, even though he died in the trying. It is ironic then, that we run to God to keep us safe, when it is He who calls us to a dangerous faith. He will shake loose everything in which we place our trust outside of Himself and teach us how to thrive in a future that is unknown. There is only One who is certain; everything else exists in the realm of uncertainty. To place our trust in anything other than God is nothing less than superstition.
Consider the story of Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego ... they were contemporaries of Daniel and they, too, had been selected to serve as advisors to King Nebuchadnezzar. Though they served him well, they infuriated the king when they refused to bow down to the god he had crafted. The king gave them the ultimatum to either bow before his idol or be thrown into a blazing furnace. All three of them chose the fire, saying “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up” [Daniel 3:16-18].
Like Jonathan, the three men knew who God was, and they were confident of what God could do. They also knew they didn’t know if He would save them. They understood the uncertainty, but their course of action would be the same in either case. We are told the furnace was then heated seven times hotter. Nebuchadnezzar’s strongest soldiers tied the three and then prepared to throw them into the furnace. The fire was so hot it consumed the king’s soldiers when they opened the door. Then Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego fell through the door and into the fire.
That was one door I am sure they wished that God had closed rather than opened in their lives. I cannot imagine that they did not long for God to take them a different way. What must have seemed to them as their final moment would become their greatest moment. They were not consumed by the fire, but instead, they were met by a fourth man in the midst of it. It was Jesus who met them there! They went to a place they could never go alone and live. God took them on an adventure where not even a king dared journey. When the king invited them to return, they stepped out of the fire. Though they were now out of danger ... they were more dangerous than ever!!!
And this is my prayer for you two, my dear prophets of God! You both know who God is to the very core of your souls. Be dangerous to the enemy’s kingdom for the sake of Christ and His Gospel. Seek the One who is certain and who delights in being found, every day of your lives. And great will be your eternal reward.
Chris ... it is with both joy and tears that I give you this day the very best I have. Ever since that fateful day near the end of June in 1988 when our Heavenly Father placed sweet baby Alli into my care to guard and to raise, to nurture and to love, to pray for and to instruct, to discipline and to lead in the ways of God, I have endeavored to be faithful to that calling. There have been innumerable instances where I have failed [and where you will too] ... but in those times God’s grace has always been sufficient to cover them. We have had much joy and many tears together ... some successes and some failures but now 24 years later I present to you my daughter, Alli, who knows who God is and knows who she is and who eagerly seeks to learn who she can be in Him. Today I transfer her spiritual covering to you, man of God, to love and to nurture, to guard and to serve, and to care for her soul and her life, even above your very own. For that is the calling of God on your life this day. Our God is a God of covenants kept throughout the entirety of human history, from Abraham all the way to this day. He calls both you and Alli to keep the covenant that you sealed today before both God and man until you are both in His presence in glory ... and exceedingly great will be your reward on that day. Chris, today I call you my son; and Alli, you will forever be my daughter. May our God be greatly glorified in your new life together.
Prayer of blessing for them both.
And finally a toast to Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Pope ... may their lives together be filled with both joy and grace as well as the satisfaction that comes at the end when King Jesus says “well done, my good and faithful servants!”
