WHEN A FRIEND ASKS A SIMPLE QUESTION: "How's it going?"

None of us need walk alone on our way to the Wedding.  Though the Groom awaits, the journey there is anything but smooth. 

Got a note this morning.  "How's it going?"

He's a friend.  A good one.  Never "met" him, though.  Except electronically, and that was through mutual comrades in the Ransomed Heart Net online-sphere.  Then our similar blogs Strategic Fathering.  I knew he was my kinda guy when he signed off, "JC Dude".  "So," he asked, knowing I'd recently discovered that my once-contained Prostate Cancer had begun to wander,"How's it going?"  So, my answer starts out cute, then got more more serious.  Reflect on the latter. 

No, "fun" isn't a form of denial in this case.  It's a field leveler.  When the notion of life's finality become reality there are several routes built around attitude. 

Here's the one I took.  Wonder with me if you'd take the same trail through the forest, the one to the sunny glen or through the dark, if majestic, evergreens. . .    
 

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Gathered by the River

Recent ponderous pondering to frame the book vanished this morning. The Father massaged my heart in family worship. In simple conclusion it was rediscovering that life in Christ wasn’t as much about how we march out the Christian conventions drawn from scripture but about how we walk in the heart of The Story; His heart, His story.

Where’d that come from? The kids, i.e., grandkids . We took a family Sunday at the wild water world of Lake Powell, the dammed up Colorado River in Utah. Five little ones, four big ones huddled in the air conditioned cool of the RV before boating. Sang some of those kids’ praise songs on the CD. “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord…I want to see You.” Then, “Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down…to say you are my God.”

My wife then un-TIVOed a Joyce Myers message she thought would fit. It did. Even the kids (5 to 12) “got” it, especially in family discussion. Life is a warfare against the enemy of our hearts. Setting aside our hearts for God and not spending it on ourselves, now that was something the kids understood.

Then came the reading. “Obscure” OT stuff, of all things. The kids took turns reading The Message rendering of Deuteronomy 30. And it’s very worth the read for Legacy Dads. It’s about the consequences of following the Lord…for generations. Verses 6 to 8 talk about freeing our heart to love God and live a full life. We all liked the part where verse nine assures us with “God will start enjoying you again.”

Popi, that’s me, offered another set verses God-breathed but not often read. Micah (yes, Micah) 6: 8 and 9, “He has showed you, O man, what is good, what He requires of you: to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Across the page in my dual version Peterson puts it nicely, “…And don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.”

The kids, our legacy, got it…for the moment. But like all children they do what they see. Will they SEE us take God more seriously than we do ourselves and follow our model with their lives in to the next generationS?

Saddling your best horse

This one's like a short ride after catching and saddling your best horse; not satisfying, but at least you saddled up.

Back up and ready to ride midst my busiest time in years (new job plus writing book and keeping family and Chapel ministry fulfilled). Am going to stay alert and active to the blog because soninlaw, Matt, and I are reading, outlining, interviewing and just now starting to write THE book. No, not the Bible, but the other one, Generational Fathering.

So, here's your chance. Short or long, let me have it. Your story, that is. It may be, and I'm hoping so, that it will be a story of the family tree from which you, the apple, didn't fall far. How you became who you are, especially how God THE Father, used the words and the model of your father and his to shape who you are.

Tell us the journey of your grand and great grand fathers, your own dads. The glory, the wounds, the recovery, the intervention of a gracious God to make of you what the best efforts of your elders could not. Tell us where you intend to go from here to assure a legacy of three more renewing generations of godliness that will glorify God and His Kingdom through the ages ahead.

www.ransomedheart.net/generationalfathering will take you in to an active group discussion.