One Year Gone ... or is it?

One Year Gone..or is it?

“Listen to your father who gave you life,
And do not despise your mother when she is old.
Buy truth, and do not sell it;
Buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.
The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, he who fathers a wise son will be glad in him.
Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice.”
Proverbs 23: 22-25 (ESV)

It has been a year since my father passed away. I remember the drive to the hospital that night as well. It was the first time I had ever seen the Atlantic City Expressway empty of any cars. I didn’t even see a police patrol car. The car seemed to be driving itself and it was one of few times that there was no chatter going on in my head. No thoughts, no emotions just me, the steering wheel and road. It was a very surreal moment in my life.

But before this had happened there was a death to myself that was going on. In 2003 I had to stop the drinking and drugging I was doing. And to be honest with you all, I still fight against with what I once was. The old man creeps up every once in awhile, hangs out long enough to make himself known, and then has to be rebuked back into his place in yesterday. Just so you are all aware of this, he was the same guy that hung out with my father where my father liked to hang out. It was the only place that any real talking went on….the local tavern.

When I take a deep look back now, in a Biblical view, I had to endure the beginning process of dying to myself. If I had stayed the same old Chris that sat in the bar with his father trying to grapple with just the everyday, when my father passed I would have sank faster and harder than I already was. I praise God, through the blood of Christ, that had He not broken me I would not be able to be a man let alone any kind of father to my son. Today I don’t mourn the death of my father but praise God in it. Did my father know Jesus……sad to say, not to my knowledge. And if he did, I never saw it. I chose not to dwell in it either.

I recently celebrated, quietly, six years since I stood in front of the Colony men, in the Colony chapel, after receiving my graduation Bible and said, “I don’t know where God is taking me, but at least my wife is letting go home.” Kinda funny now when I look back at this as well. Never thought I’d be writing Freedom Fighters either. But this is my way of journaling and at times I get real humble by it, because you are reading what is happening in my growth and walk with Jesus. And I don’t know most of you but I have a feeling that there is a little of what has happened to me in some of you. So you can relate.

On July 31st, 2003 I signed this blue card. That was after I had just come back into the Colony from a funeral held for an Uncle. That funeral was my moment of clarity and this is what was written on that card, “Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes, all my own desires and hopes, and accept your will for my life. I give myself, my life, my all utterly to you to be yours forever. Fill me with your Holy Spirit. Use me as you will; send me where you will; work out your whole will in my life at any cost, now and forever.” When I was done signing my part of this covenant, I nailed what belonged to Jesus on a wooden cross. “Nough said Brother’s. -- Chris Hughes is a graduate of the Colony of Mercy and a frequent contributor to Freedom Fighter

God's WORD for US: Proverbs 4; Ezekiel 47-48; 1 John 3

Great quote: “Christmas, the Story of God becoming the Man, Jesus, is the only hope we have of returning back to God. We must lean into the truth of God’s love displayed in Jesus’ coming. Our fall into depravity and alienation was because our confidence in the kindness and love of God was shaken. We doubted and doubt the love of God. Our recovery must begin with the belief of His love; ‘this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins (I Jn. 4:10). Dr. Tom Wood, How the Gospel Story Makes Sense