Nothing Can Eclipse Your Call to Christ

This was the greatest gift my dad ever gave me. He looked at me with tears and said, “Son, I had a successful ministry and a successful life. And I allowed myself to get wrapped up in that.” His failures and mistakes shape who I am today—as a father, as a husband, and as a leader. The first step of reconciliation was tough, but God used it in rich ways for my growth and sanctification.

Brody’s father fell back into sexual addiction that he struggled with before he was a believer. His successes and failures affected everything and everyone around him, but God’s grace is bigger than the failures of our parents.

Christians, we need to remember that we are children of God. You might be a school teacher, a pastor, a fighter pilot, or you might be a combat veteran who wrestles with finding their identity outside of the service. You might be retired and trying to find your identity. You may be a young woman or a young man who is starting your career right now is the time to establish that your identity is in Christ.

Don’t pursue the approval of others—it will eclipse your main focus of knowing Christ and becoming more like Him. Then, you’ll be pursuing whatever you think you need to be or what others think you need to be. It’s a slippery slope.

Who you are is determined by how you perceive Jesus and what you do with Him. As we pursue Christ and allow Him to conform us more into His image, that is going to form and shape our identity.

Resources

• Romans 8:28-30

Quotes

“When Jesus saved us, redeems us, and begins to set us free from the controls and dominions of sin, one of the things He sets us free from is the weight of someone else’s failure that impacts us.”

“If we can see how God can use that for His glory and our good- because people, persecution and hardship either crushes/destroys them or makes them stronger.”

“I allowed my call to ministry to be eclipsed to the greater call God has on all of our lives that is the call to be conformed into the image of Jesus.”

Transcript: Nothing Can Eclipse Your Call To Christ

The greatest gift my dad ever gave me was he looked at me and he had tears in his eyes. He was literally crying and he said, Son, what happened was I had a successful ministry, a successful life. And he said, I allowed my identity to get wrapped up in that successful ministry and that successful life.

Welcome to No Sanity Required from the ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about about the Bible, culture and stories from around the globe.

Hello there, welcome to the podcast, no Sanity Required and excited that you would join us, be with us, spend a few minutes with us here. I want to share a story, the probably most formative story in most of our lives is the story of how we’re raised, the influence that our parents have on us. One day I’ll I do an episode where I talk about my mom who’s just awesome. Love her to death. Best grandmama she could be and awesome mom to me and all eight kids and my stepdad who my kids know as their granddad, they call him Pap. He’s incredible, awesome couple of people. But my parents divorced, split up when I was a little bit older. Most of my childhood, they were together. All of my childhood, they were together. I’m the oldest kid. And I wanted to share a lesson, a life lesson that I learned from my dad. One thing that I want to encourage people with always is that you can take another person’s failures, even if those failures hurt you, and you can learn from them and bring about a positive outcome. You can see that failure used for good in your own life.

And my dad, he made some mistakes that were pretty destructive in our family. But in the end, I can honestly say I thank the Lord for him. And I get frustrated because a lot of times I feel like in our society and our culture, there’s this mindset of being the victim. And because my dad failed at one thing or another, then it gives me an excuse to to not live up to a certain potential or I can use that as an excuse in my own failures. And I don’t dare, dare, dare want to downplay the things that happen in our childhood, especially if someone is abused or abandoned. There’s a lot that person experiences. You take a kid that’s been abused, and that stays with them for the rest of their lives. And they have to learn how to work through that and live with that. And I don’t wanna dare say, well, just because you had a bad childhood and your dad abused you or left you or beat you or abandoned you or whatever, that you need to get over it. Just learn from his mistakes and be a better person. It’s not that simple.

That’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what this episode’s about. At the same time, when Jesus saves us and redeems us and begins to set us free, from the control and the dominion of sin, one of the things He sets us free from is the weight of someone else’s failure that impacts us. I don’t know if that last sentence made a connection with you, but let me say it again. The weight of another person’s failures that sometimes we feel like we’re carrying. So maybe it’s our mom and dad, maybe it’s your parents, maybe it’s just one of them, but you feel the weight of their failure, that you’re the next generation, but you’re carrying the weight of that previous generation’s failure. That can be overwhelming. And I want to be careful, but I want to talk about it because I feel like if we can see how God can use that for His glory and for our good, how we can grow in that, because people, persecution or difficulty or hardship, It either crushes and destroys people or it makes them stronger. Even in the world, not just in the Christian context. And so my dad’s failure was very painful and destructive.

And there’s one side of me where I think, no, I wish that would have never happened. But at the same time, his failure and mistakes have shaped the man that I’ve become today as a father, as a husband, as a as a leader. And so I wouldn’t dare discredit that. So years ago, I sat down and said, okay, I need to figure out how I cannot be angry at my dad, not be bitter at my dad, and see that, man, this is, God meant all of this for good. How do we go about that? How could God take all of this and then mean it and use it for good? And, and so a little background, the things that I, I want to start by sharing some thoughts on the things that I’m thankful for my dad for. One of them is, my dad taught me a a really strong work ethic. I remember when I was about eight years old, I used to cut our grass and I used to push a lawn mower and it wasn’t a very big yard, but it was big enough that for an eight year old it took me probably two or three hours.

And it was hard work. I remember we had apple trees and in the summer those apples would fall and you’re trying to work over those apples with the lawn mower. It was just a pain. I hated it. But he would make me cut our grass. Every week. And there’s a lady that lived right next door, and her husband was gone a lot with his work. And so my dad volunteered me to cut her grass. And so I went over and cut her grass. She gave me five dollars. It took me a couple hours to do it. She didn’t have apple trees, so I thought it was an easy job. But she had a big ditch out front, and that ditch was kind of slick and Steep. And she said, hey, I don’t want you taking that push mower down on that ditch. Just leave that. My husband can do that next time he’s. He’s home and doing yard work. So I didn’t do the ditch. She gave me five bucks, two hours worth of work. My dad gets home and says, why didn’t you cut the ditch next door? And I said, well, the lady didn’t want me to cut the ditch.

And he said, no, no, no. You agreed to do a job. You go over there and finish it. And he made me go finish the job. And I didn’t get any more money for that, but he made me go finish the job. And I appreciate that. Like, I look back, I’m really thankful for that. Another time, when I was a freshman in college, I’d left home and I was actually participating in sports. I was an athlete. And, and I, and so it was when I went off to school in August and I went to school about six hours from home, and I didn’t get to come home for a break until, I want to say it was the fall break. No, it was the weekend before what it was the weekend before the official NCAA kickoff or tip off for the season. We had like a midnight practice or something to kick the season off like October 1st, something like that. And so it was that weekend before. So I had, I had been gone for about eight weeks, by far the longest I’d ever been gone from home. So I’m gonna go home, get to go home, go home.

And it’s a really fast trip. Get to go home and spend, you know, a weekend. And my dad had lined up for me all day Saturday work so that I could make some money. And that’s just the way he. That’s just the way it was. And I don’t. I’m. I’m really thankful for that. It. It instilled in me a work ethic and a responsibility that. I’ll forever be indebted to him for that. So he did a lot of things well. He was a provider in a lot of ways. But my dad, he struggled man and by his own admission he had a sex addiction. Started with pornography and it turned to everything from and there’s people that are probably listening to this that are going to be shocked to hear this. And I had a preached in a church one time and shared a little bit of a story. I usually keep it fairly, like, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t tell everything that went on in our family and our home behind closed doors. And I don’t tell all the details of conversations I had with my dad. But I remember someone that knew my dad got really offended that I had implied that my dad had multiple affairs and lots of girlfriends along the way.

And, and, but he did. And I know it, and I lived through it, and my brother lived through it. My sisters lived through it. My mom felt the effects of it, and eventually it brought a lot of deterioration in our family. But there was reconciliation between me and my dad and my other siblings and my dad. And so I think the story has a happy ending. So it’s not like we have to be bitter about it or that I’m accusatory of my father. I believe the Lord used it for good in the end. But I wanted to share sort of what that first major step of reconciliation looked like because when I was a young husband, young father, I I was very protective of my kids and my wife. I didn’t want my dad to have a whole lot of influence. Some of that was bitterness. I think some of it was me in immaturity and in sinfulness not wanting to, like using my, I was wanting to use my family to punish him, I think. I’m not gonna let you see my kids because of the choices you made. You hurt our family. You left my mom, you had affairs, you were a pastor and then you left the church and you left Jesus and you left our family and yada yada yada.

And I was just immature in my approach to it and I was blaming my dad for everything. And he needed to be blamed for some of it. He needed to take responsibility for his actions. But man, there for the grace of God, would I end up in the same situation and who am I to judge him? That’s what I had to come to that point. And so, I remember having a conversation with my dad. He had been a pastor for, I don’t know, over 10 years, 15 years, something like that. And I mean, like he had an influential ministry. And you see this a lot where guys who are charismatic and they’re in leadership and they’re influential that they end up getting into trouble with women or with money or power or abuse of that power, whatever. But they get in trouble. And that, that happened to my dad. He fell into some very difficult things. And so I, I remember telling him that I wanted my family to, to have safe distance from him. I didn’t want him to just have unlimited access to my kids and. And he, by then, he was not living a great lifestyle.

And I wanted to protect my kids from some of his, his lifestyle choices. And I wanted them to not be, I wanted them to grow up knowing my mom and her husband, hey, here’s a healthy marriage and a, in a very grandparent like relationship and atmosphere. And it was good. It was healthy. My dad was part of a biker club and stayed on the road and kind of, you know, was home to work a few days a week and then hit, hit, you know, got on his bike and hit, hit the road on the weekends and went to Daytona and went to South Dakota and went to San Diego and was all over just kind of a wanderer a little bit in his later years. And anyway, we had this conversation and my dad was basically saying, what do I have to do to, to really, I want to get to know my grandkids. This was after my third child had been born. He said, I really want to get to know my grandkids. And I said, man, I want you to, I’m gonna, we were both at a point where we wanted to reconcile our relationship, which means just bring it back together and start a new relationship and really try to move forward in a positive way.

And I wanted my kids to get to know their granddad. And he wanted to get to know them. And I asked him a question. I said, How do I not end up like you? And that might sound really harsh and mean, but Snowbird was successful. It was a young ministry. It was just getting going. And I think we were maybe at that point about an eight-year-old ministry, but it was looking like, man, we’re here to stay. You know, the Lord had used this ministry already, had established it, and was giving us success in a lot of ways. And so I said, How do I not fall into the same traps that you fell into? How do I not go down that path? And I know now we had a lot of follow-up conversations where I learned a lot of the details of that slippery slope of pornography and sexual addiction and illicit affairs and things like that. But one of the greatest gifts my dad, but the greatest gift my dad ever gave me was he looked at me and he had tears in his eyes. He was literally crying and he said, Son, what happened was I had a successful ministry, a successful life.

And he said, I allowed my identity to get wrapped up in that successful ministry and that successful life. In other words, it became what fueled and fed him. His identity was in how people perceived him and how successful he was. And he said, when you allow your calling to ministry to become the thing that you find your identity in, that’s not good. And his exact quote was, he said, I allowed my call to ministry to be eclipsed to the greater call that God has on all of our lives, and that is the call to be conformed to the image of Jesus. In other words, the scripture says God saves us so that we can be conformed into the image of Jesus. For every Christian, there’s a process God’s taken us through called sanctification. And in that process, we’re still dealing with the power of sin in our lives. We’re fighting it, we’re working against it, it’s working against us, but God is growing us more into the image of Jesus. And so that’s where you hear people talk about growing in their faith. From the time you’re a new Christian until you’ve been a Christian 10 years, you should grow and mature and there should be certain evidences of that.

That’s the idea. I’m growing more into the likeness and image of Jesus. It comes from Romans chapter 8, verses 28 through 30. God saves us and then His purpose in saving us is to conform us to the image of Christ. And my dad shared that with me. He said, if your identity is in your ministry or your work or in Snowbird Outfitters or in being a daddy, a dad, a husband, whatever, how people perceive you, then that becomes the main calling. Then it will Eclipse your focus on pursuing and becoming more like Christ. And then you’ll be pursuing to become more like whatever else you think you need to be or others think you need to be. And. And it’s a slippery slope that not necessarily to say that that in and of itself would then make you become a person who is an adulterer or whatever. But in his experience, that’s what happened is when he got on that slippery slope, he fell back into things that he had struggled with before he was a believer, a child of God. The bottom line is for all of us, we need to remember, you might be a school teacher, you might be a pastor, you might be a fighter pilot.

I know two fighter pilots, three, I know three fighter pilots. Fascinating talking to those guys. What crazy stories. You might be a combat veteran who wrestles with finding your identity outside of the service. You might be a person who has retired and now you’re trying to find identity. You may be a young man or young woman who’s just starting your career and right now is the time to establish that your identity is in Christ, it’s not in your career. Who you are is determined by how you perceive Jesus and what you do with him. And as we pursue Christ and allow Him to conform us more into His image, that is going to form and shape our identity. And so don’t let whatever calling in your life is there, don’t let that eclipse your call to be conformed to the image of Christ. Learn a lesson from my dad that I’ve learned and I’m forever indebted to him for it. My dad passed away in 2007. So he’s been dead and gone a long time. And I shared that story at his funeral and I preached his funeral. In that, he gave me one of the most incredible gifts.

And he gave me that gift only about a year and a half before he passed. So it is pretty neat. We got to spend a year and a half of good, strong fellowship together. I’m very grateful for that. I love my dad very much. And so I wanted to share that with you. I think it’s a story worth sharing because at Snowbird, that’s become sort of the mantra. That is the– like we’ve got a defined mission statement and an incredible ministry set of core values in the ministry and in an initiative and how we go forward and how we pursue the things that we pursue, how we do the work we’ve been called to do. That’s all very defined. But you’ll constantly hear that terminology around here, that idea of being conformed to the image of Jesus. That’s what we exist for. That’s where that comes from. It comes from the Bible. But I mean, that’s why it’s such a big, big deal and big part of this ministry. So hope that encourages you today and Glad to be able to share it with you and I hope you get something out of it. And thanks again for joining.

Always appreciate that you would sit and take a few minutes and listen to Hillbilly Ramble and just share thoughts that the Lord lays on my heart and life experiences. Hope it’s helpful. See you next time.

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