Well, in today’s blog post I’ll try to be short and sweet. Susan and I will be taking off Thursday through Saturday for a three-day mini retreat for Valentine’s Day. Nothing greater than going away with your sweetheart to focus on each other. However, we will include family with that focus.
My sister Karen will be celebrating her birthday on Friday the 13th. Also, my other sister, Elaine, just had her first grand baby, Letty. They named her Letty after my mother’s middle name. My boys are going to have to pick up the pace if we are going to continue this Jenkins name. My mom and dad had five girls and two boys, me and my brother. Not many Jenkins men left.
I guess that’s what this blog is about this Monday—family. I’ve had my family on my mind a lot lately as I have been praying for the sons and daughters of the families of our church. The time is short for us to reach them with the gospel and I haven’t been very good at living out what I’ve been preaching at Calvary towards my own family.
For the most part, I ignore my immediate family. Partly because of the distance we live from them and partly because they do not want to talk about the fact they have a sibling who is a preacher—a Pentecostal preacher for that matter. My family talks about jobs, kids, government, weather, and the economy, but rarely do they want to mention faith or church. For them, they say religion is a private matter. For me, I have great difficulty keeping the most important thing in my life a private matter. That would be like my sister, Elaine, failing to mention Letty, her new granddaughter, because it was a private matter.
Most of us would rather keep a fictitious form of peace with our families by being silent witnesses. I have taken that route many times. Others say that praying for their salvation is enough. Still others, like me, hope that our public witness and ministry would be enough to convince our families of our faith. Yet, rarely do we ever engage them in a conversation about things that really matter in this life.
I hope to change that fact and failing in my life this year. Although I would rather minister to a stranger on the street than to take up a conversation with a family member about faith and religion, I must change. The reason I say “faith and religion” is because I believe I have faith in Christ, while they still, in many ways, only have religion through church. Their belief about God has had little or no impact on their personal lives.
Many people, including family members, would not readily admit that their religion is more of a hodgepodge of how they were raised than what they have learned from the Bible. In my family we were taught to not come against the church or to speak disrespectfully about God or the ministry. However, until my mom got saved, we had no direct connection with a life of faith and church participation.
When my mom got saved she struggled long and hard to come out of her past and embrace her new life in Christ, but family was a big hinderance to that process. On the one hand there were all the preprogrammed ways she and we had learned. On the other hand there was great resistance from my father. However, mom slowly turned to her new life and began instructing her children and her children’s children in the ways of the Lord.
Previously to this, I was saved in the Baptist Church in Henryville, Indiana at the age of 12. I’ve given my testimony before, but I want to recount the impact it had on my mother the night I came home and announced to her and dad that, “I just got saved!” The response was what I would call bewildered and confused. Dad dismissed my newfound faith. Mom buried it deep in her heart. She knew it was real.
Nothing changed immediately in our family, but we did start attending the Baptist Church from time to time. I attended regularly up until we moved away from Henryville to Depauw, Indiana. It was during this time, in the Milltown Baptist Church, my mother gave her life to the Lord. Great struggles ensued, but mom overcame. My sister Elaine gave her life to the Lord also and was baptized. It was years later that her faith began to grow and she too began to share her newfound faith with her family. She and her husband, Bernie, are members of an independent Baptist Church in New Salisbury, Indiana. Elaine is deeply involved and outspoken in her faith.
I watched my sister struggle in her faith over the years. However, over the past few years she has opened the Bible and discovered what I wish every believer knew—the Word of God will transform your life into something totally new. I’ve seen Elaine flourish under the nurturing power of the Word. She is bold in her witness and committed to her church. She also, like my mother, has had a deep influence on her children, and now that influence will extend to her first grandchild as well.
As Susan and I go to southern Indiana this weekend, I hope to be nicer to my family, reestablish relations where possible, and be more of an outspoken witness to my faith.
“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord.
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone
who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.
But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience,
so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior
in Christ
may be ashamed of their slander.”
1st Peter 3:15, 16, NIV.
Maybe, as I willing (or unwillingly) endeavor to share my faith once again with my family, it will be better received than before. I once told Susan, when we first came to Indiana from Texas, “My ministry is not my family.” There were tremendous family pressures which did not permit me to discover my faith in Christ and the power of his Word, so the Lord mercifully removed me from Indiana and placed me in Texas to strengthen me there. Maybe now, after 30 years of Christian service, I am finally strong enough to share my faith and be a witness to my family once again.
My prayer for you is that you will find this same strength also. It is a lot easier to walk away from it and not care than to face it again with a new heart of compassion. I guess the real truth about it is, back then I only thought of how they were hurting me. Now I see it as them hurting themselves. Pray for me and I will pray for you. As I learn things about ministering to my own family, maybe I’ll be better equipped as a pastor to help you as you, in turn, begin to share your faith with your family.
I’m sorry this short and sweet blog morphed into deep and serious, but maybe it will help us all.