I received this email recently from Damon D. Having spent many years actively teaching the Bible and the fatherhood discipleship curriculum –From Faith to Faith– at the Union Gospel Mission, I was certainly humbled and equally grateful for his message of a changed life. I wanted to share his testimony with you to provide encouragement. One never knows how God is going to use your life in another one’s. The message is unedited and his last name is withheld for privacy reasons.
“As a child I grew up without my father being present in my life, and it affected me a lot as I grew up wanting to go to games, picnics, fishing trips, road trips and father son days at school.
Then as a young adult I was incarcerated for 35 years charged with murder, and it caused me to be absent from my son’s life and after serving 22 years of that thirty-five year sentence I was released and I thought that I would have a relationship with my now grown son, but it didn’t turn out that way.
Due to my charge I was not allowed to be in my son’s life. And it made me angry to the point I got addicted to drugs, alcohol, and sex with multiple women trying to fill a void that had me depressed as well as not caring for anyone but myself.
Eventually it affected my relationship with my grandchildren, my nieces and nephews.
Then I found myself homeless, and staying at the Union Gospel Mission; and came to learn about Abiding Fathers and it has helped me build a better relationship with my family as well as mended my relationship God, as well as others that I came in contact with through the Mission and Abiding Father’s.
I just want to take this opportunity to thank you as well as the Mission for your guidance in helping become an abiding father, and not an absent father in all my families life.”
I responded to Damon and shared that his story is a living testimony that God is truly the “Hound of Heaven.” While this is not an actual name of God, not found in the Bible, it does describe how he pursues us out of his love. C.S. Lewis said it best. ‘He once described God as the “Hound of Heaven”. By that phrase he meant that God doggedly pursued him and would not let go. Lewis came into Christian faith, in his own words, “kicking and screaming” as God’s faithful pursuit won out in his life.’
The Spirit’s word through Paul says it all. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1.3-6).
What’s your story of rescue? Is it similar to Damon or C.S.? As you reflect back, just how did God’s grace capture your heart, mind and soul? Praise him!