The enemy, the devil, Satan, goes to great lengths to destroy God's church by destroying men in the course of bereavement

12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1

Tonight, I discovered to what extent the enemy will use to destroy His church.  It has been my experience that woman are most likely to initiate grief support groups while men will seek the comfort of alcohol and drugs.

 When I discovered to what extent, there were alarm bells that went off in my head.  When a man loses his wife to disease or sudden death, their death is first submitted to the public pages of the media.  Once that is done, men become vulnerable to the dark side of the web of organized prostitution when some will receive messages that appeal to their loneliness

. Former leader of Promise Keeper's, Bill McCartney, was aware of that vulnerability which leads him to start a movement of men to encourage them to turn their lives to Christ and become the Spiritual leaders in the home that God intended them to be.

It was a powerful movement that for many years brought men to Christ; until the devil attacked the movement and twisted the words of Bill McCartney and all of the rest of the Promise keeper's Pastors as if the intent of the ministry was to keep woman shackled to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. Over the years, the media relentlessly attacked this ministry until attendance died off and men once again began drifting away from the Church.  In one conversation I learned that there is a dark underbelly that ensnares men when they lose a loved one.

When I look at the Promise Keeper's ministry I saw the hope that God was bringing to men through accountability and restored relationships. It wasn't about keeping their wives shackled, barefoot and pregnant, but it was a way of keeping men in the word of God and spiritual leaders in the home as God intended them to be.
One of the ways you can prevent the dark side of the web from infiltrating your computer is to talk with an IT professional about getting advice about tightening up your computer security system so everything sinister and evil are blocked out. As men, we have to keep our guard up at all times and never underestimate the power of the devil.  When the unthinkable happens such as the loss of a loved one, we must remember to trust God by reading God's word while attending Church regardless of how you're feeling at the time, and look for a small group bible study that will hold you accountable.

Bill McCartney has been gone for several years, but the profound truths he brought to us through the Promise Keeper's ministry lives on and serves as a reminder that we must never let out guards down.

No matter what happens to us in this lifetime, Jesus Christ is always worth following.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

I had this dream tonight that I survived a major catastrophic tornado and a devastating fire. I remember the emotions of listening to the deafening freight train as the winds began lifting up the roof of the structure I was occupying. When the storms finally passed over and calm returned, I went up the stairs and exited the now destroyed structured I was in and surveyed the devastating results of this storm. As I took in this panoramic 360 scene I heard multiple ambulances, police and fire trucks heading toward the scene of the mayhem. The little voice from within told me to pray for those in this storm, As I listened I heard voices of people who were still trapped inside their homes, unable to get out. I looked at the home I once occupied and could see that it was leveled and beyond repair. I head a mom cry out in the darkness, " my baby, where is my baby?" I heard a grief-stricken father cry out "why God did you allow this to happen?"

So many people when tragedy strikes are quick to curse God and walk away from Him. For some, they cannot readily accept the idea that a 'good, good God would take their loved ones away from them. They seem to accept this 'prosperity gospel that says if I do A plus B equals C that God will pour out his blessings from the heavens above and bad things will never happen to us in life. We are reminded by these words in Romans 8:18 'I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.' If there is one thing I learned as I read the bible it is that God's promises that no matter what happens to us He will be there in the aftermath of our personal tragedies to help us recover from our pain.

I remember our family celebrating our son's golden birthday just 2 months after our loss. It was a day of 'mixed' emotions of wanting to be happy and joyful, but also being filled with sadness that our loved one couldn't be there to participate in the celebration. As we watched our son and several friends enjoying the indoor waterpark we were reading a book on grief survival.

As I looked back, I see, not the tragedies, not the loss of life, but I see Jesus walking beside and uniquely showing evidence that He walking with you. You may not see this through your tears and your anguished cries, but He is there. In John 3:16 are the words 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God is no stranger to suffering for He sacrificed his son so that you may experience eternal life.

If there is one thing I've learned through tragedy, it is that heaven is very real and it will be a place where there will be no more suffering, no more pain, no more anguish cries. In fact, it will be a place where there will be far more celebrations with our loved ones than we ever had in this temporary place called earth.

So, you see, God's promises are true because he does make all things new.

Holy Spirit nudges from Saul to Kanye West to countless others-God uses broken people to share His message of Salvation to a world starving for good news.

9 Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”5 “Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. 6 “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” Acts 9:1-6

Recently at Grief share, a young lady shared about her nervousness of going back to church after her loss. It was a church that held many warm memories with her loved one, but in his absence, she felt emotional pain when she saw the building. One morning she arose and drove to church, but in the last moment felt the urge to turn around and go home. It was that moment she felt a slight nudge from within to go back. She got out and walked all the way to the familiar pew she sat in with her loved one. Moments later, friends came and sat with her on either side of her.


I shared my holy spirit nudge story when on the first day of the new school year when we didn't have our daughter Maria, I heard a voice from with in to go to Rainbow and buy Linda some flowers and bring it to her school. As I drove toward the store I had this fleeting thought that Cub also had a floral department and was easier to get into until I felt the nudge to go to Rainbow. As I waited for the lady behind the counter to prepare the flowers I share my grief story. When I was done she shared about the loss of her husband. I mentioned to her that I was driving my son to drama camp when I saw her husband's hearse sitting under the awning of the church. It was that nudge from within that helped me to encourage another person in grief and cheer up my wife with a bouquet of roses.


I was reminded that Kanye West was given a bible when he was hospitalized. As he read God's words, he felt the prompting of the holy spirit to accept Jesus Christ into his heart. I've learned that God will use broken people to share the good news of his salvation- news that desperate and broken people need to hear.


As the verse from Acts illustrates, Saul had a hatred for people of the Christian faith. He wanted them dead and was on his way to cause havoc. Then Saul was blinded by the light when he had to come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was who he said he was. Even the men of Saul who were traveling with him were wondering where this voice was coming from because they couldn't see him. In this same passage, Saul opens his eyes but couldn't see anything. The men who were with him had to help him walk the rest of the way. He was blinded for 3 days and he went without food and liquid. In Damascus, there was a disciple named Ananias who God called:"“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.” Ananias had heard of this man's notorious reputation and was understandably scared. Then the Lord spoke these words of comfort to him:" “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

God uses broken people to reach those least likely to be reached.

Kanye West read the bible while in treatment and responded to the salvation message that will bring people to the Lord that you nor I wouldn't be able to reach. Our response as Christians isn't to attack Kanye's testimony, but to pray for God's protection as he grows stronger in his faith so broken people can find the Lord.

As I studied the biographical sketches of the mass shooters, I discovered that it really isn't about the guns, but the early traumatic experiences in their lives. We must do a better job asking the right questions.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. ... Psalm 23

Jesse Osborne, the teenager who pleaded guilty to the Townville Elementary School shooting of 2016, suffered abuse at the hands of the father he killed, according to testimony Wednesday from the teen's older half-brother. Ryan Brock, whose mother, Tiffney Osborne, is also Jesse's mother, testified about Jesse's home life at a sentencing hearing for the teen. Brock said Jeffrey Osborne, Jesse's father, physically and emotionally abused Jesse. https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/news/local/south-carolina/2019/11/13/townville-school-shooter-jesse-osborne-sentencing-hearing-second-day-jacob-hall-anderson-county-sc/2522120001/

Ryan Brock said he had to work through his own feelings of guilt about what happened to Jesse and how the elementary school shooting happened after Brock, who is 22, left home and moved to Texas.

 "Jesse relied on me a lot to look after him and make sure he was OK, and after I left, that was gone for him," Brock said.

Martin testified that Osborne had flashbacks of bullying that he had experienced at school and flashbacks of "trauma he had received at the hands of his father," who was "verbally and physically abusive."

Brock said that Jeffrey Osborne withheld food from Jesse to punish him.
Osborne was expelled from West Oak Middle School for bringing a hatchet and a machete there about six months before the Townville shooting.

In the recent school shooting in Santa Clarita, we know that Nicholas Berhow came from a troubled home. His early life was steller with a commitment to the Boy Scouts, hunting with his dad, and earning top marks in school. But there were signs of trouble in the home. The suspect’s father, Mark Berhow, was arrested in 2015 on suspicion of attempted battery on a spouse, according to jail records. But citing insufficient evidence, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to file two misdemeanor charges against him — one misdemeanor count each of violation of a domestic relations court order and battery on a spouse or girlfriend. 

Another report revealed his dad died in December 2017 from a heart attack and according to the New York Post he battled chronic alcoholism that contributed to his heart attack. One report suggested that Nicholas found his deceased father in the living room of the home they lived in. Previous to the arrest, his wife filed for full custody of their son. Another report mentioned that his dad would make his own bullets. His son, Nicholas, carried one hollowed bullet in memory of his dad.

Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter also came from a troubled past. Friends and family members say he grew up in a loving home, but tragedy struck twice with the death of his father when he was a young child, and then the death of his mother just a few months before the school shootings. Different news accounts suggest that there many red flags that were missed and had someone picked up on the clues this school shooting might have been avoided.

A gunman, identified as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, fires from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on a crowd of 30,000 gathered on the Las Vegas Strip for the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival. At least 58 people were killed and more than 515 injured. What is important to know about this shooter is that in 1960, when Stephen Paddock was 7, F.B.I. agents showed up at his family’s tidy white ranch house in the hills outside Tucson, Arizona, stunning the neighbors and even the local sheriff. No one could fathom that Pat Paddock, the big, jolly father of four young boys who owned a small business in town and was a special deputy at the sheriff’s office, was really Benjamin Hoskins Paddock, a serial bank robber with a rap sheet that stretched back to Chicago.

I could go on and on with other biographical sketches of school shootings, but that would be too much for one blog. What I discovered was it isn't about the guns, but the combination of traumatic experiences in the lives of young people.  Imagine you are a young child and you encountered the sudden death of a parent and now you have to go to the same school where you face triggers every time you see a happy young person giving their parent a hug the moment they are dropped off while you are in a pain remembering the parent you once had. Imagine how scared you are living in a world that no longer feels safe to you. 

 The reality is we have to stop thinking that kids are resilient and think they will recover on their own without help.  We must do a better job asking the right questions to our young people if we truly want to help them recover from traumatic experiences in their lives 

In Summary, it isn't about the guns, but it is about the culmination of the emotional and traumatic experiences that leave our young people bewildered and at a loss at how to recover from those events. As the Ace's study bares out, young people who struggle with unresolved pain associated with trauma will have a harder time in school while earning poorer grades and are at increased risk for significant chronic health issues.  As a Christian, I know from my life that listening to our children and consistently worshipping together as a family is the start of the healing process. 

  It is in God's book that we see a living and breathing Savior who truly understands us and wants to walk us through this pain.

Yesterday, November 14th, 2019 in Santa Clarita, California was the scene of another school shooting and a reminder of the affects of trauma on children

A 16-year-old kid carries a gun into his high school before taking it out of his backpack and killing two students while injuring several others. When I look at the survivors in this tragedy, I see unceasing pain. The image of a young female student on the school bus revealed a concerned but scared look. I wondered if it was one of her friends that were killed. In another scene were parents and children seen crying in the aftermath of this mayhem. As usual, the school mentioned that would be school counselors that will be made available to help the students cope with this tragedy.

One of my Linkin connections is a recent college graduate that happened to be one of our daughter's good friends before Maria died in 2007. Kim graduated from Legacy Christian Academy, the same school ( different name) Maria attended until the end of her 4th-grade year. In one LinkIn post these words confirm all along my thoughts that we need to do a better job addressing the trauma needs of children.
"For grief especially, I think people write off kids as being resilient enough to bounce back, so they don’t worry as they would over an adult. Even if nothing major happened, sometimes kids are just going through a rough patch and could benefit from therapeutic support. Perhaps early intervention could even prevent lifelong mental health issues in adulthood."

This young lady is pursuing her Master's degree in Clinical Counseling and wants to make a difference in children and adults impacted by trauma. This builds to the recent findings from the Aces study.

In the 1980s, the dropout rate of participants at Kaiser Permanente's obesity clinic in San Diego, California, was about 50%; despite all of the dropouts successfully losing weight under the program.[2] Vincent Felitti, head of Kaiser Permanente's Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego, conducted interviews with people who had left the program, and discovered that a majority of 286 people he interviewed had experienced childhood sexual abuse. The interview findings suggested to Felitti that weight gain might be a coping mechanism for depression, anxiety, and fear.[2]

Felitti and Robert Anda from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) went on to survey childhood trauma experiences of over 17,000 Kaiser Permanente patient volunteers.[2] The 17,337 participants were volunteers from approximately 26,000 consecutive Kaiser Permanente members. About half were female; 74.8% were white; the average age was 57; 75.2% had attended college; all had jobs and good health care, because they were members of the Kaiser health maintenance organization.[3] Participants were asked about different types of childhood trauma that had been identified in earlier research literature:[4]

The conclusion from this study are as follows: The number of ACEs was strongly associated with adulthood high-risk health behaviors such as smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, promiscuity, and severe obesity, and correlated with ill-health including depression, heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease and shortened lifespan.[4][8][9] Compared to an ACE score of zero, having four adverse childhood experiences was associated with a seven-fold (700%) increase in alcoholism, a doubling of risk of being diagnosed with cancer, and a four-fold increase in emphysema; an ACE score above six was associated with a 30-fold (3000%) increase in attempted suicide.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_Childhood_Experiences_Study


We need to do a better job addressing the trauma needs of our children and young adults. A 16-year-old kid doesn't just go into a school and start killing kids. If one looks hard and long one might see a pattern of problematic behaviors going back several years. It could have been relentless bullying, or any number of issues revealed in the Ace's study.


The result of this study is a start toward understanding childhood trauma. As the study reveals, children are not as resilient as adults would like to think they are.  They need help with processing the pain they feel within than simply be given a cookie and being told things will be all right.

Last night, I heard the most horrific story regarding 'unresolved grief from a friend who shared openly about his brothers grief

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

It was in 1971 when this man lost his 4-year-old son through a failed heart transplant procedure. This friend reminded me that it was only in 1968 when Dr. Barnard first did the procedure which was still pretty new. 

He shared how his brother never moved out of the anger stage of his grief, preferring instead to stay stuck in anger all the rest of his days in life. He said his brother refused to go to church thereafter, hated people instead and wouldn't talk to him because he was a 'Jesus freak.'  

He even refused to consider the blessings of having 4 more children, preferring to focus continuously on the loss of his son. By sharing this story, I want everyone to know just how incredibly toxic anger is for people. 

Besides the horrific health issues from the hardening of the arteries resulting from addictive smoking to psoriasis of the liver caused by abusive alcohol consumption, anger causes the breakdown in marriage communication and prevents that person from having normal relationships with spouse and his surviving children. 

 In many cases,  children grow up insecure and anxious regarding making healthy choices as adults. Thus, the original anger from one person can lead to generational sin where future generations would never know the origin of their anger.  I'm reminded by the verse from Ephesians 4: 31-32 which says,'

Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.
 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.'

Our ability to forgive those who we perceived have harmed us in some way will ultimately help us to heal from our anger and lead us down a much healthier path in life.

In our family's situation, there was great healing that resulted when we sat down with our daughter's doctor remembering the special little girl Maria was and forgiving each other for a procedure that didn't give us the outcome we desired.

 It was as though Jesus, Himself, lifted our anger out of us and replaced it with peace, tranquility, and a vision that heaven is real and when our lives are complete we will see her again.

If you are dealing with anger for some wrong that was done to you or to a family member, would you picture Jesus on the cross as he took the blows for you just so your sins can be forgiven and you can experience true freedom and assurance of eternal life? If God could forgive you then why wouldn't we forgive others?

One of the greatest joys of living is being able to have a personal relationship with God because of the sacrifice of His Son on the cross. To think that we have a God in heaven willing to listen to our prayers of whatever is ailing us is truly amazing.

If you are struggling to get out of the anger stage of your grief, you may want to consider finding a 13-week grief share group near you. Grief share will teach you how to go through the pain of your loss, not around it. Https://griefshare.org

TobyMac fans rally to offer comfort in the passing of his son, Truett

Faith isn’t pretending our problems don’t exist, nor is it simply blind optimism. Faith points us beyond our problems to the hope we have in Christ. — Billy Graham

TobyMac fans poured out their love and support after the sudden loss of his son Truett. There is no greater pain than when a mom and dad lose a child because it wasn't supposed to be that way.

 When a parent encounters the sudden death of a child it rocks their whole world from the smiles and laughter to incredible gut-wrenching pain. Pain that is so deep and so intense that it is difficult for the world to understand. Parents are quite literally shocked when those people they thought would come to their side to sit with them in their grief don't, but they are surprised by the new friends they never knew before come to their side listening to their deep sorrow.   

A friend shared the isolation they felt as they began the grief journey after losing their young child and how hurt they were when well-meaning friends never said a word to them. Some friends may not know what to say to a couple while others don't want to go there because of the possibility that such a loss could happen to them. 

When this type of loss occurs we are at a crossroads.  We can either be angry with God that He would allow something like this to occur or we can trust God and allow him to help us walk this painful journey with us.  Pursuing the angry road will only lead to drugs, alcohol and other self-destructive behaviors while trusting God will lead to eventual peace.  The better approach after the loss of a loved one is to put one foot in front of the other and continue going to a church that worships Jesus Christ.