Today my previous pastor died. I gave him a hug just last Sunday on my visit home.
I thought I'd post my last letter to him here. RIP Pat and see you on the other side. I know that right now you are probably not resting, more likely dancing, singing and joyfully laughing in the presence of our King.
Dear Pat
I wanted to write and let you know some of the ways God used
you to impact me.
Thanks for reaching out to me when I was new to Bethel and
believing in me enough to ask me to join the youth staff. Those years really
changed my life. I remember how you
would pray for us when you exercised and how you would come eat lunch with us
once a week at the JC. I’m truly thankful for your strong servant leadership
during all those years. Even now, my
favorite patients are teenagers, especially the messy broken ones. Thanks for
your example of loving and teaching the youth group students and also how you
invested so much into the youth staff as well.
I’m also thankful for all the ridiculously fun memories as well, ie fear
factor eating fish eyes.
I always appreciate that you continually preach the gospel
and have stayed true to it even when I come back home to visit. I’m just really
encouraged by that. It really is what we all need to hear the most. Even though I’ve been away for more than 8
years now, thanks for the continual support and encouragement. Thanks for
challenging me in evangelism many years ago, and writing the letter of recc for
me to do the medical evangelism summer training program. Here is something
cool- the program I work for lets me formally teach the residents methods in
sharing the gospel, and then go with them to the hospital and do “spiritual
rounds” where we visit patients, ask them spiritual histories and have
opportunities to share the gospel with patients who really are hungry to hear
it. God is amazing!.
I’m truly thankful for the example of you and Michelle in
how you raised your kids too. I appreciate and respect how transparent you were
about how you had struggled early on but had grown in the process and how you
had told your kids you didn’t want then to be any different at church than they
were at home. I always thought to myself, “If I get married and have kids, Pat
and Michelle are the two people I’d want to get advice from”. I’m so proud of your kids, and how they love
Jesus. I know God is going to use them to change this world and build His
kingdom.
Today I was reading Philippians and it reminds me so much of
you, so I’ll just end with it.
Philippians
1
1 Paul and Timothy, bond-servants
of Christ Jesus,
To
all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and
deacons: 2 Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God in all my
remembrance of you, 4 always offering prayer with joy
in my every prayer for you all, 5 in
view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 For I am confident of this very thing,
that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ
Jesus. 7 …. 12 Now I want you to know, brethren,
that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, 13 so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has
become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, 14 and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because
of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without
fear. 15 Some, to be sure, are preaching
Christ even from envy and strife, but some also from good will; 16 the latter do it out of love, knowing that I am appointed
for the defense of the gospel; 17 the
former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition rather than from pure motives,
thinking to cause me distress in my imprisonment. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in
truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in this I rejoice.
Yes,
and I will rejoice, 19 for I know that this will turn
out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of
Jesus Christ, 20 according to my earnest
expectation and hope, that I will not be put to shame in anything, but that
with all boldness, Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body,
whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain…
Chapter
3… v7 But whatever things were gain to
me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my
Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but
rubbish so that I may gain Christ, 9 and
may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the
Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes
from God on the basis of faith, 10 that
I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His
sufferings, being conformed to His death; 11 in
order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
You are surely in His Grip. He is truly a mighty Savior.
With much love,
Jennifer Jung.
