I was raised in a religious home, attending church every Sunday. I sang in the choir, was president of my youth group and even served as an acolyte.  However, my real god, the one that received all my time and dedication, was basketball.

 

During my senior year of high school, I trained so hard in the weight room that I ruptured two discs in my lower back.  This effectively ended my basketball career, shattering my plans to play for one of the military academies.  I reluctantly decided to attend the College of William and Mary where, at least, I could focus on academics.  My heart was heavy with disappointment.

At college, things went well for a time.  I made the Dean’s List, joined a popular fraternity, and enjoyed the attention of successive girlfriends.  Gradually, the emptiness of it all began to gnaw at me.  I found nothing satisfying.  I was bitter and wrote an essay asserting that there was no God.—a topic which pleased my humanistic professors.

 

By my junior year I was depressed and contemplating suicide.  I sought help from a campus priest and a school psychologist.  Week after week I met with each one, but they had no answers for my aching soul.  I had no peace.

 

It was Christmas break of the same year when someone handed me a copy of The Attributes of God by Arthur Pink, and The Gospel According to Jesus by John MacArthur.  The words at once confronted and comforted me.  While psychology and religion danced around my dilemma, the Bible diagnosed my case with ‘in-my-face’ directness and pinpoint accuracy.  I was a sinner in need of a savior.  Despite the fact that I had doubted God’s existence, He was still there (Psalm 14:1).  I read that we were created for a purpose far greater than our own self-interest. 

 

God made man to serve Him and enjoy the unspeakable fulfillment of a right relationship with Him. But, shaking our fists in His face, we went our own way (Isaiah 53:6), down countless roads all leading to the same place: unfulfillment in this life, and eternal judgment in Hell at last.  We were sinners living far from God’s presence, when Christ stepped in to bring back those who would believe.  God’s justice demanded our punishment, but God’s mercy made a way. On the cross the sinless Savior was crushed for OUR rebellion, cleansing us completely, clothing us with HIS righteousness, restoring our relationship with the God we had offended.

 

I fell to my knees and submitted to my Maker’s rightful claim upon my life.  I used to think a balanced life assigned one ‘piece of the pie’ to God.  Now I saw that the entire pie was His!  I would joyfully pursue a life of obedience to His commands, in every sphere of my life.  As the hymn writer said, “Jesus paid it all.  All to Him I owe.  Sin had left a crimson stain.  He washed it white as snow.” 

 

In God’s perfect timing, He sent me Stacy.  She became a great friend, an encouragement to my faith, and eventually my wife.  The night before our wedding, Brian Millard and many other friends rented a limo “to celebrate with me.”  They planned to take me to Richmond for one last bachelor party. While I loved my friends, I could not accept the offer.  So they celebrated my big night without me—zooming down the road to the tune of “Highway to Hell.”  I still remember how sick I felt, seeing my closest friends trapped in a life that mocked God.  As I held back the tears, I silently prayed, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.  Please save them.  These are my closest friends and they are all on their way to Hell.”  Amazingly, God answered that prayer when Brian was saved many years later.  God is always faithful.

 

God continues to bless me.  Stacy is a wonderful helpmeet, perfectly completing me as we train up our 6 beautiful children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  Because the Bible calls us to diligently teach God’s commands to our children all day long (Deuteronomy 6:7), we have chosen to educate them at home.  While it is a financial sacrifice to keep Stacy at home, it has been, spiritually and educationally, the richest time of our lives.  

 

God has placed a particular burden on our hearts for the strengthening of families.  In a post-Christian culture, openly hostile to God, young people must be equipped to defend the faith in the face of adversity.   We desire to train our children to be “generals,” not just “privates,” in God’s army.  They must take faith seriously, not take it for granted—knowing what they believe and why they believe it. 

 

So often “Christian” parents fail to embrace this multigenerational vision, spending time diligently teaching athletic, musical, or academic skills to their children, while failing to invest the time necessary to disciple them in the gospel.  As the biblical heads of their homes, fathers must lead this charge, clearing their schedules to walk alongside their children, capturing their hearts before God’s enemies do.  God’s word declares, “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (Malachi 4:6).”  We believe the very preservation of Western civilization rests upon this principle.