Yeah, That's My Dad

We live in a broken world. It's broken in the sense that things don’t work the way they were meant to. It's broken because of our sin. The infinitely good and glorious God of holy love who created this world had to unleash his just judgment on it because in response to sin. Had to. And that means that our lives in this world are necessarily filled with sorrows and sickness and for all of us, eventually, death. But we also live in a redeemed world. Through the gospel, Christ has overcome sin, dealt with its curse in his body on the cross, and secured a bright and happy future for us where sin and its effects are gone forever.  What’s so cool is that world that has, in a sense, invaded this one. And so we can say with Christ’s Apostle Paul: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed.” That gospel truth informs how we think about and engage with sickness right now.  We know that our bodies are mortal and susceptible to all kinds of illnesses. Nobody skates free of that. But when we do get sick we don’t despair. We pray of course, rightly, for healing. God can do that if he wants. And we embrace by faith all the common grace of modern medicine. But deeper than all that, we know that God is sovereign over every cell in our bodies and that He superintends sickness to humble us and grow us and prune us and change us and loosen our grip on the garbage of this world.  That doesn’t make it easy to live with physical pain, but it does animate us with a hope that carries us through.  For my dad, this reality came fast and furious when in his 70s he was diagnosed with Stage Four prostate cancer. In this episode, he talked about walking through the ups and downs of illness.

Whether you call them Grandpa and Grandma or Nonno eh Nonna or Abuelo y Abuelita, every grandparent ever will tell you the same thing without hesitation: there is nothing happier than grandchildren.  This is a proverbial truth. And I mean literally. In Proverbs 17, super wise Solomon says it like this: “Children’s children are the crown of the aged.” You feel that? Grandchildren are the crowning joy and validation of a life well lived. A cherry on top of a killer sundae. A Gatorade bath at the end of a super bowl win.A magnificent sunset culminating a happy beach day. A crown. That is what grandchildren are in a man’s life. And not just because you get to buy them Richie’s Slush, or take them to see the fireworks, or let them watch two straight hours of SpongeBob, but because you are given another chance to model for and share with your own flesh and blood the goodness of God and grace of His gospel.  Don’t ever forget that when the Apostle Paul was encouaring young pastor Timothy to hold fast to gospel truth and throw himself with no fear into the difficult work of leading Christ’s church in Ephesus, he said to him, “Don’t forget that your confidence in Christ is not new, It dwelt first in your grandmother Lois.”  Isn’t that beautiful?  God works through generations, and if we live long enough to become grandparents, he lets us see that faithfulness all the way to the last chapters of our lives. - If there was a world championship belt for most fun, most involved, most present papa, my dad would have held it. Let’s just say that he fit right in with his grandchildren. In this episode, I asked him to talk about that, and about the unique relationship that he forged with each of his 8 grandchildren, oldest to youngest. 

Every dad has at least one funny story of their son or daughter coming home with a big surprise. "We're having a baby." "We’re buying a house." "We're moving to Dubai. Or New Hampshire. Or Texas. (God forbid.) For my dad, one of those surprises came at the very turn of the century when I came over to tell him that I felt called - unmistakably - to plant a church seven miles north of one of the least Christian cities in America. That church would eventually become Seven Mile Road, and we built is on 5 gospel convictions, one of which we called "supertight community." What we meant by that was that we believed that the gospel is not just about showing up to church on Sundays. And that even a casual reading of the New Testament shows that Jesus’ church was marked by a beautiful, messy, holy closeness. Those first Christians knew each other’s names, stories, sins, strengths, weaknesses, issues, dreams, fears, all of it. Life lived long-term in tight-knit and transparent community: that’s what we are shooting for at our church. And nobody - nobody - has embraced and modeled that conviction more deeply with more people than my dad.  In this episode, I asked him to talk about the ways that God redeemed a really hard church experience with the sweetness of being a part of Seven Mile Road​.

Episode 6: Parkway Every true and genuine Christian ever loves not only Christ, but His church. This should be obvious, right? When Christ saves us, He doesn’t save us by ourselves for ourselves.  He saves us into a family, the historical and global community of the saints. By grace, we become members of Christ’s body, not only dependent upon Him as our head, but intimately and necessarily connected to one another. This means that the Christian life is a “we” endeavor. You can’t live this thing out listening to your favorite preacher on your airpods while you walk the track. It's gotta be lived out in real-life, flesh-and-blood, face-to-face community. And so gospel-centered Christians always love their local church. They given themselves to knowing and being known by the people, submitting to the pastors, benefiting from the means of grace, and loving whoever Christ brings to them. Nothing could be more healing than that. And yet church can also be a place where harm is done. Of course, no church is ever going to be perfect. How can it be when it is filled with and led by sinners? So we should all have really patient, understanding hearts and really thick, humble skin when it comes to being a part of a church. But sometimes a church moves from spiritually imperfect to spiritually abusive. Its shepherds prove to be hirelings who are out for the advancement of themselves and their brands and their self actualizations at the expense of the people When that happens, inevitably, the people get hurt.  My dad’s experience of throwing himself fully into the life and mission of our church in Revere in the 80s was the ultimate mixed bag of church life: so much gospel healing in him and so much healing though him in others, but also some hurt.

Bonus Stories from the First 5 Episodes We are halfway through Season 1 of the Yeah, That's My Dad Podcast, so we thought we'd share one bonus story from each of the first 5 episodes. Enjoy!

Episode 5: Bookstore One of the marks of a gospel changed person is this: they don’t play scared anymore. They are secure in the love and power of Christ, and so they are fearless in taking risks that believe He is calling them to.  Scripture is littered with examples. Noah risked building an ark in the middle of a desert. Abraham risked uprooting himself from Ur and striking out for lands unknown and then he risked his son’s neck on the altar. Joseph risked displeasing Potiphar’s wife. Moses risked making stuttered demands of the most powerful man in Egypt. Rahab risked housing the spies. Ruth risked a night at the foot of Boaz’s bed. Daniel risked a night in the lions’ den. Esther risked making herself known to the king. John risked standing by Jesus’s cross. Nicodemus risked asking for Jesus’s body. We could give 100 more examples. It’s just what God-alive people do. And it's not just in the big stuff. They risk extending forgiveness. They risk confessing their sin. They risk opening their homes, and fridges, and downstairs bathrooms to others. Gospel people don’t play scared. For my dad one big risk that he felt called to take was starting a Christian bookstore called Noah’s Ark that he hoped would be a light for Christ right in the middle of New York.

Episode 4: Sons If you had to choose one relationship in Scripture that is the closest, who would you go with? Jacob and Rahcel? He worked 7 years for that girl!Isaac and Rebekah? Ah. Her humble posture when she is about to meet him.Priscilla and Aqulia? Totally in sync on the mission of God, sitting hand in hand on that couch, welcoming Apollos.Ruth abd Boaz? Breath-taking in the way he contends for and redeems her.Joesph and Mary? Traveling to Bethlehem, us against the world. Or maybe it’s not a marriage that comes to mindMaybe it's Jonathan and David, the tightest of friends.Or Paul and Timothy, pastor and protege. Those are all good choices, but I would go with Christ and His Father.  Their relationship is actually meant to be the archetype of love and affection and togetherness and trust that all holy human relationships are to be marked by. The way they love each other is how we will love them (and them us!) and each other forever. Jesus loved his Father. And the Father loved the Son.  We see that side of it on clearest display at Christ’s baptism. Who could ever forget it? Jesus wades into those Jordan waters and John goes, "Hold up, timeout, what are you doing here? This is backwards. I need you to baptize me." And Jesus goes, "I know, but do it ayway, it's the right thing. I don’t need cleaning from sin, but I do need identifying with the sinners I am here to save." And do you know who didn’t miss that baptism? His dad. The Father was there, as any good Father would be.  And as soon as Christ emerges from those waters, He loudly, exuberantly, joyfully lets everyone in earshot know: ‘This is my deeply loved son, and with Him I am so pleased.” Bostonian translation: "That’s my boy. I love this kid.”  Every man who ever becomes a dad to sons or daughters is invited onto that reality right there. A deep and close "I love you and would do anything for you" relationship of love and affection. So I talked with my dad about becoming and being a father.  

Episode 3: Margie The Bible is a love story. On its opening pages we are told that the man God created was alone, and it was not good. So God created for him a helper, a partner, a lover, a wife. And when Adam sees her and is so overcome with wonder that his jaw drops and his heart races and his eyes go wide and he bursts into song. And then the man and the woman get mar ried, right there in the garden, with God officiating. The Bible begin with a wedding. And interestingly, that’s also where it  ends, On the last pages of Scripture we see another wedding, only here the bridegroom is Christ, and the bride, His church. And we realize ohhhhh … this is where the story was going all along, the culmination of all of God’s designs for his creation, made possible through the gospel. Is Christ and His people happily united in covenantal love, forever. Every marriage in this age is meant to point to that reality. That doesn’t mean that everyone ever is going to be married, or that no marriage will ever end in divorce. We live in a broken world, marred by sin. Not everything goes right in this life, and we need to be realistic about that.  But it does mean that as those who have been swept into the love story that is the Christian gospel, we should be the kind of people who love and esteem marriage. In this episode my dad talked about his 54 year marriage to my mom and how it all got started. 

Episode 2: Vietnam Anyone who has ever come to Christ has done so only by His grace. If we love God, it’s because he first loved us. If we choose God, it’s because He first chose us.  Now, while that election went down before the foundation of the world, the Trinity still has to track us down in real time (in our “lived experience” as the kids call it now) and direct our hearts and steps to a place where we are ready, not only to hear the gospel, but to respond to it in repentance and faith. And that readiness can only come when we are brought low, and humbled, helped to see our sin and our need for a Savior.  There is no one blueprint for where and when this happens in someone’s life. For Zaccheus it was sitting up in a sycamore tree. For Paul, on the road to Damascus. For Lydia, in a van down by the river. For the woman at the well, yeah, at the well.  For me, it was in a church on the Revere Beach Parkway.  For my dad, it was in a hot, hot village on the other side of the world during his time in Vietnam where he was sent to his serve his country at war but found peace with God. For more information on the “Yeah, That’s My Dad” podcast, go to kruse.studio/dad.

Episode 1: Queens Childhood.  All of us have had one, right? We are all from some family somewhere and have been shaped by those family dynamics, by the ethos of that specific place. Interestingly, this is even true of Christ. Have you ever thought about that? That in the incarnation, Jesus did not just appear fully grown, dropped out of the sky like Arnold in The Terminator. Nope. Christ was sent into this world into a home, born as a baby to be raised by a dad and mom, alongside brothers and sisters. Jesus grew up running the streets of a neighborhood called Nazareth, on the wrong side of the tracks, in a community of messy and imperfect people. And all those experiences shaped his character and his self-understanding, and helped prepare him to be who he was called to be.  It’s the same for all of us. Any good counselor or therapist will tell you, there is no way to make sense of who we are without tracing back to where we came from. To our what our childhood was like: the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Now our childhoods, whatever they were like and as influential as they were, are not to be seen as curses that have spoken over us and get to dictate or handcuff our futures. We are all moral agents who can change, who can take the good and throw out the bad and, by God’s grace, even heal from the ugly. Another way to say it is that the gospel frees us to not see our backstories as prisons but as providences of a good God, who gives us our dads and moms and childhoods to ready us to step into the story he intends to tell through us.   For my dad, it was growing up among all the joys and the dysfunctions of a small home in a little neighborhood a few miles outside of New York City. For more information on the “Yeah, That’s My Dad” podcast, go to kruse.studio/dad.