Author: jcudd14

I woke up on Saturday, November 27, without any living grandparents for the first time in my life. I’m 1 week short of 41 and I have never not had at least 1 grandparent alive. You may say that everyone loses their grandparents at some point. You are correct, this is true. It will eventually happen to all of us. But when you have gotten to enjoy them for 40 plus years, it hits home when they are gone. I was fortunate enough to have all of mine be a part of my life for at least 36 years. My first grandparent passed away when I was 36 years old. I knew that at some point, as they aged, that when it started happening, all 4 of them would pass away in a relatively short amount of time. It was inevitable.

I even knew all of my great-grandparents for several years of my life. I was in my 20’s when I lost my last great-grandparent. Grandparents are special. They get away with things because they are the grandparents, even though the parents don’t always agree. They get away with giving the child that extra cookie, or the 3rd pop of the day. Then they get to send them home jacked up on sugar. That’s just the way it goes. It’s the grandparent life.

My own kids had the privilege of knowing my grandparents, and knowing them well. Since all of my grandparents lived into their 80’s and 90’s, all 3 of my kids got to spend quality time with them. Now my kids have the privilege of having wonderful grandparents themselves. My wife lost her grandparents when she was young. She didn’t know hers very well. She didn’t get to spend the time with hers that I did with mine. She considered mine hers, and they felt the same about her. They all took care of her like one of their own. For that, I am forever thankful.

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My last living grandparent, Papa, passed away Saturday morning. He was 96 and living by himself in Edmond. I’d say that is a life well lived if you can do that at 96 years young. As I look back at what my grandparents meant to me, I am reminded of so many things. I have so many memories that I will cherish forever. I could tell stories for a long time about memories of all of them over the last 40 years. I have so many memories of going to their houses when I was a kid and staying the weekend or staying at their house during the holidays. My cousins and I on both sides had so many good times at their houses growing up. I hope that someday, some distant day, I can be half the grandparent to my grandchildren that mine were to me and my family.

As I think about their lives, I know where they are now. They were all four Christians. They are all four together now. As of Saturday morning, they are all united and with their Heavenly Father. It’s amazing the peace that can bring loved ones that are still on this Earth.

So here is my mission. Here is what I think about literally every day. I want to see them again. I know that as a Christian, as long as I keep my faith in God, I will see them again. I will be re-united with them one day. That’s easy to say, but it has to be a daily focus. There are some things that I think about every morning that motivate me to be on a mission to not let satan win the day.

The first thing I want to do is make all of them proud. I want them to look down on my family and I and smile because we are carrying on the Christian legacy they set for our family. They raised a son and a daughter that later became my parents, and those two passed on the love of Christ to me and I am forever thankful for that. Because of God’s promise to us and the faith that was passed down, I know we can all be together again. But, in the meantime, I want them to be proud of the life we live while we are on this Earth.

The second thing is that I want to make sure that my kids get to see them again too. As parents, what greater responsibility do we have than making sure that our children see Christ lived out in our homes. We have a responsibility to our children to make sure their souls are taken care of. That comes from the example we set for our children. It goes beyond talking to them about it. They need to see it lived out in our lives. They need to see faith in action. They need to see a servant’s heart every day at home. I am so thankful that my grandparents taught my family, through their actions, how to love God, love other people, and love each other as husband and wife.

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We are all driven by different things. We all have things in our life that motivate us. I have other things that motivate me to be a Christian too, but these things are right up there at the top of that list. I know this isn’t the type of blog that I normally write. Those that know me know that I am not a real emotional guy, especially not outwardly. But, life is full of first, and this weekend was the first time I woke up without grandparents. This weekend was the first time that I can’t call one of them or take my kids by to see them. I knew this day would come. I knew it would happen one day. But here it is. It is reality now. I know that my wife and my mom, at least, are crying as they read this. That is ok. They don’t get this side of me very often, but today, here it is.

We must always remember where we come from. Always remember what people have done for us and be thankful for that. We all have memories of growing up and memories of our hometown. That is very important. That part of our life is the where. But we also need to always remember WHO we come from. Remember who we represent. We represent our family in everything we do. We represent the people that raised us and the people that raised them. My prayer for all of us is that we make those people proud. I hope that I make the ones that have gone before me proud as they look down on my life from those streets of gold. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.” Does that mean we are perfect? Absolutely not. We all have peaks and valleys. It takes some of us longer than others to get on the right path (I’m speaking from personal experience here). But, if the seed is planted, it will grow. If the foundation is laid, it will always be there to hold us up! I’m so thankful that foundation was laid for me by some wonderful people.

I know not everyone has been given that foundation. Not everyone grows up in a Christian environment. But, here is the great news. It is never too late. No one is beyond God’s love and mercy. There is a way to receive that love and mercy and if you are reading this and that foundation wasn’t laid as you grew up, there are plenty of people out there that would love to share that story with you just like it was shared with us once upon a time. If this is you, please reach out. Find someone to share that story with you. I promise you don’t have to look very far. Someone, somewhere is ready and willing to share.

Not only do we represent our families every day, but most importantly, theres another WHO that is very important. As Christians we represent God in everything we do. Just like with our family, we will either give others a good or a bad image of God based on how we conduct ourselves. As I have said in here before, we will have a positive impact or a negative impact on everyone we come in contact with each day. My hope is that the positive outnumber the negative by many.

These things are the fire that burns inside me. These things discussed above are what motivate me every day. I want all of my family to be united again one day. In the meantime, I want to make them proud. I want to make sure my kids have Christ as the foundation for their life. Above all, I want to be a disciple of Christ. The wonderful thing is, if I am a disciple of His first and foremost, all of these other things fall into place just perfectly. Crazy how that works, huh? My prayer for everyone that reads this, everyone I come in contact with, and everyone I love, is that we take care of business here on Earth. We do the work of the Lord. We lead our family and others to Christ. Why not take as many people with us as we can? If we do this, one day we will all be united again. That is the great thing about God’s promise. We just have to be mindful everyday of WHO we come from!

Have a great holiday season and God bless!

#LoveGodLovePeople

“A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection”. That is one dictionary’s definition of the word friend. The wording may differ, depending on where you look the it up, but the concept does not change. Bond. Mutual affection. Another one says, “a person who has a strong liking for and trust in another person”. The idea behind any of the definitions is all the same.

We all have our own idea or definition of what a friend is. Friends help us in bad times. They won’t leave us when times get tough. They won’t give up on us when we are stubborn or hard to get along with. They lift us up when times are rough. Friends pray for each other during these hard times. I remember when our oldest son was sick. We saw what true friendship was all about. We were so fortunate to have the people we had in our lives at that time. That’s what friends are for. I promise that every single one of us on this planet at some point has had someone pray for us. Every. Single. One. As Christians, we should pay those gestures of friendship forward as it says to in Galatians 6:2, especially prayer.

Friends also celebrate with us in the good times. Friends are truly happy for us and rejoice with us when good things happen in our life. They aren’t jealous of us. They don’t wish the blessings were theirs and not ours. They are truly happy for us. Once again, we should pay that forward too.

Family is important. Family can be all of this for us, and should be. But this post is not about family, not blood family anyway. That is another post for another day. Never underestimate the importance and worth of a good friend. There is something about a friend, a true friend, that is irreplaceable. Maybe it is because they are not directly involved in our situations like family might be. Maybe it is that they offer a fresh perspective on things. I don’t know. But I do know that they are invaluable to our personal well-being.

Right now everyone reading this is probably thinking of someone, or multiple people in our lives that fit these categories described above. We all have these friends in our lives. Hopefully we are those friends for someone else in their life as well.

My grandpa loved to sing at church, and sing loud. He sang every song every Sunday. On key or off key, he went hard. That is one of my favorite parts of the service too. I may not have the best voice, but I’m gonna belt it out each week (sorry to those that sit around me if you are reading this). Grandpa had a favorite song. As I have thought about him a lot the last few weeks, this song kept coming into my head. It kept coming back to me over and over. I caught myself this week singing this song in the truck or when I was by myself. Sometimes God has a way of nudging us to communicate these things to others. Maybe this is for someone in particular this week. I don’t know who needs to hear this. Sometimes you just feel led to do something and you are not sure why. But it is our job as Christians to follow that nudge. Grandpa’s favorite song was, “What A Friend We Have In Jesus”. The lyrics are:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer!
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer!

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Can we find a friend so faithful,
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy-laden,
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge—
Take it to the Lord in prayer.
Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In His arms He’ll take and shield thee,
Thou wilt find a solace there.

Sources:

Faith Publishing House, Evening Light Songs, 1949, edited 1987 (179)

The Rodeheaver Hall-Mack Company, Quartets for Men, 1926 (140)

The Gospel Trumpet Company, Select Hymns, 1911 (323)

How about that for comfort? All the things I described at the beginning of this post about what a friend is and does are so true of Jesus. He rejoices with us in the good times and He picks us up when we need Him to. He tells us to bring Him our troubles and He will take care of us. We should strive to be that for others as well.

I hear people say all the time, “Well, all I can do is pray” like they feel like they aren’t doing much. Maybe that is the only thing we can do for someone else at that time, but that is also the best thing we can do. The absolute best. There is nothing more powerful we can do for someone than pray. We can take them food. We can drive them somewhere when they are unable to drive themselves. We can watch their kids for them. The list of great things we could do for them could go on and on. But, the absolute most important thing we can do for anyone is pray for them! It’s powerful, folks!

We all need prayers. I do. You do. Everyone does. But we have a few families in our lives and our community right now that have recently gotten tough news. They are going through difficult battles right now. They have been on my mind and heart lately. They are facing those battles head on with courage and they are not backing down. I hope they will find peace and comfort in knowing the friend that they have in Jesus. I also hope that we as their Christian friends will read the words in that song again and PRAY it forward!!!

Have a great week and God Bless!

#LoveGodLovePeople

So last week I chronicled our adventurous Saturday morning at the campsite and told you I would have the rest of the story this week. Little did I know this Saturday would provide more material for this story. So here goes!

Anyone who knows me very well knows that I am not a very patient person. That could possibly be an understatement. I just was not blessed with patience from birth. I don’t know why, it’s just the way I have always been. For years I prayed for God to give me patience. I wanted to be the patient man that my dad is. I grew up with patience. He is one of the most patient human beings on the planet. When I met Kristin’s family I realized that her dad is the same way. So I have these two great examples of patience in my life, but that was just not the way I was wired.

I mentioned that for years I prayed for patience. I wanted God to wave His magic wand and instantly alter my personality and make me a patient person. I wanted Him to say poof, there is your patience. But the reality is that He didn’t do that. I would get frustrated and more impatient over time because I couldn’t get to where I wanted to be in this area of my life. But remember, His plan is always better.

I was impatient about being impatient. Just as a typical impatient person, I wanted it to change immediately and when it didn’t, it just got worse. Over time though, as I finally started to mature as a person and a Christian, I realized that God had spent years trying to instill patience in me. I just didn’t realize it yet. It’s a good thing God is patient!

Sometimes we don’t think God answers our prayers because we don’t see the answer dropped directly in front of us. But sometimes we just don’t look at the situation the right way. God puts us in situations to answer our prayers and make us better people, we just have to be looking for the opportunity.

Here are just two of the ways God spent years trying to help me attain patience. Roughly 20 years ago I met Kristin. We began dating in 2002 and got married in 2004. We had many differences just like all couples do. Some differences were small and some were not. Some caused arguments and some did not. We had one thing in common that will always stand the test of time though, and that is God.

Back to the patience issue. One of my biggest pet peeves is being late. I can’t stand to be late for so many reasons I won’t even go into. But the fact is I hate being late. I spoke of differences in Kristin and myself. This was one of those. It had never bothered her to be late. It just wasn’t a big deal to her. My philosophy was that if you weren’t at least 10 minutes early somewhere, you were late. She went with more of the notion that if you were only 10 minutes late, that’s not a bad day. (She proofreads these before I publish them, so yes she’s seen it and ok’d this part)

So you can see where this could lead, right. Arguments. We didn’t fight about a whole lot of things, but being on time was one of them. Sundays were the worst. We were late for church every week. My patience wore thin every week as I could see time ticking away and knew the result would be that we would be late. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I would make some comment that would send the morning into a tailspin and not end well. I tell all this in past tense to say that it has gotten better. Being late is a thing of the past most of the time for my wonderful bride. She has gotten so much better over the years. I brag on her all the time to those that know her well.

Here’s the point of that part of the story. God started giving me the opportunity to grow in patience long before I realized it. I had a chance every week to put into practice one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit by being patient with my wife as I could tell that we were not going to be on time to wherever we were going. I started to realize that being a little late from time to time wasn’t that big of an issue. It wasn’t worth causing us to fight or be mad all the way to church, or whatever event we were going to.

As time went on, I got better. I learned to not make the comments I once made (at least not every time). I learned that it was not good for our kids to see me getting frustrated with her or her with me. I figured out it was not good on our marriage for us to have these feelings every time we went somewhere. Guess what, her punctuality got better too. We are rarely late anywhere anymore. Funny how that works out, huh? When we embrace God working in our life, He gives us what we need.

The other thing that God did to give me a chance to improve in the patience department is that He gave me 3 wonderful kids. Those three kids can, well, test my patience quicker than about anything on Earth. I love them with all of my heart, but also can get riled up with them quickly as well. Anyone that has had kids will understand how this switch can be flipped quickly. Those that haven’t had kids but will, you will understand soon enough. As time has gone on, my patience with them has gotten better too. This process is a story for a whole other post. They would probably tell you I’m still not very patient, but they were too young to remember the early days.

So I hit on this topic of patience a little bit last week and knew this was the topic for this week. Then Saturday (yesterday) we had a flat tire on I40. We were actually in a little bit of a time crunch, so that added to the fun. Kristin and the kids were not sure what was going to come of that situation, but it was actually handled with patience as well. We had the tire changed in probably 15 minutes or so. I would recommend if you have a flat that you consult YouTube with your vehicle model and watch the video on how to find everything you need to change the tire on your car. The concept of changing a tire has not ever changed, but the placement of all the things you need to get the job done is different on every vehicle. YouTube saved us quite a bit of time because the tools are not all together and the owners manual is not much help. But anyway, there will be more of this event documented on my mid-week message on Facebook on Wednesday. Tune in to that to see more video details on that incident, live and in the moment.

God gives us things that will help us achieve the desires we have if we allow him to work in our life. By doing it this way, we learn about the process as we go and can help others understand and do the same as we did. We just have to be open minded and be looking for God’s answers and not expecting God to just hand it to us. We usually learn better if we have to work at it ourselves.

We must be intentional in everything we do. We must look for God’s answers to our prayers and embrace the opportunities to grow. I went years not realizing that an often tardy wife and 3 ornery kids were exactly what I needed! Thank you God for answered prayers!