Rushford's Morning

Good Morning and welcome to our special day with Jerry Rushford! If you are our guest, we are particularly honored that you would come share this day with us! Jerry is the Director of Church Relations at Pepperdine University in Malibu California. He directs the annual lectureship program in which 5,000 plus folks attend, as well as many other activities. In May Jerry takes people around the world on a hymns tour and is the author of “Christians on the Oregon Trail” WE welcome you Jerry to our part of God’s family today!
There is a quote that says in part, “No one lives or dies to himself” We are all part of one another’s lives, but even more we are part of the lives of those who came before us and after us!
Isn’t it amazing that people who lived over one hundred years ago effects our lives today in Pateros and in the Pateros community. That people who came to this part of Washington after a long hard journey knew for sure that they needed God in order to survive? Before electricity, and the control of the river by the Dams, and the water usage to be able to grow fruit trees in mass, the needed God! Sometimes I think that today as people who live in “modern” times’ people think ,or they don’t think, they don’t need God because after all we can control heat or cold, feast or famine to some degree.
I wonder what our fore-fathers and mothers would think of us? Certainly they were not perfect, nor were they without sin. They were not mere innocent human beings. I would wager that they were every bit as human as we are. They fought with their wives and husbands and with each other. I think there were some who cheated other people. My guess is that there were some drunks and other social struggles. YET they were people who knew two truest! Number one, if they were to survive they needed God and His help. Number two, they needed each other as a Christian or church family!
There is something different about being in an extended family because you choose to be and they choose to have you! A church family still allows you to be an individual because God allows you to be an individual. In a church family people choose to surrender at times their individuality to be what God wants the church family to be. A loving, caring group that tries to follow what God wants instead of what they want. When they do that a wonderful blessing occurs, other people start caring about one another as if they were a good physical, born into family. Life whether in the 1890’s or 2007 is hard! Each time period has its trial and struggles, because we are human and humans will always struggle! The good news is, we don’t have to go through those struggles alone! We can humble our hearts and therefore our lives before God and He will bless us! We can humble ourselves before God and He will bless us with other family who is not perfect, but forgiven and because they are forgiven also team up with us to be family! God calls that in the Bible, His Church or Kingdom!
What will our lives and history say to those who come one hundred years after us? Will our history proclaim that we were as smart as our fore fathers in that we needed each other as a spiritual family, and we needed God! Whoever reads this, I would like to try to love you with God’s love! Dave Dowlen