Happy Father's Day in heaven to my dad, Clyde Ottie Hall who was, and is the most influential man in my life. My father brought words to life. He defined them. Words like endurance, perseverance, and faith.

  He was born to a large family, in a tiny cabin in Hazel Creek, North Carolina in what is now National Park wilderness. His father was Marion Spurgeon Hall, and his mother Nola Laney Hall. He grew up in a tough environment, life was hard. The closest store was many miles away, and it only carried basic staples, like salt, and flour. There were no cars to get you there. Basic needs that we take for granted like shoes and store bought items were hard to come by. He often went without. He told us he was 15 years old when he first laid eyes on a store bought toy. He once played for weeks with a tiny chocolate turtle that he received in his Christmas stocking. He told us that for most Christmas's they got an orange and some hard candies in their stockings, but that one year there was the turtle, covered in foil. He learned to farm and to hunt, not for recreation but for life. When he was a little boy, he once killed a groundhog with his bare hands, and his family had food. He told us of one hard winter when his dad trapped song birds so they could have meat for the table. Life was difficult growing up in the Appalachian wilderness. 

  He fought in the South Pacific in many famous naval battles. He was known as a fierce man, and his shipmates were amazed when I informed them that Clyde "Gabby" Hall had been changed by Jesus Christ and was called to be a pastor. One man told me that my father would have been last on the list of shipmates had he chosen one for that profession.

  There were many things in his background that I never saw personally. How he loved to fight, and was a fierce fighter. He had a huge scar on his arm from a bar fight. He once threw several persons through a bar window. He once stood in a ring with a prize fighter for the required time, earning his shipmates huge winnings. He manned one of the big guns on board his ship, and he told of shouting his rage to the heavens as the Japanese pilots swooped down so low that he could hit them with a potato. He had some problems with the law in his younger days and it is said that he helped build the Blue Ridge Parkway, with a ball and chain around his ankle. He never shared that one with us, but it was told me by one of his sisters, He drank a lot in his younger days. I never saw these things, other than a brief stint of drinking when my mother walked away, and a willingness to defend us kids against anyone and anything that promised harm. His life was a living testimony to the power of Christ that can completely change a person, and take them to heights they never dreamed possible.

  In his past he had been a reprobate, a sailor, a moonshiner, a coal miner and a farmer. He married Geneva Wilson, and they had a son James Steven Hall, and a daughter (me). One day he went to work, to the long hard day at the cotton mill, and on that day she left him. My brother and I met him as he walked home. It is a day that neither I nor my brother will ever forget. For a short time my father lost his anchor, and we wandered adrift. But he soon found his strength and faith again. He raised us two children alone and he poured his heart into us. He worked in a cotton mill (brutal work) full time. He always plowed, planted and maintained a big garden, and he pastored a church full time.

  He demonstrated daily with his life the qualities that have kept me whole all the days of mine. He never gave up, I have seen him weep, seen him tired, seen him in such pain, but he always managed to keep going. His life was anything but easy. He never had much, but he was content with what he had. He depended on God and demonstrated faith and how to walk with God through the hard places.

  I can't recall a meal that he didn't bless with prayer, and I have many memories of sitting around the table as he blessed the food. He loved to cook, but he wasn't very good at it. I guess if you survived your childhood on groundhog and song birds, then stew with bits of meat, purple cabbage and walnuts was pretty darn tasty. My brother and I never thought so.

  He loved my brother and I with a fierce love. He wanted us to have more than he did, he wanted us to be better people, he desired to protect us from the mistakes he made as a young man. I felt safe with him. He was larger than life to me as a little girl. He became even larger when I finally understood the things he labored so hard to teach me.

  I loved to see him laugh, and he took joy in simple things.He took great joy in his garden and the planting and harvesting always excited him. He loved God, and God's word. He preached every Sunday and most Wednesday nights in the churches he pastored, and he often preached on the radio.He was never once ashamed of the gospel. Indeed many of the times I saw him cry were when he was talking about the grace of God.He knew exactly who he had once been, and that God, by grace alone was the One who changed him.

  My final memory of him was at his wake. I stood next to my brother at the head of my father's casket and shook the hands of a mass of people as they filed by to pay their respects. They told me they came to Christ through my father's preaching, how he had baptized them, how he had visited them when they were sick, how he taught them the scriptures, mentored them in their ministries, performed their weddings, their ordinations to ministry, person after person declaring how the life of this one man, a terrible sinner saved by grace, a man born, raised, and died in poverty had touched their lives.

  I miss him, would give anything to be able to sit on the back porch with him. I wish my boys could have known him. He would be so very proud of them both. I wish my sons could sit on the back porch with him, hear his war stories, hear him speak of Jesus, for he demonstrated to the world how you can be a strong, manly man, full of fire, fierce and loyal and yet devoted and unashamed of his Lord.

  I miss you dad. I will ever be thankful that you were my earthly father. You taught me more than any other person apart from our Lord.I do believe our Lord has allowed you to look down on us in that great cloud of witnesses from time to time, for my heart has and doth hear you cheering us on. You shall be the first face, after His, that I search for. Until then Papa, happy Father's Day in heaven.

Dan DeWitt wrote a little book called, Jesus or Nothing, which I am currently reading. It has brought back many memories. The book is very well written, and concerns the subject of atheism, and the choices many make as to either place faith in the existence of God or to discard it and choose instead to believe in nothing.

  I can relate too many of the atheistic views discussed in this book, and Dan asks some very valid questions of those whose faith is in nothing. Why do we often choose to reject God, to discard the concept of God? One phrase leapt out at me as the author discusses a man named Zach, who has chosen to believe in nothing.

“But I do think Zach should honestly consider whether his trajectory away from Christianity is based on the central claims of the gospel or on the all-too-often ridiculous nature of many who profess faith. These are two very different claims.”

 I personally once called myself an atheist, although in retrospect I believe I was just an angry agnostic, a disillusioned believer. I grew up in Christianity. I grew up the daughter of a pastor. I grew up watching my dad constantly suffer, and be so often mistreated by “pillars” of the church. I experienced very judgmental people, and a lot of “thou shall not’s”. These things, and my life experiences, drove me to reject the church and to develop a disdain for most Christians.

 Fortunately for me, I saw true faith in my father; sadly there are folks out there that did not have that experience. For them, most everything they have experienced has been negative. Consider the words of Paul in the book of Colossians 4:6, where he states “Let your speech always be seasoned with grace, as though seasoned with salt so that your will know how you should respond to each person.” And in 1 Peter 3:15 we have  “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,”.  You see, we, the people of the cross, the ones who say that we follow Jesus Christ; we are a type of gospel, to those who do not know Him. We may be the only gospel that some people ever see. If my words, my life, my actions are such a contradiction to the message of the gospel written in scripture, people will reject my message, and may never even make an attempt to understand the true gospel that God has given in the pages of scripture.

 In the book, the author quotes a minister who said these words; “The single greatest cause for atheism in the world today, is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyles. This is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

  I can only tremble at the thought of how many folks, across my 26 years of walking with Christ I may have turned away from the gospel, where my actions, my words, my blindness preached something else to them and therefore helped them along the path of rejecting God. It’s a heavy thing to reflect on.

  Going back to the quote that I shared, from the book, I can say for certain that my path away from faith, away from Christianity was based on the all too often ridiculous nature of those who professed faith. It was the judgments, it was watching a deacon in church stand up and pray, and talk about grace, while knowing that it was his voice on the phone that I answered, his voice telling me that “they would run my dad out of town on a rail for hanging out with #$^% (not even gonna share the word used.) Here was a “pillar” of the church, and he was a racist. Also included in my choice to walk away, was the church lady, whose favorite song was “How Great Thou Art” and who informed me that she did not believe black people had souls.

  Now one thing I must point out, before I lose the thought, is not everyone was like these two I have mentioned. There were a lot of decent persons in my youth, who did display Christ to me, my dad being one among them, but the truth of the matter is, and it’s especially true for young folks, is one negative can outweigh a hundred positives. In the mind and heart of a zealous young person, one negative can send a powerful message. For me, the message was clear, decent, kind, uneducated folks, mean well, but they are ignorant of truth, there is no God, because look at how people who say they believe act, look at the pillars of the church. It’s all a farce, a crutch created, because the world is harsh and dark and we need something to believe in. That was pretty much my view of Christianity.

  Fortunately, the God of the universe, the One who spoke all things into being, is gracious and kind, and continued to pursue me across the wastelands, and brought me to an understanding and knowledge of the gospel, and I realized that it is Him that I must consider, it is Him who sets the mark, and that every last one of us, from Mother Theresa on down, miss that mark. As to why we have so many harsh, mean and judgmental people within the walls of the physical church, I cannot say for certain, only that perhaps they are not yet in the place that God wants them to be, in their walk with Him, for it is a process of growth and understanding, or perhaps they are the ones that He speaks of in Matthew 7: 21-23, but for me, it matters not for I know Him now. My faith is firm, it is unshakable. I may falter in walking it out, I may not speak when I should, or as I should on any given moment, but my belief in Him cannot be shaken. As Job cried out, “though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

  I understand what it is to have no faith in a personal God. I have been there. I have been atheist, I have been agnostic. I pray that all those who struggle, all those who have rejected, will be moved to deeply examine their reasons for so believing.  Do not let life experiences or broken people be the cause of your faith in nothing. Examine the scriptures; examine the historical reasons for believing, examine the scientific reasons for believing in a Creator. Examine and I will trust God to do the rest.

 For “if the resurrection is true, then racist deacons and anti-intellectual Christian teachers don’t negate its authority and power. They do however illustrate that we are unworthy and that we all have a long way to go. At the same time, no faith is more multi-cultural and has motivated more intellectual inquiry than the worldview whose story of creation, fall, and redemption through resurrection wrestles honestly with our failures—and the process of overcoming them.”

 

  It is my prayer that; You will know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death. Philippians 3:10; and I pray that Christ may live in your hearts by faith. I pray that you will be filled with love. I pray that you will be able to understand how wide and how long and how high and how deep His love is. I pray that you will know the love of Christ. His love goes beyond anything we can understand. I pray that you will be filled with God Himself. Ephesians 3:17-19

 

Jesus or Nothing, a great little book and well worth your time in reading it, regardless of whether you are a believer firm in your faith, or a skeptic, or a seeker.

 

 Here is an older post of my personal testimony, for any who may be interested.

http://allisgrace.posthaven.com/confession-is-good-for-the-soul