How Will I Answer God?
First and foremost this is not about my son or about me. It is about how God changed two men. The son through bad choices and ending up in prison, the changes in him and then the father learning from God through his son’s death.
My son Tim
On August 20, 2010 I lost my son. Through his death God has changed me. God first changed my son. He took him from only thinking of himself– to helping others, including the homeless, street gang members, and prison inmates. Tim is my son and he died helping others. He was taking some things to a homeless camp, when walking across a set of railroad tracks, he was struck by a train and killed.
In 2009 Tim was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. He did not let this stop him from doing what God wanted him to do–to love and help others. He was not a saint and none of us are.
Through Tim’s death God changed me. I did not go that Saturday night when I got a call saying he was missing, to look for my son, even though everything in me said to go. God was speaking to my inner feelings in my soul and I was to stubborn to hear.
God dropped the hammer on me a few months after my son’s funeral services. He put a gut wrenching question on my mind and would not let up until I looked inside of my self and found the truth. Why did I not go that Saturday night to look for Tim? I was too much into myself. I was mad, I did not want to run in to save the day when my son was capable of taking care of himself. I let Tim down, and most of all I let God down. Self had prevailed again. WRONG CHOICE AGAIN. Remember Peter would not have become the great spokesman for God had he not looked inside himself to find his faults of the denial of Jesus to save himself( again self). He found his faults, asked for forgiveness and knew he could move on. He knew God had forgiven him and he could flush the faults away. He had inner power through God.
This is where FOR EACH ACTION I TAKE-HOW WILL I ANSWER GOD came from. The question that God put to me was HOW WILL I ANSWER GOD for leaving one of his children on those tracks for an extra 12 to 14 hours. I could not have changed the outcome of Tim’s death, but I did nothing to go find him.
We need to think For Each Action I Take – How Will I Answer God, because if you believe in God then remember Matthew 10:28 “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the one (GOD) who can destroy both the soul and the the body in hell.”
We all have to look inside to clean the junk out. We can ask God for forgiveness and He will give it. God will start you over, but the hardest thing you will ever do is clear the crap out and forgive yourself. Do not let someone blow smoke up your backside and tell you that if you ask for forgiveness all is well. You’ve got to carry the burden with God’s help, and do your part. It is called being born again. It means to start fresh. If you are still carrying the junk around inside you, how the heck you going to start fresh (born again)? YOU CANNOT!!
Now remember the 2nd greatest command– love thy neighbor as you love yourself. Would someone like to tell me how you going to love someone else if you hate yourself? Love and hate can not live on the same plain.
Now there are a whole bunch of people that will help you in supportive ways, but you and only you have to want that change. Don’t wait for the government, or the church, or anyone else, ask God for the forgiveness and get started clearing out the crap. You will find a peace that you never knew before. You will find it changes everything.
If you are true to yourself and find the truth within yourself, you will find what my son, and through his death I have found, the loving presence God. Once you have that, as my son said, you will not want to let it go.
Remember we can all hold hands, lock arms and sing Kum Ba Yah. We can all come together and raise money to help ones less fortunate. We can say and act holy and feel good about ourselves, but until we clean the junk from within, you have nothing. You need to know God from within and that is what God is looking for. He is looking for the soul because that is what is moving on after your time is done here on earth.
Change the inside of yourself and you change the world. If each one of us changes ourselves from the inside out we change everything. Whatever you get or accumulate here does not mean anything. Show me a casket or a hearse with a luggage rack on it. You are going to go out from this earth the same way you came in–with nothing. You will have only the good and bad deeds you have done in this life to take with you. So flush out the bad, get right with God, and leave anew the same as you arrived.
Download Free 29 page booklet “How Will I Answer God“.