Moussa's Journal

I wasn't born a pastor.  As a kid, church was weekly punishment.  My parents would dress us boys in matching suits and parade the family up the steps of Saint Somebody church.  After an hour of "ssshhhh" and "hold still" and the occassional ear pinch we would parade back down the stairs and be released for a week.  I assume they talked about the Lord, I just don't remember it.

You can only drag an anchor so long before it just lets loose.  We stopped going to church when I was 10.  Without a grip on anything in particular, our family drifted...a long ways!  I did attend Young Life in High School because I liked a girl who went.  The singing wasn't to bad, but you could keep the rest. Know what I mean?

 My years as a Marine, mostly overseas as an embassy guard weren't condusive to any type of spiritual growth.  That time was more about seeing how much partying you could actually survive.  Crabbing and Longlining out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska was pretty much the same thing.  Heavy on self-sufficiency and self-destruction, light on anything meaningful.

It wasn't until years later, married with a three year old son, that the a desire for "meaningful" began to grow.  I was a charter boat captain and fished for a living.  I had an artery collapse in an arm and ended up in the hospital for a month.  The doctors said, "We don't know what is going on, this is going to kill you."  Now, don't laugh.  Until that moment, I actually believed I was immortal.  I said don't laugh.  A quick glance at my lifestyle would confirm that I didn't believe I could die.  I had not met anything that I couldn't outwit, out smart, out last.  Ever.  And then, "this could kill you." Not someone else...me.

At that moment I began to remember some of that Young Life teaching I wasn't really listening to.  I remembered hearing that Jesus had defeated death.  We call it Easter.  He rose from the dead and was seen by more than 515 people.  Wished I had payed more attention.

No, I wasn't born a pastor.  But shortly after my confrontation with the reality of my mortality, after an intense study of the Bible, I was born again.  Me, a thirty year old, uneducated fisherman with a very speckled past.  I made the decision to accept the Lord as my savior, to place my faith in Him and to simply stop telling Him, "no."  You know what it was?  It was my own personal Easter.

Do you know what He did with me?  He made it possible for me teach at a private Jr. High School.  He trusted me with the starting Men's ministries in different churches.  He humbled me by allowing me to proclaim His word in church.  Most of amazing of all, He led a church in Seabrook, TX to call my family and I to pastor.  We have been here nine years! Unbelievable!

I know this is a Hepatitis site.  I am on TX and I do have side effects.  But that is not what is important to me right now.  Right now I am just praising God for Easter.  I am praising the Lord that death has been defeated and that I need not fear.  The tomb was empty, death could not hold Him, and it can't hold me.  I wasn't born a pastor but I will live as one!

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

God bless and Happy Easter!

Rob