Matt Chandler - Brother, Servant

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Uh, where do you think you’re turning? James. There we go. Uh, go ahead and turn to James chapter 1. If you don’t have a Bible with you, grab one of the little hardback black ones that are somewhere around you. As always, my hope is that you’ll see that what we’re reading and what we’re saying aren’t really my ideas or anything like that, but we are really digging into and seeing what the Word of God has to say. While you’re turning there, I want to spend just a moment or two praying with you. One of the marks of Christian community is that we do life in such a way that we enter the joys and sorrows of one another. Now, in a church our size, there could be, in any given weekend, hundreds of things to rejoice in and hundreds of things to mourn about, so we’re to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn. Every once in a while, though, there’s an incident or something that kind of transcends really those hundreds of other incidents—not in a more significant way, but just in a way that needs to be considered by the body. So, Bill and Sue Graves and their six children moved here a little over a year ago, quickly led by their 22-year-old son, Blake, who had been a podcaster when they lived in Minnesota. He led the family here, and they dove in, being just a picture of health and vitality. Bill Graves was a man of God who loved his wife and loved his children. He was on a flight back from Minnesota earlier this week—in fact, on Thursday morning. If you read about or saw the plane crash in Argyle, that was one of us. Bill died late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, leaving behind a wife and six children: Dalton, who is five; Noah, who is six; Carter, who is ten; Grace, who is fifteen; Brook, who is sixteen; and Blake, who is twenty-two. Josh and I made our way over to their house on Thursday morning as their children got up. We were able to share the news that their daddy wasn’t coming home and just weep with the family and hang out with them, being a ministry of presence. I wanted to lay that before you so that we might pray for them and feel the weight of this and intercede on their behalf. I know that there are many here who are in your twenties and thirties, and one of the significant parts of your testimony is that the loss of your father at a young age led to some bitterness, resentment, and anger that the Lord ultimately worked in and saved you from. Now, we want to pray that these sweet boys and girls are spared from some of that and that the Lord might bring about a peace that surpasses all understanding. We need to pray for Sue, as she begins to navigate this. I know that having multiple conversations with Blake, who’s 22 and a senior at TCU, just the pressure he feels to step into a role that really isn’t meant for a 22-year-old is immense. Sometimes life puts you in situations where you have to be thrown into the deep end of the pool, and he is feeling all the weight of that. Bill was a ferociously godly man. In fact, even as we were at their house and friends and neighbors began to come over, the testimony of many people who were not Christians or followers of Christ was that Bill was constantly trying to bring them to this church and telling them about Jesus and why they needed Jesus. He would say that if he was wrong, it wouldn’t cost him anything, but if they were wrong, it would be significant. So, come hang out; it’s not what you think. He was just a tremendous guy. To sit in his house with his children crying and hear his lost neighbors talk about how he pestered them to bring them to church speaks volumes about the life of Bill Graves. So, I want us to pray for him, and I want us to pray together. A couple of words in terms of engagement: if you know the Graves family and their children, this is the time to reach out. This is the time to encourage, to text, and to see what you can do. If you don’t know them, this is not that time for you; what you need to do is pray. Our lives are going to shift into what comes next as soon as this service is over, and right now, after talking with them, this is hour by hour until we can get it to day by day, and eventually to week by week. But I don’t know that those waves really ever stop coming, and I just want to pray that the Holy Spirit would do a profound work in that family. Just so you know, I’m not wearing any cape here. I can see and agree with the Apostle Paul when he talked about being perplexed but not crushed.