Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant

Today, a good man, a godly man died.  Pastor Eric Van Rhee of the Adventure Four Square Church in Draper, UT.  There will be many people speaking or wanting to speak at his funeral and so I will speak my tribute here.  Eric was my Pastor, he was my brother in Christ, but most of all he was my friend and I loved him dearly.  He accomplished many things for God and in every way put God, his family, and his church family first.  There are 5 things that Eric did for me that I need to say here.

1. He restored my faith in the church.

2. He showed me that even as a Christian who screwed up royally, and I did, I can be used by God.

3. He taught me how to love the Word of God and how to study it.

4. He restored my faith in myself and helped me to see who I was in the church.

5. He stood next to me and watched with me as my daughter breathed her last breath.

He did so many other things for God and for our church and for the 4-square church in America, but these are the things he did for me.

Dear Eric, brother, friend, give my love to my Rachael, and try not to join her in laughing too hard at me.  If anyone deserves the welcome from our Lord as you enter into His presence for eternity, it is you.  Well done, good and faithful servant.  Well done preacher.  Well done teacher.  Well done husband to Jodi and father to her children and others as well,  Well done my friend.  I will see you soon.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Where Is The Love?

Matt 7:3“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? Recently, I have read some FB posts about the problems of the modern church.  My friend Ben Jensen wrote an excellent rebuttal to one of them and I will refrain from re-iterating it here.  Please take the time and read his statement in his blog Dear Church: People Will Always Leave You at  http://lifeunstained.blogspot.com/     Read it. It is worth your time. It is easy to go about ranting on what is wrong with the church.  We, who are the church, are fallen, imperfect, etc.  So there is a lot of material available.  Possibly a 1,000+ volume encyclopedia on me alone and I am just 1 of millions. I understand admonishments and exhortations are needed from time-to-time.  And yes discipline needs to be exercised as well.  But we need to be so careful that we do not overstep our authority and find ourselves in dir...
Read more

This Man Knows His History...

Image
Ever come face-to-face with your own history? Today I did.  I had the blessing and humbling honor to meet the man who was responsible for my life and the lives of my family.  Today I met Matthew Duffy, formally, Sgt. Matt Duffy. Sgt Duffy served in the U.S. Army during WWII. Why is he responsible for my family's lives?  Come with me on this incredible tale and find out.  My father, Gottfried Kligmann and his brother Samuel Kligmann were imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp after their half brother turned them in.  They were scheduled to be executed when the US Army arrived an hour ahead of schedule.  Sgt Duffy was one of the soldiers who arrived at that time. Here is a snippet of his story which he related to me today. His battalion, the 2nd Ranger battalion, was attached to the 101st,, airborn battalion but he was with the ground troops.  They were to make a coordinated ground/paratrooper strike on a target. The airborn soldiers were behind schedule and the ground troops wer...
Read more

Do you Hope with expectation?

 I have been re-reading the book of Romans in the Holy Bible. There is a word that occurs 14 times that God has brought to my attention.  The word is "hope."  When God, through His Holy Spirit brings a word to my attention, I research it.  Like all Bible scholars, and wannabes (me), I went to the Greek. The word used for hope, in the Greek, is "elpida, elpidi," et.al.  This word is also translated as expected or expectation. So I contemplated (picture me in an Alistair Cooke setting, LOL) the application of the word hope.  Hope can be anything from hoping for an A on a test, a Lamborghini, a kiss, a healing, a new job, etc. But hope, as the apostle Paul meant in his epistles, was that of expectation.  Not just the hope of a maybe, but the expectation of a promise to be fulfilled.  A hope that requires faith. Faith that says not just something to which we look forward, but a trust and belief that allows you to EXPECT that it will be fulfilled....
Read more