Initial Thoughts - Part II

...spoiler alert...If you have not yet read part one, I would invite you to wait to read this until you have read the first installment!...

I want to take the last moments that I have to tell you about today.

Let me ask you a question, who do you see in front of you? Is it a man that has succeeded? Is it a gifted teacher? Is it a decent speaker? Is it someone that you can, would or do call friend? Is it your brother? Is it a member of your family? Who is it that stands in front of you today?

The man that stands in front of you today is a man by the name of Russell Hall. And it is only in recent years that this person could be considered a man at all. You ask yourself if there is still grace for me…you ask if there is enough mercy to go around…you ask if there is enough grace not just to save but is there enough to sustain…even when I am at my lowest of lows? I am here to tell you emphatically yes!

Let me give you a few of the highlights of a life that is bathed in mercy and grace. I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict…I am a recovering criminal…in some ways I am still recovering from my first marriage…I have recovered from being unemployable…I am daily recovering from my own pride and arrogance.

I was born in November of 1969 into a rough and sordid situation. I spent several of the first years of my life living with my grandparents in Ohio. I was sent to church with some regularity until I was given the decision on whether or not I wanted to go anymore. Since I had already started drinking and smoking pot, I figured I had better things to do on Sunday mornings than going to church. I drank alcoholically and used addictively from the word go. I left home at an early age and wouldn’t return for over a decade. At 17, I showed up to the local bus barn drunk and unable to go to the competition that I was scheduled to go to…that event cost me a four year full ride scholarship to a college of my choice. The years to come would find me in and out of jails and institutions for everything from shoplifting and hot check writing to, public intoxication and traffic violations and more. I have seen the inside of both the new and the old county jails. I have seen the inside of the cells at the U.S. Marshall’s facility and an FBI facility here in Houston. I have been a guest at the majority of the city jails including those at West Side Command, downtown, and Mykawa. I know what it is like to be hospitalized, to go through charcoal treatments and stomach pumpings. I know what it is like to live in unpowered and unwatered shacks in the middle of the wards. I know what it is like to live on the run. In spite of all of these things, I also know what it is like to succeed by the world’s definition. Though I always brought the house of cards back down around me, I always seemed to find ways to get it re-erected. I have survived car wrecks, fights and life, when many times I shouldn’t have. I have violated my moral, social, ethical and spiritual integrity in more ways than I care to recount.

Yet I stand here today and invite you to examine the Gospel Truth…I stand here today and invite you into a life of grace and mercy. What does my story have to do with God and his promise of mercy and grace through Christ? I’ll tell you. On Easter Sunday, 1998 I rededicated my life to Christ. Having never been baptized in my youth, I took a second step and was baptized a few months later. The last decade of my life has been a trip to say the very least. By God’s grace I have been clean and sober since June 5th of 1997. In the fall of 1999, I had completed all of my required obligations and was released from state observation. Two months later, I was finally off of federal paper…my time had been served. I began to get really plugged into my home church and discovered that God had placed some very special gifts in me. I have been blessed to teach and work with thousands of people both in and out of recovery and in and out of church over the last decade. At the ripe old age of 30, feeling a call into ordained ministry, I decided that it was time for me to get that college education I had lost 13 years earlier. God placed in my life a man and an organization that has help pay for my last eight years of college…giving me back the scholarship I had thrown away years before, plus much, much more. After sobering up and losing my good paying job and then being unemployed for several months, God has provided continuous employment for almost a decade. After a failed marriage and numerous other failed relationships, God has blessed me with a Godly and beautiful wife that encompasses everything I ever wanted, yet never knew to ask for. After showing up more than 10 years ago weighing in at 118 pounds when I entered treatment, I am now healthier than I have probably been in a long while and have gained 64 pounds. After frying my septum and much of my brain (so I thought), God has blessed me with the ability to still hold my own in school. After losing everything more times than I can count, my wife and I have a home and a family and everything that we need. After almost 15 years of separation from my step dad, we now have a relationship that we always wanted, but couldn’t seem to develop when I was younger. Instead of a family of origin, God has blessed me with a family of choice. Where once I had marks I now have friends. Where once I had utility, I now have love.

None of this happened with out the grace and mercy of God. By all accounts I should have received death, but God had mercy on me, a sinner. By all accounts I should have been lost, but God relentlessly pursued me to the ends of the earth.

I tell you this because God is still God. He is still in the business of grace and mercy. There is enough grace and mercy not only to save, but also to sustain. The Gospel is the same for each of us today as it was for the adulterous woman long ago. And that is the Gospel Truth!

I share all this with you because this is the way that God has shown me just how scandalous mercy and grace are. I share all this (here and with those I minister to) because I once heard my story in someone else's and once found hope for mercy and grace in my life by witnessing God's mercy and grace at work in others. I share this because my experience with God is the only authority I have to witness to others. I share this because it is imperative for my own authenticity and integrity.

I hope and pray that in sharing this with you, I have somehow opened a door for authentic conversations, searching with integrity, and radical transformation. I look forward to this journey together as we seek mercy and grace in the most unexpected places.

Thanks D-Man for the opportunity and the privilege!

Shalom,

Russell