Jake on James

We took a few days off this week and made a visit to family and friends near my hometown of Ringgold, GA.  On Monday night we were able to reconnect with some college friends at Dave and Katie Delmotte’s house.  I first met Dave in a Greek class somewhere about 1993 or 1994.  He moved to Chattanooga from Michigan.  In order to communicate with one another Dave and I used a translator.  Dave drove a jacked up Toyota truck with huge snow tires on it - in Chattanooga!  Where I grew up, folks carried dead animals in the back of their truck.  Dave was the only guy I ever met who carried hockey equipment in the back of his.  Even when we drove up to his house on Monday afternoon I knew we were in the right place because Dave is the only person in the Bible Belt with hockey nets in his driveway.

Dave is now pastoring a church in rural Tennessee.  I am not sure any of the people in his congregation have understood a single word he has spoken in the last five years, but God is using Dave despite the fact that he still sounds Canadian.  It is Acts 2 all over again.  One thing I have always appreciated about Dave is that he is tenaciously disciplined.  He is a real student of the Word of God and carries through with implementing the Bible into his walk.  

Before we left his home, Dave and Katie’s son Jake, who is about 7, quoted some parts of the Book of James for us.  He didn’t quote some verses out of James, he was quoting James!  Katie has worked with their children, reading James to them repetitiously, to the point that now their oldest child has it memorized.  On the way back to my parent’s house Shannon and I talked about how we, as a society, don’t challenge our children enough, not just biblically, but academically as well.  God created children with DVR.  They naturally remember everything they see and hear.  As parents we should seek to fill their minds with God’s Word, pure thoughts, and great memories.  

So, if you are ever playing ice hockey in Tennessee and someone body checks you and quotes a Bible verse, it was probably one of Dave’s kids.