define: Jared Barden

I thought today would be a great time to share a testimony of God’s faithfulness in our lives over the past 18 months.

As many of you know, we had a miscarriage in March of 2009. It was an event that almost devastated us. I questioned God. I was angry at Him. How could He let this happen? He could have prevented it and He didn’t. Why? Why? Why?

Life isn’t fair, unfortunately. Bad stuff happens for no apparent reason. Although God was working throughout the whole situation, even though I couldn’t see it at the time.

We have met so many people who are struggling with miscarriages and attempts at pregnancy. We’ve grown to love each of those people and we can truly empathize with what they’re going through.

We know the joy / pain of having friends get pregnant, while month after month we couldn’t conceive. It wasn’t fair. We hurt so deeply ourselves but were happy for those friends and family as well. It’s such a hard situation.

And then the past couple months. Something has been different. God has really been moving at our church and in our lives. I practically forced Danielle to come up front for prayer with me a few weeks ago, and this may sound hokey, but I felt God birth something in me. Or maybe more like a rebirth. I regained much of the passion that had been missing in my life. I feel like I’ve become more outspoken (to some people’s chagrin).

I was even able to have a in depth conversation about my beliefs and feelings with my boss and his wife!

That next week I gave a testimony in church of God’s moving in our lives.

Then mom gave a testimony a couple weeks later, I believe.

We met with Pastor James shortly thereafter, and he shared that he felt we needed to open our hearts to other options (adoption, foster care, etc.). We were receptive to what he had to say.

Shortly after that we ended up watching a sweet baby boy for just 1 night and we both agreed that we were OK not having kids for a while. Have a 1-year old is a lot of work!

Not 2 days later Danielle found out she was pregnant! We just had our first official appointment this past Friday (09/10), and we got the official news.

I turned 30 on 09/09. What a birthday present. I had decided a while ago to get a tattoo in remembrance of Enoch, our baby from our first miscarriage. Because Danielle couldn’t get one now, I decided to get one that said God is faithful, which was something I was planning even before we found out.

I saw all this to say, if you’re going through a hard time, turn to Jesus. He’s the only ONE who can get you through and work everything for your good and His glory!

To our friends that are still struggling, please know that we love you. We ache for you. We’re praying for you, and God loves you!

A blog from Randy Bohlender popped up in my Facebook news feed the other day, and I had to check it out, since it had to do with Glenn Beck.

As many of you may know, Glenn is a self-professed Mormon. How closely he follows the teachings of the Mormon church, I have know idea.

If Glenn is a true Mormon, then we very much disagree theologically, however, during his Restoring Honor rally, everything I heard, except for one statement, lined up very closely with what I believe.

The following are my responses to Randy’s original post. I figured I’d capture them here to further foster discussion.

Comment #1:

I saw this post on Facebook today (via Tracie Loux) and I’ve been thinking about it all day. I’ve been trying to formulate my thoughts and an answer from a slightly different perspective.

I watched a good 2.5 hours of the rally. It was incredibly moving. The speakers (plural) went out of their way to mention their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. One pastor, upon receiving the honor for Faith practically preached a Bible-based sermon in his acceptance speech.

As some of you have noted, it’s sad that Christians can’t get this sort of following and draw this sort of crowd, maybe, just maybe it’s because people see a lot of hypocrisy in the church (myself included at times) – just a thought.

So now I’ll get to some of my points.

1.) Glenn Beck calls himself a mormon. Guess what? Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama profess to be Christians. I would argue that their actions belie their professed faith. I’m not saying this is the case (none of us can see inside Glenn’s heart) but maybe he’s not “all that Mormon” for lack of a better term. Everything I heard Saturday, had I not known Glenn was a mormon, would have sounded just like something I’d expect to hear in my church on Sunday (except for the “go home to your Mosques, etc.” part.

Some of you may know David Barton, of wallbuilders.com. The following is a quote from David,

“For Christians concerned about Glenn’s faith, I would ask the following questions: What fruit do you see produced by Glenn,” David Barton, an influential evangelical activist who is joining Beck’s rally, wrote on his Facebook page recently. “Good or bad? If you judged Glenn only by the fruits he has produced, would you still hold concerns over his faith?”

“Christians concerned about Glenn’s faith should judge the tree by its fruits, not its labels,” Barton, a former Republican National Committee consultant, continued. “After all, Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton openly call themselves Christians… Although these individuals have the right labels, they have the wrong fruits.”

2.) Is God not big enough to speak through someone other than a Christian?

Are we following a messenger, or a message? Glenn was calling people to return to God, people were lifting up the name of Jesus Christ. It’s up to us to figure out the only true way to God. Yes, Glenn did not explicitly preach Christ as the only way, but this was a rally, not a church service.

Remember how God spoke through Balaam’s donkey? I’d like to think that if God can use a donkey to speak to His people, just maybe he can use a Mormon (or someone by any other faith label for that matter) to call His children back to Him.

God said in the last days He would pour out His Spirit on all flesh. Unless I’m misinterpreting, that means everyone. Not just the born again. Again, perhaps God could use someone with the label “Christian” to lead His people back to Him. Look how He used Pharoah and the desert to waken up the Israelites.

While I do agree that we need to be discerning, I think we shouldn’t be so quick to write people off, and that we should look at the message as a whole.

Comment #2:

Randy, thanks for your thoughtful reply.

I guess what I don’t get is there is only one Jesus, what you believe about Him doesn’t change the fact of who He is. I can believe 2+2 = 5 until I’m blue in the face, but that doesn’t make it so.

So if Glenn doesn’t have the whole picture of Jesus it doesn’t change the fact of who He is.

Again I took this more as a rallying call for the, I’ll call them “frozen chosen”. Those who already know God but are sitting on their butts not doing anything while our country literally travels on the path straight to Hell.

For these people, the call to action, the call to return to Godly values and morals, is, in my opinion, not effected by whether or not Glenn has the total picture of Jesus Christ.

For instance, if I were backslidden in my faith, and I heard Glenn’s message, it would be a call back to my first love, a call back to the truth. Whether or not Glenn totally understands that truth would be irrelevant because I would have already known that truth for myself.

Now, if he’s reaching out to people that know nothing about Jesus (which is not what I believe his target audience is), then that’s different.

Thanks for the discussion. I love a good back and forth.

Comment #3:

I think the point that many of the commenters are missing is that Glenn’s views on Jesus (which none of us really know, unless someone hear actually knows Glenn) don’t change who Jesus is.

For example, I could think Randy is a 70 year old man with no children that lives in Las Vegas. That doesn’t change the reality of who Randy is. I could believe the moon is made out of cheese – that doesn’t mean it is.

I completely understand that we need to follow Jesus as He is presented in the Bible. I get that, really I do.

But what I’m trying to say is that if someone is offering a return to God and to Jesus Christ who was mentioned as Lord and Savior by many people, to some extent, in my opinion, it doesn’t matter if they lack the complete understanding about Jesus.

And here’s why. Glenn isn’t saying, “follow the Mormon mis-guided idea of Jesus.” If he was, I’d be the first to say, “hey, that’s not right!”

We, the listeners are left to discern and follow the truth. Would it be better if Glenn got up and preached Scripture and led people to the “same” Jesus we believe in? Of course it was. Except that that wasn’t the point of the day.

I’ll offer this. The disciples (founders of the church) sometimes didn’t have a clue who Jesus was, and yet we don’t knock their ministry. They were totally clueless, but did that negate the good that they helped Jesus accomplish during his life on Earth? I hardly think so.

Maybe we can accept the message, despite the flaws in the messenger? After all, we’re all sinners saved by grace.

Comment #4:

Yes Glenn is wrong on that point.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I would say we have more in common with him than not.

Perhaps the collective church should get off their duffs and envigorate people the way Glenn is able to. Until then, I say good for him for making an attempt.

A lot of things have been happening in my life recently, some of which I can’t talk too much about, other than to say amazing things are happening, and God is moving.

Many of you know that Danielle and I went through a miscarriage in early 2009 – an event that shattered our worlds, something we are still recovering from. Through it all, God has been faithful, and our friends and family have been amazing, and we owe you all such a big thank you for just going through this with us.

But I digress…things are happening. I feel a stirring. I guess that’s the best way to put it. I’m not really sure how to describe it other than a stirring and a reigniting of the passion in my life as it relates to politics and current event-type issues.

Some of this passion has led to quite heated debates on Facebook, but I think that’s a good thing. We shouldn’t just blindly believe whatever it is we believe. We should be able to back it up and to articulate why it is we believe one thing or another. I enjoy a good debate.

Then I re-read Ezekiel 33 where Ezekiel is told to warn the people of the coming danger. A couple of verses in particular really jumped out at me.

“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. ⁸ When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for ^[a] his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. ⁹ But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.

And…

Yet your countrymen say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But it is their way that is not just. ¹⁸ If a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, he will die for it.¹⁹ And if a wicked man turns away from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he will live by doing so. ²⁰ Yet, O house of Israel, you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ But I will judge each of you according to his own ways.

Some people that I love dearly have (I believe) accused me of making statements that “judge people.” I see these statements as stating fact, stating the truth in love. God has warned us that we need to tell people when danger is coming. If we don’t, their blood is on our hands.

If we don’t, their blood is on our hands. Let that sink in for however long it needs to.

So, I’m giving fair warning. I’m going to be sharing things, either on my blog, Facebook or both, that you might not agree with. That’s fine. I’m entitled to my opinion and to share what I believe the truth is. Just like you are entitled to your right to agree or disagree with what I say.

This doesn’t make me a racist, judgmental, a homophobe, an Islamaphobe or any other “phobe” you can come up.

I will be exercising my right to free speech, and I encourage you to do the same.