In This WorldDavid Tatea grief observed, 2 samuel 12, david, grief and worship, overcoming grief, god has made his decisionComment

Memorial Service for David L Tate, Sr.

In This WorldDavid Tatea grief observed, 2 samuel 12, david, grief and worship, overcoming grief, god has made his decisionComment
Memorial Service for David L Tate, Sr.

On Friday, May 8, 2020, my dad and I were out on a bike ride. We were having a great time, enjoying the day and enjoying one another’s company, but the day ended in mourning: After a freak accident, my father died in my arms around 4:00pm. He died quickly, and thanks be to God I don’t think he ever even had the opportunity to realize what happened.

That being said, the past week has been a whirlwind. My father had always said that when he died, he wanted me to officiate his funeral; I had always assumed that I would have 20 more years to prepare, but as the Bible reminds us, we never know what tomorrow brings. On Thursday at 3:00pm, my best friend and I were enjoying a bike ride; an hour later, I held him in my arms, weeping over him, crying over him, singing over him; less than twenty-four hours later, I sat in a funeral home planning his funeral. Less than a week later, I stood before a crowd of hundreds of faithful friends and family who showed to pay respect to my father and celebrate his life.

Yet are we to grieve as those without hope? By no means. Our God is a gracious God. NOW LET’S BE HONEST…One of the most gracious things God ever did was give me a father as amazing as my own. If He chose to take my father away, I trust that ti was the same gracious love that motivated Him in His decision. Our God is a God worth trusting, and we have a living hope in Jesus Christ. I pray that you will take the time to watch the memorial service we held for my father:

In This WorldDavid Tatepassages israel, texas a&m, passages, israel, aggies, u of h, passages 2018, texas techComment

1 Passageonians

From David, a follower of the Way and a disciple of the one true King,

To those brothers and sisters in Christ for whom, by the grace of God, I was permitted to shepherd during our time in the Holy Land:

Grace, peace, and understanding unto you from God our Father, Christ His Son, and the Spirit that grants discernment, alive in us right here and right now.

I want to begin by first thanking the Lord for my every moment shared with you, from the first encounters as strangers to the reluctant farewells by which we departed only a short time later. It is by His grace alone that we were brought together, and if I have come to know the character of the Lord at all, it would be left understood that He is not one who wastes any of the time He has allotted. For this reason, I believe that our short time together was a period instituted by God, and through that time I hope we found ourselves capable of bringing Him glory upon glory, living from faith to faith, from hope to hope, from joy to joy. Yes, He gave us this time that our spirits might be enriched and uplifted and our faiths strengthened all the more, but even more so, He gave us this time that we might return the glory back unto Him who provided us with our every breath. To Him be the praise for granting us such an opportunity, and even if such an opportunity had been lost, let us praise Him still more!

In This WorldDavid Tatepassages israel, texas a&m, passages, israel, aggies, u of h, passages 2018, texas techComment
1 Passageonians
To Infinity and Beyond, In This WorldDavid Tategender roles, christianity, bible study, imago dei, masculine god, christ, bible, man and woman, complimentarianismComment

Resurrecting God the Father

It is essential to my argument that I begin today’s writing with a disclaimer:

** Before even beginning to address specific gender roles as they are outlined in the Bible – especially as it pertains to why God is consistently, throughout the biblical narrative, referred to with male pronouns – we must establish that we are discussing things from a strictly Christian perspective. It is easy to object to the biblical ideas of masculinity and femininity when considering the sinfulness of man and the oppression that submission might so easily espouse within power-hungry and demeaning individuals, but we must accept, going into the argument, that we are speaking from the ideal as established by God in His creation of man. In this, we must discuss matters such as submission, sacrifice, headship, and leadership not according to the negative connotations established by a prideful and lustful society, but rather according to the biblical standard to which we all must strive. When you give a man a gun, he may use it to either protect or to slay – we may guide him towards the former, but the option by which he uses it is up to him. All rules and roles in any governance or society stand the possibility of being abused; the Bible seeks to establish gender roles in a manner that is holy and set apart, glorifying to God for the betterment of mankind. A rational and concise conversation regarding such matters is impossible if we do not first establish a stable worldview which we can then extrapolate. Thus, for the purposes of this article, it is my request that we set aside secular ideologies and rather read the “He” of God the Father according to the Biblical context, that we might better understand Christian ideals and even more greatly come to grasp the beauty of God’s love towards us. **

I will begin my argument by stating this: God is spirit. Of course, He stepped into the flesh via the person of Jesus Christ and thus lived on the earth for approximately thirty-three and a half years as a Middle Eastern man, but from eternity past to eternity future God is, according to His divine nature, spirit. Thus, He is neither male nor female; however, the way in which God manifests Himself is masculine in nature, in that he designed man as an image meant to reflect Him. Therefore my thesis is that our use of the pronouns “He,” “Him,” “His,” etc. are essential in comprehending our own selves in relationship to God.

To Infinity and Beyond, In This WorldDavid Tategender roles, christianity, bible study, imago dei, masculine god, christ, bible, man and woman, complimentarianismComment
Resurrecting God the Father
In This WorldDavid Tatereckless love, is god reckless, love, bible, bible study, worship music, david lee tate sr1 Comment

My God Is Not Reckless

It is no secret that I'm not a huge fan of the song "Reckless Love." That's a soap box I could stand on for hours, defining terms and breaking down how we can't allow our preference for a catchy tune to allow us to embrace what is, at best, shaky theology. I could quote Scriptures and cite evidence after evidence demonstrating that God's love is anything but reckless, and I have done so to exhaustion many times in the past. (I have refrained from doing so on this website, mainly because people's defenses of the song are largely emotional in nature, and so I would prefer to have a face-to-face conversation with them.)

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the song, but it wasn't until my father passed away last week that I truly began to process the practical ramifications of such shaky theology. Prior to last week, my opposition to calling God "reckless" was more so a result of zeal for correct doctrine and sober worship; now, however, my opposition is from the stance of someone whose present hope and present joy is rooted firmly in the fact that God is not reckless. If I am wrong, my hope, my joy, and my peace is built on a house of cards, and my faith is in vain.

In This WorldDavid Tatereckless love, is god reckless, love, bible, bible study, worship music, david lee tate sr1 Comment
My God Is Not Reckless
In This WorldDavid Tatepeter pan, david lee tate sr, all children except one grow up2 Comments

All Children, Except One, Grow Up

It was a Thursday night.

Thursday the 7th, to be exact. Thursday, May 7, 2020. I was sitting next to my father on the new reclining sofas he and my mom had purchased only a few months prior, trying my best to focus on a book while the TV played and he scrolled rigorously on his iPad, helping me search for good deals on cheap, used stand-up paddleboards. After having finished my final exam for the Spring semester, I had spent the rest of the day with my dad: We went to Academy (where he bought two fishing poles—one for me, one for him), ate dinner at Cheddar’s (he got to try their croissants for the first time), and then worked out together at Clear Lake Park. He had asked me to make him two grilled cheese sandwiches the way his mom (my grandma) used to make them—a request he had never asked of me before, but one to which I happily obliged—and now we were watching Patrick Swayze and his rag-tag team of guerrilla-fighting 30-year old high schoolers single-handedly defeat the Soviet Union in 1984’s Red Dawn. The movie had started while I was still in the shower after my run (I had run back home from the park), but he had rewound it so that I could see the whole thing. Me being my typical multi-tasking self, I was trying to read J.M Barrier’s classic Peter Pan while watching Red Dawn. The book was about a child who never had to grow up; the movie was about children who were forced to grow up in extreme circumstances.

In This WorldDavid Tatepeter pan, david lee tate sr, all children except one grow up2 Comments
All Children, Except One, Grow Up
In This WorldDavid Tatedeath, grieving, death of a parent, mourning, jesus and joseph, jesus carpenter, carpentry, more than a carpenterComment

Jesus Lost His Dad Too

We don’t know much about Joseph.

Jesus’ dad, Joseph, that is. The earthly father of the Messiah. The one whose fiancé came up to him one day and said, “Hey, by the way, I’m pregnant. But don’t worry, I’m still a virgin.”

Joseph is probably one of the most significance characters in all of Scripture—God literally chose this man of all men to be the earthly up-bringer of His one and only Son—yet the information we have about him is fairly sparse: He was a descendant of King David and the son of a man named Jacob, and according to Matthew he was “a just man” (Mt 1:19a), a statement proven by the fact that he originally planned on merely divorcing Mary quietly when she announced her pregnancy despite the fact that virgin pregnancies are, by any natural means and purposes, physically impossible. Despite believing that his betrothed was blatantly lying to him, he was “unwilling to put her to shame” (Mt 1:19b), and such a righteous and kind man was he that he was simply going to separate from her without drawing any attention to her perceived iniquity. He could have had her punished in the courts of law for infidelity, but he had no interest in doing such a thing.

In This WorldDavid Tatedeath, grieving, death of a parent, mourning, jesus and joseph, jesus carpenter, carpentry, more than a carpenterComment
Jesus Lost His Dad Too