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What I Would Do More Of  

If you could do it all over again, how would you live your life differently?  I sat down with 28 Christian leaders and asked them.  One of my specific questions was what would you do more of, if you do it all over again.

Michael Card told me...

Clearly I would have put more time in with my family.  I think I was on the road doing 150 concerts a year for more than 30 years.  My wife homeschooled and our kids got plenty of attention.  I would be home for two or three weeks at a time. Yet later, my oldest son, Will, took me aside in a very non-condemning, very sweet way and said, “I just need to tell you this.  It was hard for you to be gone so much.”

Josh McDowell shared...

I’ve got four children who would die for me—an incredibly loving intimate close family.  We’re together all the time. But I have made over 19,000 airplane flights and stayed in 2,300 hotel rooms.  Now I just wish I could have been with my family more. 

Erwin Lutzer took me into his office and said...

If I could do it all over again, I would spend an awful lot more time investing in the lives of my children. Of course we prayed with them and we taught them and so forth.  But you know, in retrospect, I really didn’t enter into their world as I could have.  One day my second daughter, Lynn, wrote me a letter when she was about to go off to college.  She said, “Dad, I cannot compete with your studies of Martin Luther and theology.”  Talk about an ice bucket experience!  Sure I was studying Martin Luther and I was studying theology.  But for my child to think that she couldn’t compete with that?  That so set me back!  I realized that I was on the wrong track. I began to change my priorities.  But if I could do it over again: more investment in the lives of my children.

Ephesians 5:15: “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.”

 

You can discover for yourself what Christian leaders regret—and find freedom from your own regrets—in Jon's new book, If I Could Do It All Over Again

https://www.amazon.com/Could-All-Over-Again-Christian/dp/0736967966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472481625&sr=8-1&keywords=Jon+Gauger

Facebook.com/authorjongauger 

 
If I Could Do It All Over Again  

He was half a second away from being pounded into the grass. In desperation, our Junior High quarterback flung the ball to the only open receiver on the field—me.  Clutching the laced leather, I raced toward the end zone, virtually unopposed. It was only as I crashed across the goal line that I finally understood all the yelling. I had run into the wrong end zone—ours!  To this day, I wish I could do that over.

Here's another do-over.   It was half time at our high school football game.  I was in the marching band.  All 96 of us were high stepping toward the end zone when at a musical cue, we were supposed to flip around crisply and march the other direction.  92 of us did.  But me—and three others—continued ignorantly toward the wrong end zone (all of this captured on film). 

How I cringed later to see myself and my group on the big screen.  We looked like ants, skittering toward the wrong end zone!  (Do you see a pattern here?). 

Trust me. I have plenty of do-overs I’d love to completely erase.  I’m guessing you do, too. For some of us, the do-overs are “big ticket” items: a divorce, a fit of violence, a drunken spree, flunking out of college, serving time in jail or at detox.   Maybe your list is darker yet.  We’ve all got our issues.

But what about the Christian leaders whose sermons we hear, whose books we read and whose music we sing?   Do they have regrets?  I was curious.  So I sat down with 28 well known evangelical leaders.  People like Joni Tada, Tim Keller, Michael W. Smith, Anne Graham Lotz.  I asked them straight out about their regrets, about how they would live life differently if they could do it all over again. Know what I discovered?  They're just like you and me.

There are so many great stories these leaders shared, I compiled them in a book.  But the one truth you need more than any other comes from the ultimate Book, were we are reminded in Romans 3:10, “There is no one righteous, not one.”

 

NOTEYou can discover for yourself what Christian leaders regret—and find freedom from your own regrets—in Jon's new book, If I Could Do It All Over Again

https://www.amazon.com/Could-All-Over-Again-Christian/dp/0736967966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472481625&sr=8-1&keywords=Jon+Gauger

Facebook.com/authorjongauger 

 
Maranatha!  

As we sat under the porch of the Blue Gate restaurant, there was nothing blue at all about the evening sky.   It was as ink splotched and torn as our hearts were light and joyful.

Why not?  Diana and I had just spent a day relaxing in Amish country—Shipshewana, Indiana.   We sampled 20 kinds of cheeses, shopped at 20 different stores (well...maybe not quite that many), played with unusual musical instruments, devoured a glazed cinnamon pretzel, and watched an Amish craftsman make a new belt for me.  We packed a lot in—and all of it was grand.   Please don't tell anyone we bought a few “hand fried pies” to take back with us.

We had just finished an Amish dinner of roast beef and mashed potatoes, and had plopped down into polymer brown rocking chairs on the covered porch of the Blue Gate to watch the rain.  The whole experience was a study in contrasts:

We had come from the urban crush of Chicago.

            But Shipshewana was nothing except rural peace and quiet.

We had left a place of nasty traffic and snagging congestion.

            But Shipshewana is a landscape untouched by overcrowding.

Where we live, gas stations are crammed and noisy.  

At the Marathon station across from the restaurant, we marveled at two horse-drawn buggies tied to a hitch, while others clip-clopped up and down the street, buggies in tow. . 

We had left a culture that celebrates paganism at every possible turn.

But at Shipshewana, wonderful old hymns were played over sound systems:   What a Friend We Have in Jesus, There is a Fountain Filled with Blood, and Wash Me and I Will Be Whiter than Snow.

Sitting on those comfortable rockers, sniffing the rain and listening to the hymns playing, it was tough not to let your mind play tricks on you.  With very little difficulty, you could imagine a slight spelling change in the name of the gas station.  “Marathon” becomes “Maranatha.”  Which means, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

Amen!  Come quickly, Lord!

 
Boombox Living in a Bluetooth World  
  • 1966. Philips created the “Radiorecorder”--better known as the boombox and Holland started to dance.
  • 1975.  Boom boxes were booming in the U.S.--big time.    
  • 1980.  The first personal computer was introduced.
  • 1983.  Cassette tapes outsold vinyl records for the first time...and boomboxes were as big as suitcases.
  • 1990.  Boomboxes lost serious ground to the Sony Walkman.
  • 1993. The internet went public.
  • 1996.  Dolby Digital and DTS surround sound were introduced to our home theaters.   Boomboxes were fading.
  • 1997.  Windows first incorporated support for mp3 audio into their Media Player. 
  • 2001.   The DVD was introduced. 
  • 2006 Blu-ray players were introduced globally.
  • 2014.  HDTV became the broadcast television standard...as 4k TVs started to roll out.
  • 2016.  What's a boombox? 

Truthfully, I still have a boombox in my garage.  The radio still has a great sound—but I must confess the biggest reason I keep it is for sentimental value.  That's probably okay when it comes to a boombox.

But that's NOT okay when it comes to the way we think and do ministry.  Or personal evangelism. I wonder. Are we guilty of boombox living in a Bluetooth world?    Do we speak and preach and share Christ using the same moldy old methods?

Of course the gospel message cannot and must not change.  The Bible is still the Bible.  But are we just offering what we've always done in the ways that we've always done it?  

This is not your father's America.  If this very pagan nation will be reached, it will take much more than boombox living in a Bluetooth world.

 
Offer I Could Not Refuse  

Recently, I bought a collection of Louis L'Amour western novels on Ebay. Some of them had special book club offers tucked inside.  Reading them is a time capsule in direct marketing.

A 1971 edition of The Broken Gun pitched a Zane Grey Library—three books for one dollar (plus a few cents shipping charges). 

In a 1981 copy of The Skyliners, I was urged to examine a hardback edition of Silver Canyon.  Bundled with a 1981 calendar, (valued at $6.95) who could possibly resist?

Then, a 1993 print of The Trail to Seven Pines tried to rope me into—quote--”Claiming my reward!”    That reward turned out to be a hardback edition of a book titled, Sackett.

Yet, I was scarcely able to leave my six-shooters holstered when another book proposed a free Louis L'Amour Collectors deck of cards if I would simply examine another great western on a trial basis.

All four of these offers were presented on tear-out postcards—which I tore out, filled out and put in the mail on Thursday, May 19.  Mind you, the oldest offer goes back to 1971....and the newest is still 16 years old. 

Then came the wait. 

Would even one of the four respond?

Would just one of these publishers be willing to honor their promise?

After nearly three months of waiting, I concluded I would be more likely to shoot the head off three rattle snakes with one bullet at a thousand paces....than get a reply from any of these old offers.

Contrast those cheesy marketing ploys with an offer from God that is as valid today as the day He issued it in His book, the Bible “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

Finally, an offer you can trust.   And frankly, the thought of heaven--it's beauty and certainty--makes this cowboy sit a little taller in the saddle.

 
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Jon GaugerJon Gauger

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