A home-school magazine in Texas, Texas Home School Coalition Home Educator Quarterly, has reached out to us about our family, ministry, and the plight of Jeremiah. Prayerfully, it will give us the opportunity to challenge and inspire home schoolers to not just protect their children against evil, but to go on the offense to defeat evil savaging our nation.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS:
Question: Please tell us a little about your family.
Answer: When I got married to my first wife, Liz, I did not have God’s perspective on the importance of marriage, family, and children. As far as my theology carried me, it was marry or burn. Even though I was a Christian man in full time ministry and thought I was spiritual giant, marriage provided a major reality check. I had a lot of growing up to do in short order.
A year after we were married, God began breaking our hearts about the plight of the preborn and the Covenant of death our nation made fueling the American holocaust (Roe vs. Wade). It was there are hearts became convicted about the preciousness of children. As we began to study God’s Word, our worldview dramatically shifted.
We began to realize, even as Christians we also had adopted an anti-child mentality. Even though God called them blessings, gifts, and rewards, we were not buying what God was selling. It finally dawned on us how did we expect to defeat the Evil One who was lying and murdering the innocent, when we ourselves were marching to the same spirit of the age as the world. Sadly, we also became keenly aware that the majority of the church had similar views. They clamored for God’s blessings but believed they could do without the blessing of children.
In the Old Testament, if a woman was barren that was considered a curse, but a fruitful womb was blessed. Today, most believe quite the opposite. The barren womb is now blessed and a fruitful womb the curse. We repented of that novel idea. Afterwards, God turned on the switch of life and then broke it. We had ten children right in a row, five sons and five daughters.
On August 3rd, 2005, my first bride, Liz, went home to be with the Lord. She was 38 years old. Yet, she accomplished more in those years than most could accomplish in 3 lifetimes. Her heritage remains and continues to grow as our family presses on to the high call and prize.
To wake up a widower with 10 children to rear on the frontlines of the battle was a punch in the gut that almost knocked the life out of me. Life did not take a vacation because Liz died. The demands of our family increased, and less help was available. There was hardly any time to grieve as some of my children were still babies. Though I tried desperately to get in contact with my feminine side, to everyone’s shock, Daddy was not Mommy. Though I could possibly have remained single for the rest of my days, it was not good for my children to be without a mother.
It was there and then that I learned it is doubtless that God can greatly use a man that He has not deeply hurt. In fact, this poem by Barry McGuire became my faithful companion. McGuire wrote, “I walked a mile with pleasure and she chattered all the way. But there was nothing I learned from pleasure when we walked along the way. I walked a mile with sorrow and nothing did sorrow say, but O the things I learned, when I walked with sorrow along the way.”
My life was plowed to its core. Thankfully, I had enough spiritual maturity to not shake my fists at the heavens and get mad at God. I had learned it was vain to ask why. We prayed for her healing and He answered. The answer was not what we wanted. He said no. My first wife, as all our family, belongs to the Lord and He took her home to be with Him. Ultimately, she is far more His bride than she was ever mine.
One year later after Liz passed, God raised up another beautiful woman, Kendra, to take me on with 10 children. God truly brought beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:3). She stepped in and God used her mightily to nurture our family back to health. She had twin daughters and that made twelve children. One year later, Kendra and I had our own daughter, Jubilee. We had her when I turned 50, so the name was appropriate. Altogether, we now have thirteen children.
We have 6 children that are married, and the grandkids are multiplying. Seven of our children have been shot out from the bow of family and church and we still have six at home to raise in the fear and admonishment of the Lord.
Question: Please provide a short description of your ministry, including the ways the Lord has been able to use Jeremiah as an active participant recently.
Answer: Here is our vision statement:
Operation Save America unashamedly takes up the cause of preborn children in the name of Jesus Christ. We employ only biblical principles. The Bible is our foundation; the Cross of Christ is our strategy; the repentance of the Church of Jesus Christ is our ultimate goal. As the Church changes its heart toward preborn children, God Himself will hear from heaven, forgive our sin, and bring healing to our land. We believe that Jesus Christ is the only answer to the abortion holocaust. It is upon our active repentance in the streets of our cities that the Gospel is visibly lived out. We become to the church, to our city, and to our nation living parables which rightly represent God’s heart toward His helpless children.
Our ministry leads the church to the exposed areas and the sin centers where the Evil One kills, steals and destroys to lift high the name of Jesus and minister the Gospel of the Kingdom. We storm the gates of hell, knowing they will not prevail against the obedient church of the living God.
Question: How has homeschooling shaped your family life and enabled your family to do the things that are important to you?
Answer: When God changed our hearts about children, we knew our duty was to home school. From the very beginning we loved, cared, trained, instructed, disciplined, and taught our children at home. Every subject we taught was directly connected to God’s word to root and ground our children in a Biblical worldview.
For us, homeschool was not just a viable education option or issue. We also knew from God’s word, it was a jurisdictional issue as well. There is no where in God’s Word where He ordained the state to teach children. And though the church can be a supplement, it is family government that is the primary sphere most responsible when it comes to the education of our offspring (Deuteronomy 6:1-9, 32:46, 47).
What we discovered is if you do things God’s way, you get God’s results. This Biblical model of education not only allowed our family to grow and learn together, but it provided a wonderful opportunity to disciple and mentor our children at the gates of hell. We took field trips to abortion mills and other sin centers to minister the Gospel. Our children saw first hand the destructiveness of sin and the glory of God’s redemption. Homeschool allowed our children to go on the offense against evil, instead of always being on defense getting picked off by the spirit of the age.
If there is one truth, we could leave other homeschoolers in regards to the previous statements, you can homeschool unto isolation or you can homeschool unto Kingdom impact. Choose the latter.
Question: How are your life purposes–ministry, family, etc.–affected by challenging times, such as your family faces now? Phrased a little differently, we often think that challenges and opposition hinder what we’re trying to accomplish with and for the Lord, but I suspect that challenges and even opposition are no surprise to Him and may, in fact, be tools He uses to magnify our work for His glory. Could you speak to that?
Answer: When it comes to the plight of our dear son, Jeremiah, we have termed it, “The painful gift.” Our family has taken a roller coaster ride filled with great challenges, mourning, grief, deep sadness, and yet times of great rejoicing.
True to His Word, God has taken the feebleness and weakness of Jeremiah’s ailing condition and shown Himself strong (1 Corinthians 1:26-31). Jeremiah’s testimony has literally reached around the world influencing the nations for Christ and His Kingdom. Daily we receive testimonies of salvation, the backslidden coming back home to the Lord and His church, broken relationships between married couples and between parents and prodigal children restored, and more good soldiers of Jesus Christ recruited into the battle for the souls of men, the lives of children, and the future of our beleaguered nation. My default statement for all this is, “Who is sufficient for these things?”
Through the plight of Jeremiah, God has answered all our prayers when it comes to our desire to love, serve, and obey Him in fulfilling the Great Commission in our poor fallen world. It is literally above and beyond all that we could ask or imagine. The only prayer that has not been answered fully is what the future holds for our son. To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21)!
#jeremiahstrong
#operationsaveamerica
#churcharise
#operationsavespokane
www.operationsaveamerica.org
