Attitudes on Parenting — Jim Logan

It's been a good week. I've just about had it, two weeks of this. I swore I was going to work with these kids. But it has been good. It's been a real encouraging week for me, and being in exhorter to go, and every time I go I really pray that it would be worthwhile because this is kind of a new thing for my church to have a pastor that goes a lot.

And the pastor they had before was a tremendous fellow and stayed there 18 years. And then they were without a pastor for two years and I came along and I've been gone almost as much as I've been there, but I told them that.

I said, if you want me as your pastor, I really, I can't tell you how fulfilled I get by going out from the church, and I said, I just feel it's extending the ministry of the church in different places, and then going back there, and then going out again and going back.

So sometimes I don't tell them I'm going if I'm not gone long. No, they don't miss me. It's only a couple days, it's not an overnight thing. I don't say much. I try not to be gone on the weekends. A lot of people, they don't think the pastor is anything anyway, so he might as well be gone between Monday and Sunday.

Evaluating Media, Speech, and Personal Habits

But, oh, I didn't want to show you this one. I wanted to put this on again, that we might look at a few insights on the thing we looked at last night. We looked at lust last night, and we said that it was appeal to physical senses for personal gratification.

But I like sensuality better than lust, because a lot of people think that they're okay because they don't have lust, but they're struggling with sensuality. And sensuality is just giving in to your senses.

And so we have sensual reading material I should discontinue. I had an interesting experience. I got a telephone call from a pastor in Philadelphia, and one of his young men was flying jet airplanes out of McCord Air Force Base, and he asked me, because he saw my name in the IFCA directory, if I would go and call on this young man from his church, because he wanted him to go to church.

He says, you know, when the young men go into service and they get away, sometimes they get away from the Lord. Well, I said, well, I can tell you he hasn't visited our church, and I'd be glad to go visit this guy.

So I went to visit him, and he lived in a motel-type thing a lot of these flyers lived in, and he was never home. So I just always made a point, and I drove that way, that if I ever saw a car there, I would just drive up and visit him.

So I came and knocked on the door when I saw this car. It was a motel, but they were just renting it out to the servicemen. The car was angled in front, and I went and knocked on the door, and he answered the door, and he obviously wasn't expecting a man of the cloth.

I told him this pastor had called me, and that I would like to come in and just tell him a little about the church, and share with him, and so on. Well, he was a little bit embarrassed, and kind of struggling, I could sense.

Should I invite him in, or should I not? He invited me in, and I walked in, and there's different places I could sit in the living room, but his coffee table was spread with his current reading literature.

I think he forgot it was out, and so I thought, I'm going to get this kid. I'm going to sit where he's going to have, I'll sit on one side of it, and he'll sit on the other side of it. I could just see him doing this, well, come on in.

Because it wasn't the child today, or whatever you call it, he was the one spread out on his coffee table. It was really bothering him, and so I think it's important that as we realize that there's things that maybe we ought not read, and how do we determine?

How do you determine what you ought read, or ought not read? I think this way, not is this evil material, or not evil material, but how will this be a benefit to my life? If it isn't a benefit to your life, it's possible it will be a hindrance.

There may be nothing wrong with it, but that is not the issue, it's what's right with it. And we need to have that, what's right with this, not what's wrong with it, there may not be anything wrong with it, there may not be anything good with it either.

And then, word phrases I shouldn't use. I remember one time my son came home from church, he said, Dad, look it, Dad, it's awful. I said, what's awful? He said, Deacon so-and-so swears. I said, what?

I thought, you know, if he swears, he wouldn't do it at church, how would Richard swear? He said, no. Daddy swore. I said, are you sure, Richard? He said, Daddy, I know swearing when I hear it. And what Estello had used was replaced slang, and we had told the kids that garsh and gee and golly is the same as, you might as well say the real thing, let's say that.

And Estello had used one of those words, and in his mind, it was swearing. I remember the first time I ever saw a policeman smoking, he just sighed, that policeman went down 40 points. He just couldn't believe it.

He said, Dad, he's smoking. I said, yeah, I know. Isn't that awful to him? And he just felt so, the policeman doesn't know how much he dropped down in the eyes of my son, because he expected more of a policeman.

But, you know, are you using terminology that maybe isn't the best for a Christian? You know, as you grow as a Christian, there's things you ought to be throwing out of your life that just isn't the best.

And so, if there's anything like that, habits I should break, expressions of flirting I should stop. And that can be really bad, you know. There's the thing of being friendly, and then there's that over-friendliness.

And this is really bad in a Christian school. And today we have a whole new struggle, and it's hard for me to comprehend, but I think it's a whole switch on TV that's caused a whole switch in the school, but as I get around to the Christian schools, I've had different parents come up and say, what should I do?

My fifth-grade son is being propositioned by the sixth-grade girls, and the girls are making the moves today towards the fellows. And, you know, the girls are calling, asking for dates. The girls are calling and giving the fellows all kinds...

The fellows are playing hard to get, and the girls are trying to catch them. And this is a whole new... Now, I don't say this in the colleges, or at least the college I was with, the Christian college, but I know that it's in the Christian high schools, and I know it's very much in the public schools, even down in the lower classes.

And so you have these girls that are becoming tremendously flirtatious, and that is bad. And some of these girls are flirtatious, and they're really innocent. They don't know what they're doing, and they don't know where it's going to lead them.

And as parents, you better tell them, or if you see it in your club, somehow you better talk to these kids about this. And it's amazing how young it can go down, with these kids doing this type of thing.

Condemning Spirits and the Danger of Self-Righteous Judgment

And then we looked over here at this thing of purity. Now tonight, we want to take up a very... not that they're not important, but this one is one of them... a major attitude. I guess you're going to say, well, they're all major, because we've been looking at these attitudes and the difficulties.

Tonight we want to look at the condemning spirit. We looked at a critical spirit. A critical spirit is bad enough. A condemning spirit is a lot worse, and lies at the root of a condemning spirit. When someone is very condemning...

Now what's the difference between a judgmental spirit and a critical spirit? A judgmental spirit is one that passes sentence. You know, that's it. They're judge, jury, and verdict. Boom. What does the Word of God say is at the heart of a condemning person?

Now I can tell you... Turn to Romans, chapter 2, and let's see if we can figure it out here. When people open their mouth... You know, a lot of people will, I think after this, will go to church and not say anything.

Because people have no idea what they're saying when they open their mouth. Besides, they need to brush their teeth. You know, a lot of other things. They reveal a lot of their heart, more than what they know.

And they're revealing more of their heart than what they know. In Romans 2, it says, Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man. That's starting out pretty heavy. You're inexcusable. Whosoever thou art that judges.

For wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. Now, why am I condemning myself when I judge someone else? For thou that judgest, what? Doest the same thing. You better believe that. The people that run around this organization with their long, old fingers out, pointing at others.

There's a real key there. That they're struggling and failing in the very same areas in their own life. Why is it other people's failures in my area are so glaring? You know, and mine aren't so bad. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to the truth against them which commit such things.

Do you want to see a beautiful illustration in the Old Testament of this? Turn to Genesis 30. There's always beautiful illustrations in the Old Testament. I don't think there's a New Testament truth that you cannot find in a living setting in the Old Testament demonstrated.

Genesis 38. This is a particular portion of Scripture that Dr. McGee does not even like to cover in the read-through of the Bible. And there's two passages in Scripture he doesn't want everyone to read or preach.

This happens to be the story of Tamar. Which is a tragic story. And you remember the story. She was married to the son of Judah. And he died. And then he had another daughter and another son. And he died.

And so he told her, you just go away. Because, you know, you were supposed to marry. I mean, this was a practice. It wasn't something strange that the widow of your brother became your wife. And it's excellent.

Because it meant when a brother got married, the whole family was in on it. And a guy said, you're not going to marry her because if you die, I don't want her for my wife. You know, you better pick somebody of more quality than her.

I mean, the whole family got in on this thing. Because you figured, you know, third down, you still might end up with her. Something happened to the rest of the family. But two brothers died. And the other brother wasn't, you know, he was only seven, a little too early for marriage.

So they told the girl that when he was old enough to get married that, you know, they would send for her. Well, he didn't send for her. And if you read the story, she realized that her father-in-law was going up for the shearing of the sheep and so on.

She put on the robes of a harlot. And she was immoral with her own father-in-law. And he left his signet, his staff, and I forget, you know, his calling card and a few other things with her. And when they came back to get his things, she was gone.

And they said, where's the harlot in this place? And they said, there's no harlot in this place. Now, this is a small town and we know if there's a harlot in town, we don't have one. They said, oh well, never mind.

Well, then later on, in verse 24,. And what did her father-in-law say? Let's pray for her and restore her to fellowship. Judah said, bring her forth and let's burn her. Didn't like that daughter-in-law anyway too much, let's get rid of her.

Now, what was he doing? He was doing Romans 2 .1. And she was brought forth for what purpose? They're going to burn her. And she said, before you light the fire, She sent her father-in-law saying, The man whose these are, I am with child.

She said, discern, I pray thee, whose are these? The signet, the bracelet, and the staff. And Judah acknowledged them and said, burn me with her. All of a sudden he got very forgiving. What did he say?

She said, she hath been more righteous than I. But what was his attitude before? A terrible daughter-in-law. You know, you can go through scriptures and find this kind of a thing. That disproves Romans 2.

He thought she was horrible. And he changed his mind when he got cornered. Look at verse 3 of Romans 2. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judges them that do such, and you do the same, that you shall escape the judgment of God?

Do you think you can judge others, do the same thing, and get away with it? Are we supposed to answer it? No. All right. I just wanted that. What was his problem? What is the problem of a condemner? Guilt and bitterness are two poisons God never intended to remain in the body of a Christian.

Guilt, Conscience, and Spiritual Shipwreck

Major reasons of mental breakdowns, and especially what they call nervous breakdown. There's no such thing as a nervous breakdown because nerves don't break down. It's like Christian science. It's neither Christian nor scientific.

And when you have what doctors would call a nervous breakdown, about 97 of nervous breakdown is unhandled guilt. Guilt that has not been dealt with. What is the way that they're doing again? It was very popular one time.

It faded away, and they're doing it again. How are they handling guilt today? If you are having a tremendous amount of guilt so that it's causing you not to function normally, and you are going to be committed to hospital treatment, what is the treatment for guilt?

Shock treatments. Shock treatments will not work because guilt is not registered in the mind. It's registered in the spirit. And you cannot touch the spirit with shock treatments. A lady after 22 shock treatments was asked by a counselor friend of mine, What did you forget?

You know, it just scrambles up your head. She said, I forgot everything. He said, everything? She said, everything but the two things that were bothering me. And this is a sad thing. We had a fellow that came to Calvary on a commuting basis type thing.

He came in to see me, and he said, Mr. Logan, I'm having a terrible time with my thought life. And he began to share, and he was having a terrible time with his thought life. But he didn't get as serious about it as he should have been.

And I didn't see him for quite a long time because it's kind of like one of these outside students that takes a class or two, you know, that kind of person. I saw him again, and when he came in and had an appointment, he was in bad shape.

I mean, really bad shape. He said, Mr. Logan, I think I'm going to kill myself. And I was really concerned for him. And he was one of the most severe cases of disturbed people I've seen in a long time.

And that was just in a period of about four months. And his thoughts had gone from bad to worse. Finally, his parents were so afraid that he would just destroy himself, they committed him to a mental hospital.

He had ten shock treatments in one week. He got out a week later and came to see me. I asked him, I said, he said, Oh, Mr. Logan, the thoughts I have, they're so wild. I have the most wild thoughts you can't believe.

I can't believe that I'm saved and have these kind of thoughts. But I know I'm saved. And he said, you know, I have ten shock treatments. They had me so doped up. That's the other thing they do. Dope, you know, dope therapy.

They dope them up so they don't know where they are, and then shock them, you know, and then they turn them loose. And I said, when you were having these shock treatments, what did it do? He said, it did everything but touch my wild thoughts and the guilt that I felt.

Because it's a spiritual problem, not a mental problem. And guilt in the conscience is a tremendous thing. It's like when we touch a hot stove and you know to take your hand off. You know, that was the trouble with lepers, if you read Ten Fingers for God.

Lepers, their fingers weren't being eaten up with leprosy. They had no feeling. And they would find the rats were gnawing them off and they didn't know it. And they would, you know, just wear their feet off because they couldn't feel anything.

And so, you know, and you go to a psychiatrist and what does he tell you with guilt? He says, you're too sensitive. You do more sin and you won't feel so bad. And that's true. The more you sin, the harder your conscience gets.

But eventually it'll get to you. And guilt is a very terrible, terrible thing. And we want to see in Scripture some things about guilt. Turn to Timothy. The Apostle Paul, 1 Timothy is a tremendous book.

The Apostle Paul is going, I mean, pardon me, Timothy is going to pastor his first church. He's never pastored before. Timothy was going to pastor in the most difficult town of all the New Testament. He was going to pastor at Ephesus.

If you know anything about Ephesus, what was at Ephesus? The temple of Diana, which is one of the ten wonders of the world. I mean, you talk about a fabulous church. There was one there. The staircase was made out of one vine.

Over a thousand of the most beautiful women served as prostitutes in the worship of Diana in his temple. It was renowned all over the world. Timothy was going to have a storefront Baptist church down the street.

You know, that's hard. It's just like renting something by the Mormon tabernacle. I mean, if you could get the idea there, it would be a terribly struggling place to start a church. It would be hard. Very wicked, evil, immoral place to go and preach righteousness and godliness and holiness.

And Paul said, Timothy, I know that you are probably going to the hardest field we have. Las Vegas. Reno, Nevada. We've got someone here from Reno. And he said, I'm going to give you some advice. He said, if you follow this advice, Timothy, you'll be successful.

If you don't follow this advice, Timothy, you will fail. And he told Timothy the two things he would need to be successful as a servant of the Lord. And without these things, he said, Timothy, you will never make it.

And that's why this passage of Scripture is so very important, just as a background of how important it is we're going to hear. Look at verse 18. This charge I commit unto thee, son Timothy, according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them might war us a good warfare.

He says, Timothy, my burden is that you will be victorious in your warfare, your spiritual warfare, as you go to serve the Lord. And he says, Timothy, there's two things that you must have. The first is what?

Faith. And then you add to your faith what? A clear conscience. What is the opposite of a clear conscience? Guilt. And he says, Timothy, I want you to know that there are some who do not think a clear conscience is all that essential for their Christian life.

And what happened to them? They ran their life of faith, what? On the rocks. They're shipwrecked. And he says, Timothy, I want you to know who they are, and he tells us who they are by name. He says, you probably wondered why those fellows are shipwrecked.

I'll tell you why. Because they didn't have a clear conscience or a genuine faith. Look at chapter 1, verse 5. Now the end of the commandment, or the purpose of preaching, is what? Love. Now how can we have love?

We talk a lot about love today. But what are the prerequisites for love? You and I are what? We talked about how we could show to a lost world Christ's love through our spiritual gifts. But he says that there's some things that's important for love to come out from our lives.

Real, genuine love to flow out from our lives. Out of what? What's the first requirement for love to flow from your life? A pure heart. We talked about that last night. You'll never love right if you're struggling with sensuality or immorality or any degree of that in your life.

You cannot love properly. The second is what? A good conscience. Because you cannot properly love if you're filled with guilt. And the third is what? Faith unfeigned. You know, unfeigned. I get a picture of a guy with that and all those things.

And what it really is is genuine faith. Real faith. So I need to have a pure heart. I need to have a clear conscience. And I need to have real faith. And that's the whole purpose of teaching. What do you suppose I'm trying to do in my church my first year?

To have these three things. If that church I'm pastoring is going to be a place where people sense the genuine love of God, the congregation has to have what? Purity and a clear conscience and really trust God.

Or it won't be there or they won't sense it. The church won't be able to love as God would have them to love. Turn to the book of Acts somewhere. 24. I'm glad I looked and had it written down. It's going to take a long time from chapter 1 to find it.

But I know it's at the bottom of one page and the top of the next one. You turn it over. The Apostle Paul says something that is so tremendous. He said, and herein, in verse 16, do I exercise myself always to have a conscience void of offense.

Paul says, I exercise myself to always have a clear conscience towards who? God. Most people put a period there. I confess my sin to God. What else does he say? And toward man. So a clear conscience with it that I have a clear conscience towards God and what?

Towards people. And in my ministry, I realized about 10 years as a pastor that pretty much I had a clear conscience towards God, but not towards. And I wondered why I was not as effective as I wanted to be.

The Apostle Paul says, I mean, the Lord Jesus said, if you have offended your brother and you want to give a gift to the Lord's Word, God says, I don't want your gift. Until what? You get right with your brother, then you come offer your gift.

Reconciliation, Giving, and a Clear Conscience

And we're trying in our church to move towards stop taking offerings. I mentioned then, and I thought everybody would just blow away in that church, and they didn't. They got really excited about the idea of stopping the offerings.

And I got worried. Who will pay me? But in the second church, the last church I pastored, we just felt that offerings destroyed the spirit of giving. There's two reasons not to give. What are the two reasons not to give?

Of necessity or of grudgingly? Why do most people give? Well, because the point's coming by. You know, you turn off the light, we'll go off the air, you know, we'll lose, they'll pull up the rugs and all this other stuff if you don't give.

And so we stopped offerings in the church. And it was so interesting. People would visit the church and they'd say, how do you give to this thing anyway? You know, did he forget to do something today?

And they'd say, forget what? Well, they never took any money in the church. You know what my dad said when I took him to church? He was unsaved. And he came to church and he sat right in the front row in a super church.

The guy gave an altar call. My dad could move three inches and get saved. You know, I'm right down front. I don't have to go far. And my dad, my mom turned to my dad and said, do you want to go forward?

My dad said, no, they just only want your money anyway. And I was a brand new Christian, two weeks old, in the Lord, 19 years of age. And I thought, that's terrible. But, you know, the older I got, I thought, you know, I know why my dad had that idea.

You know where he got it from? Christians. And a lot of pastors. And a lot of radio broadcasts. Because where do they put the emphasis? You know, that's where he got the idea. And do you know the most amazing thing?

That when we stopped taking offerings in this little dinky church, up there at the base of the mountain, guess what we had a problem with? Surpluses of money. We didn't know what to do with it. And we had to find ways of giving it away.

Because I didn't believe in bank accounts. And we tried to figure out what to do. We'd spend $500 just for this missionary. And we had a dinky little church. You know, and it was just amazing. We didn't have signs, you know, offering box this way.

You know, big arrow right here. Don't forget. No, we just put it in inconspicuous places. If people want to give, they'll find it. If they want it, if they have the heart to give, they'll find it. And if they don't want to give, fine.

And when God touches them, they'll want to give. But, you know, as I was thinking of this, I went back in my mind, and I had some difficulties in my life. My real problem was here. Bitterness. I was really bitter.

I tried to forgive, but I couldn't forgive. And the person I had bitterness towards was my father. And, in fact, it would go from bitterness to hatred, and back to bitterness again. When I was unsaved, I hated it.

My dad became an alcoholic when I was in junior high school. And people have got offended when I say this, but we did live in hell. People say, oh, you don't know what hell is. I say, if you ever lived in an alcoholic, that describes it pretty good.

It was awful. It was just awful. We'd come home every day wondering how drunk he'd be. It was just a horrible thing. I just can't tell you how my heart goes out to kids whose folks are alcoholics. They live in a horrid, horrible, emotional thing.

It's terrible. And I was saved at 19, and I didn't have the love for my dad. After I was saved, I should have had. We just had a film last Sunday night in church. It's that new film, that western one, you know, the shootout on the bridge.

Mark Fore. It's on a Forgiveness film. Some of you have seen it, haven't you? You know what I'm talking about? And the film, I hadn't seen it before, but it really bothered me because this guy hates this guy because he...

Well, I can't tell you the whole thing. But anyway, the whole thing is about these guys that hate each other. And he gets saved, and they ride off in the sunset, and they love everybody, you know, ever after.

And that's wonderful. I got up right afterwards. There was a church full of people that came from all over town. I said, listen, I got saved, and I still hated my dad. Come out next Sunday night, and I'll tell you what I did.

I was riding Forgiveness. You know, I rode off in the sunset, and I still hated him. And I was still saved. But I knew it was wrong, but I didn't know what to do about it. And I felt guilty. Why should I, as a Christian, feel this way?

And I'd say, God, I don't want to feel this way. And then I'd see my dad again, and I'd feel worse. And I'd go down to his house, and for ten years, after I was pastoring, I had horrible feelings in my heart towards my father.

We'd go on vacation. We'd go in the house. My dad was a strong Democrat, and I would become a Democrat. And as soon as I became a Democrat, he'd become a Republican. You know, if he said it was raining, I'd say, I'll get the umbrella.

You know what I mean? I would try everything in my power, and we would argue. And we would fight, and I'd say, I'm a Christian. How can I fight and argue with him? And he'd sit there with his drinking, and my stomach would turn over.

It was horrible. And finally, I realized that it had hurt him, too. And it took the Holy Spirit a long time to convince me of that. And one day, I got alone. And the Spirit of God did a really work on my life, and I looked back on my attitudes towards my father.

I always looked at what he did to me, not what I had done to him. And so I began to examine my heart. Where was I wrong? What had I done wrong? And I thought, would I want my son to respond to my authority the way I responded to my dad's authority?

No way. Would I want my son to talk to me the way I talked to my father? And God broke my heart. As I looked at my responsibility in that whole relationship, I was wrong. And so I wanted to tell my father in person how much I had hurt him, and how much I realized I had hurt him, and how wrong I had been.

And we were pastoring in Tacoma, Washington, and I brought a message on forgiveness in the church, what it's all about, and shared the bitterness that I had and the guilt that I had in my heart. But I would balance that guilt.

Because, see, when you feel guilty, you can't handle guilt. And so when you feel guilty, what do you do on the other side of the scale? You put the blame. And see, that helps you to balance out and keep yourself halfway from going nuts inside.

And so whenever I think about the things I said, the things I did, I would think, well, look what he did to me. And I would be just kind of doing this. For years, I did this kind of thing inside. And everybody, we struggle with guilt.

If people have abortions, you have all the reasons over here why they killed that baby. If they did this, this is why, over here. Their grandmother didn't look at them when they were little or something, or they got a spanking once, or something.

There's all these reasons why I did what I did wrong. So, as I allowed God to break my heart and really show me my attitudes and how wrong they were, my wife said, Jim, and we were driving home from the church, she said, Jim, why don't you call your dad and tell him?

I said, honey, I want my dad to see it in my face. It's easy over the phone. I want him to see how bad I feel for the way I have treated him for all of these years. And we got home, we sat down at the table, and the phone rang.

And it was my father. It was the first time my father had ever called our home. Period. Well, I knew that it was divine. I got all sweaty and shook up. Oh, God, why are you doing this for me? I knew what I was going to say.

My wife says, why don't you talk to your dad? And he calls me. And so I knew God wanted me to do it. And so I told my father, I said, Dad, I've recently been looking back over my childhood. And as I look over my childhood, Dad, I am grieved at the heartache I've caused you.

And, Dad, I just realized how wrongly and what a disappointment I must have been as a son. Could you forgive me? And my dad said, you know, kids are kids. And when he said that, I knew something. I knew I had hurt him more deeply than what I even thought.

And I said, Dad, I can't tell you how wrong I was. Could you and would you forgive me? And he said, Son, I forgive you. The one thing I always wanted from my father was approval. I never got it. I thought when I got married, he would show up.

Well, the only thing he really did like was my wife. You know, the one thing you ever did to a good kid was getting her. And I thought, you know, when I went to Bible school, he'd say something. He'd say anything.

When I graduated from Bible school, I thought he'd say something. He didn't say anything. He came. He was half drunk, but he came. When I passed through the church, I thought he'd say something. I said, Mom, does Dad care about me?

He said, he brags about you all the time. I said, why doesn't he say one thing to me? He said, I don't know. But he tells everybody how proud he is of you. I said, Mom, if he'd only tell me. After that telephone call, I got a letter from my dad.

I said, dear son, I want to tell you how proud I am of you and that you're a minister. Ten years for a letter like that. I mean, that was after I was out of college. When that summer came, my dad called on the phone and said, can I come and visit you?

Which was, I mean, we just couldn't talk. I mean, you don't know how bad it was. My wife would say, it's worse than Jim can tell you. I mean, we just did not, there was no communication. We'd watch TV.

Thank God for television. You know, you can sit there and not do anything. Just watch a program, you know, and just kind of smile during the commercials. And, I mean, it just saved a whole lot of things, you know, for us.

And he said, can I come up and see you? And he was coming up without my mother, which was unbelievable. Because my dad never went anywhere without my mother, especially on a trip. He just wasn't, you just have to see this.

And I saw my dad. I realized he was short and he felt inferior. And he had a lot of struggles that I could finally see when I got rid of the bitterness in my heart. But he said, can I come up? I'm going to fly up and spend a week up there.

And I thought, oh, super, come on up. And so he flew up and we went to Sea-Tac Airport to meet him. And I'll never forget this. We were standing there. You know how they come in those deals and then come out.

You know, they walk up those little runway deals and then they come out. And my dad came out and I saw him. And all of a sudden, something happened that I could never remember ever happening. You know what happened?

I loved him. It was the first time I saw him after I asked him to forgive me. And in my heart, love flowed out to him. I couldn't believe it. You know, I thought I'll be nice to him, but I never thought I would love him.