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Speaker: Glenn Rawson
Hi, this is Glenn Rawson. One of the most powerful ways to share history and heritage is by the telling of stories. We began sharing inspiring stories nearly 30 years ago. Each of those stories is true and was intended to inspire and strengthen faith. Over the years, those stories have reached millions around the world. This podcast is for you to listen, learn and enjoy.
First Story: Praus 00:32
About 1963, my dad took a job managing a ranch near Lemhi, Idaho. It was up on Hayden Creek. In preparation for that work, I think I can remember him buying two young horses that he planned to train as cow horses. Neither one of those horses had a registered pedigree. In the dog world, they were just mutts as far as their bloodlines, but they were both good horses, young and strong, and both became fine saddle horses. I have spoken of the filly before. Dad named her Princess. She became, for the large part, my horse. But the other horse, I haven’t ever told you about him. He was a long-legged sorrel gelding that dad named [of all things] Popcorn. He named him Popcorn! I never did learn where he came up with that name. I want to tell you about Popcorn.
Through all of my growing up years horses came and went on the ranch, but Popcorn was always there. He was dad’s horse of choice when there was work to be done. Once in a while, Dad would let me ride him, but I remember that horse was tall. He was so tall, that as a little guy, I couldn’t get on him. I would lead him over to the fence, climb up the fence and jump over. When I got a little taller, I was able to reach up and get a hold of the latigo and strings and climb up his side like shinnying up a tree. Once on his back, trust me-for a little guy, it was a long way down. Unfortunately, I made that journey, from saddle to ground, several times riding Popcorn. He was fast and he was so agile that he unseated me more than once. Dad used to quip, “This is the one horse that can turn on a dime and give you ten cents change!” He could.
He was an incredible working cow horse. He could run, he could cut, rope, open gates-just about anything dad needed Popcorn to do. Popcorn was cow-savvy, tough, and strong. He was almost too much horse for a little boy when working cows.
Not long ago I was studying the scriptures and a passage stood out to me. It said, “None is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart” (Moroni 7:44). That verse stuck. “None is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart.” Meekness is evidently very important! What does it mean to be meek? I have pondered over this question for decades—read every talk I could find—checked every dictionary–studied all kinds of opinions. In the world, especially in the business world or the political world, to be meek is a negative quality associated with timidity and weakness and milk toast. Yet, it is the very virtue of meekness that the Lord uses to describe himself. Therefore, whatever else meekness is—it cannot be weakness.
Then, I discovered that in the New Testament the Greek word for meekness is Praus. Praus was often used and associated with the training of horses, especially war horses. Of course, that immediately caught my attention. The object in training a horse was never to “break him”–never to destroy his power, but the purpose was to control and utilize the horse’s power. A meek horse was an animal of incredible strength, courage, and power, especially in battle, under a rider’s control!
Popcorn was a meek horse. He was strong. He was powerful. He was fast. He was smart, and he gave all that to my dad, even to me. Together, they were a great working team. When I willingly give all the power I have to God for His work—I am meek. When I voluntarily yoke myself to Him, He brings my power under control and increases it. As I abide by my covenants, I consciously control the power within me, my emotions, my passions, my body, my appetite. I control my power according to His directions and give it to Him. By so doing, with all of this and all that I’ve learned, I am brought back with understanding to where I started long ago, “Meek is not weak, but strength under control.”
Second Story: Being a Dad 06:53
Years ago, I came home from work one day, and sat down to work on another project, when my phone rang. It was one of our married daughters. In fact, I think it was the one that just called me. And she said, “Daddy, I’m a little depressed.”
And her voice cracked as she said it. And then I knew I needed to listen. She went on to explain how she just spent all day working on a project to help her mother. And then she finished and looked around and her housework had gotten behind. Her house was a mess. And when she saw it, you know, this feeling, she just felt overwhelmed. To make matters worse, her husband was gone for two weeks, and oh, she missed him. And then to top it all off, her little daughter had head butted her right in the eye, giving her a black eye.
Well, that’s when she called me. She needed someone to vent to while she figured out the best way to finish out what was a messed up day. We talked for a while. And I I think she was feeling a little better.
Now here I was sitting on the sofa in our front room still talking to my daughter in Texas, when the front door opened and another daughter walked in, put her books down and came straight over to me not saying a word. And then she did something she has not done in years. She sat down on my lap and snuggled into my chest. This was something she used to do all the time. And I realized at that moment how much I missed it.
I held her while my other daughter and I wrapped up our conversation on the phone. Then I turned my attention to the daughter on my lap. Clearly. She was having the same kind of day as her older sister. It didn’t take much to get her started talking. She had indeed had a bad day. She was upset. And the tone of her voice proved it. She vented on me. No, mind you, not at me, but on me. There’s a difference with great volume. And when she finally wound down again, I think she felt better. She went away.
I’ve lived long enough, my dear friends, to see what some people consider of great worth in this life. And may I say for me, the thing of greatest worth is to live that someday I can merit the love and trust of my Heavenly Father and my family. I love being a dad and all things considered God could put me in his most heavenly piece of real estate somewhere in this universe. But if my family’s not there, it’s still hell. Next story.
Third Story: A Message from Dad 10:14
More often than not, the most powerful sermons we will ever preach will be in the lives we lead, not the things we say. May I illustrate?
1936: Jay was fifteen years old and growing up on a small farm in a family of thirteen. Times were hard. One morning Jay’s mother asked him to stay home from school and take a message to his father. Jay knew the message had to be important to warrant keeping him home from school.
Jay walked the mile and a half to the highway and caught a ride into town. His father worked eighteen miles away in the Pacific Fruit Express rail yard. It was hard, dirty work and long hours.
Soon Jay found himself at the gate of the rail yard. “So this is the place that makes him so dirty and tired,” Jay thought, the place of work that Mom had said was so important to our large family. This is why Dad is only with us on evenings and Saturdays and Sundays. This is why it’s Mom who teaches us how to milk cows, to shock hay and grain, to irrigate, to harness the team and make fences, to build a brooder coop, and in short, to run a farm. Dad was here, and it was important and hard.”
Well, the rail yard was sprawling and huge. The noise was deafening. Suddenly a loud siren went off and men began filing out of the buildings. It was lunchtime.
“How will I ever find Dad in all this?” Jay wondered.
Well, Jay went toward some huge stacks of bulkheads. As he rounded the end of the stacks, he froze. Across the clearing sat his father on the ground, his back against the bulkheads, his legs stretched out in front of him with his hat lying at his side. With an open lunch pail between his knees, hands folded in his lap and head bowed, Dad was speaking thanks to God for his blessings.
Jay stood and watched his father for what seemed like a long time.
“There’s nobody here for him to prove anything to,” Jay thought. “Dad really does believe!”
Finishing his prayer, Dad opened his eyes and saw Jay. As Jay approached him, tears welled up in his father’s eyes.
“Well, Jay, it’s so nice to see you. Come and sit down, son.”
Jay sat next to his father and delivered the important message. “But you know, to this day,” Jay says, “I don’t know what the message was that I delivered to him, but I’ve never forgotten the one he gave me.”
Sometimes, it is not what we say but what we do. It is not what we calculate people to see, it is what they observe us doing when we don’t know that we are being observed. Last story.
Fourth Story: The Fatherhood of God 13:45
You know it seems to me that speaking of Fathers’ Day, too often we focus so much on the Godhood of God that we fail to recognize the Fatherhood of God. Now indeed, He is all-knowing and all-powerful, and all-just. He governs the universe and holds the destinies of men and nations in His hands. There is no way to describe how great and glorious, and majestic He really is. But so too, in every worthy sense of the word, He is a Father. He wants us to call Him Father. He is kind, gentle, loving, and solicitous of the welfare. Now if you wouldn’t mind, may I share a story to illustrate my point?
Typically, when we think of the story of the prophet Jonah, we automatically think of a whale, and how Jonah was swallowed for trying to run away from the mission that God had given him. And that’s true; he was. But there’s another element to that story in the Book of Jonah that’s worth telling.
You see, Jonah was a prophet during the time that Israel was ruled by Assyria, a ruthless world power. When Jonah is commanded to go to the city of Nineveh and call them to repentance, he attempts to run away, but not so much because he was lazy he didn’t want to go – but because Nineveh was the capital city of Assyria, Israel and Jonah’s avowed enemies. And what’s more, Nineveh is a city of heathen gentiles, another fact that would make them additionally detestable to Jonah.
Well, after the Lord manages to – what shall we say? – adjust Jonah’s attitude in the whale’s belly, Jonah goes to Nineveh and boldly and powerfully calls the city to repentance saying, “… Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” (Jonah 3:4)
Immediately – and our nation now would do well to do the same – the people of Nineveh begin to fast, pray, and bring themselves down in the depths of repentance. They were spared the promised destruction; God has mercy on them. But that mercy angered Jonah to the point that he went to the Lord and asked the Lord to kill him. The Lord refused, of course. So Jonah, pouting, goes outside the city and sits down on a hill, and waits to see what will happen to the city.
The Almighty decides to teach Jonah another lesson. The Lord causes a broad-leafed plant to grow up overnight over Jonah’s head to shield him from the rays of the hot sun. Ah, the next day, Jonah enjoys that plant for its shade. But then a worm killed the plant. By the end of the next day, Jonah is suffering from heat stroke, and again angry with the Lord, this time for killing the plant. And again, Jonah’s so mad he asks the Lord to kill him. At this point now, Jonah is ready to be taught. The Lord comes to him and says in essence, ‘Jonah, are you angry with me because I killed your shade plant?’
‘Yes!’ Jonah answers.
‘Jonah, you feel sorry for that plant, yet you did no work to plant it or to nurture it. It grew up in one day, and it died in one day. You are angry with me because you wanted it to live. Jonah, shouldn’t I have pity on a great city of 120,000 of my children who are lost and confused? Shouldn’t I do everything I can to help them? Shouldn’t I want them to live?’
The Book of Jonah ends right there, but to me – this is a classic story applicable to our modern times. It demonstrates to me the Fatherhood of God. Whoever we are and wherever we are, He loves us. Every nation, kindred tongue, family, etc,., He will do everything for us, His children, that we will allow Him to do for our happiness here and hereafter. I tell you, I love our Heavenly Father because He is my father. The best and the greatest of all fathers.
This Sabbath Fathers’ Day, for one who has done so much for us, could we do just a little bit more to remember the one we call ‘Our Heavenly Father?’
My dear friends, Happy Father’s Day. If your father [as in the case with so many of you] is beyond avail and you can’t thank him, perhaps, you could thank God for him and he’ll still get the message.
Thank you for listening. Many of the stories you heard today have been published and are archived at glennrawsonstories.com. If you would like more information you can communicate with us there. We will be back again with another podcast next week.
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