The Pastor’s Piece, Pastor Kevin Cernek – FCFI Chaplain

FCFI

February 2, 2025

In looking back on my life so far, I’ve been thinking about the different chapters that God has blessed my wife and I with. Of course, the first chapter would be my years at home with my parents. I lived at home until I was 18, at which time I moved into a house across the road, which eventually ended up being home to me and three of my brothers. Dad owned the house and he was perfectly happy with us living there as opposed to living with him and mom. He had enough to do without us complicating things. It was a mutual assessment. I can’t think of a single time when any of us abused dad’s trust in us or our respect for each other. It was a good transitional time in our lives.

During this time, I met my wife, we got married and set out on a course that took us to the great wild west where we established ourselves and made friends. We moved several times during this adventure. Number one on our priority list, everytime we moved was to find a church. We made lifelong friends and memories with those friendships that we are blessed with to this day.

Eventually we ended up back here in the frozen tundra where we settled in and raised our family. The joy of those little ones filled our days and we were not ready for them to grow up and move out. We treasured every day with them as they grew up. We have found that even today, so many years later, the words we use in our vocabulary often revert back to the way they used to describe things. I remember the night before our daughter left home for college, I lay in bed wondering if we had taught her everything she needed to know for life out in the big, wide world. I remember feeling so inadequate, then the Holy Spirit filled me with a peace that was very settling. Of course, we hadn’t taught her everything she needed to know, that would be impossible to do. But we had laid the foundation for her life so that whatever happened, she would always have that solid foundation under her.

We’ve been watching our granddaughter this week. I don’t know who is having more fun, her or Grandma. It’s been non-stop from sunup to sundown. They’ve been baking and singing and dancing around the place and going from one thing to the next with hardly a break in the action. I will tell you what I like best. I like hearing (again) first thing in the morning a sweet little 4 year old voice as she wakes up and embraces a brand new day. She has no agenda for the day except to make the most of every moment. I like the innocence and the intrigue. Everything is a curiosity. I like the pitter-patter of her little feet running across the hardwood floor. She never walks, but runs everywhere. I like the excitement of every new experience. I like the hugs that come randomly and often and without warning. I like that she thinks we’re the greatest people on earth. It’s all great. God is so good to us. God is an infinite and an inexhaustible treasure of all blessedness, enough to fill all things. The God that we believe is the God of whom the Psalmist said, “The goodness of God endureth continually,” Psalm 52:1.

The Bible teaches that God has set each one of His servants apart to accomplish the work He has given them to do. He appeared to Moses in the burning bush. He brought David in from the pasture to engage him in His work. He told Jeremiah, ““Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;  I appointed you as a prophet to the nations,” (Jeremiah 1:5). He met Paul on the road to Damascus. He met Peter on the shores of the Sea of Galilee and He will meet you wherever you are in your life today. Our relationship with God is more than just about settling our whereabouts for eternity. It’s about making every day matter, and every season. We only get one chance to be a young person for the glory of God. We only get one chance to be a parent for the glory of God. We only get one chance to be a grandparent for the glory of God. We don’t get a do-over at any stage of life. The good news is that it’s not too late to set the course of your life on a path of usefulness for the Kingdom of God. He made you for that purpose. 

(Kevin Cernek is Lead Pastor of Martintown Community Church in Martintown, Wisconsin).