Have I told you about my Pawpaw?

Hey Friends, 

Today would have been my Pawpaw's 89th birthday. 

It's hard to escape my Pawpaw's influence. I'm a pastor today in part because of him. 

Jimmy Day was born in 1935 and grew up in Alpharetta when there was nothing but dirt roads. He stopped going to school in 8th grade so that he could work and help his family. When God saved him as a teenager and called him to ministry, education wasn't easy since he never learned to read very well. He worked twice as hard to get the minimal bible training he received. 

So when I was starting Bible college and seminary in 2013 he made me a promise: he would pay for every single one of my books. 

My Pawpaw loved people and he was always ready to tell someone about Jesus. He would carry a gospel tract in the front pocket of his shirt and look for any excuse to give it away. 

On my drive in to work every day I take Shallowford Road from where it begins on Highway 5. 

I pass another small church called East Cobb Baptist, and their pastor is a man named Johnny Foster. 

My pawpaw led Johnny Foster to Christ when he was a kid in the 1960s.  

I can't drive too far around this community without passing a church my Pawpaw pastored: the old Willeo Baptist Church (now Willeo River Church) in Roswell, or Chattahoochee Baptist Church on Johnson Ferry Road, or Mount Arbor Baptist Church behind Sprayberry High School. 

Even the house they lived in when I was young is off of Piedmont Road. 

This place is filled with his fingerprints. 

My family has been putting down gospel roots in this community for a long time. 

He shepherded people in this community, and now I do too. 

I'm not sure I ever set out to do that, though. 

I didn't set out to follow in his footsteps and I especially didn't set out to be in this community. 

But you need to know what it means to me that I get to pastor here. 

I'm a part of something that started long before me, and I'm sure will continue on long after me. 

The thing about ministry is that it's not a family business. It doesn't get passed down from parents to children quite like that. 

But at the same time, the Bible is full of stories that whisper of spiritual legacies. 

That's just about all Genesis is. David and Solomon, too. 

Paul reminded Timothy of his mother's and grandmother's faith. 

Now I'm here because of men and women down through the years carrying the gospel and giving it away. 

They carried it all the way across an ocean, through some dark and broken times, right on down to me. 

Now I live with the good news of who Jesus is. 

Because of Pawpaw and all who came before him. 

And now we get to be the ones who came before somebody else. 

We are now a part of someone else's spiritual legacy. 

The truth is a few generations from now no one will remember our names. 

But we'll get to give away another Name that far out lasts ours. 

At his funeral I had the opportunity to preach. What in the world do you say in a moment like that? 

I felt like God gave me a simple message: if you love Pawpaw, then you ought to love the God who made Pawpaw the way he was. 

I pray the same will be true for all of us. That we'll be made new by Jesus and people will see Him in us. 

I pray our legacy will be Jesus. 

So Happy Birthday Pawpaw. 

Jesus is being passed down to another generation just fine here in Cobb County. 

In Christ, 

Jonny Day