Overcoming the Nightmare of Losing My Children - Gerard Long
[00:00:00] Steve Gatena: We are blessed with God's grace, his life, power, and mercy are given to us unearned. God pours out his endless joy, goodness, and healing to those in need. His grace gives us the strength to endure all suffering and hardship. For God's grace is always with us. It's with us through our sins, our pain, our brokenness.
[00:00:36] Steve Gatena: And through God's grace, we may come to know that our suffering is never in vain. While God does not cause tragedies or suffering, sometimes he allows it, for God's plan is eternal and beyond our understanding. Sometimes God calls us to suffering so that he may use our brokenness to reach us. Sometimes it's our suffering that causes us to open our hearts and our minds giving them fully to God so that through his grace he can work to change our hearts and minds for the better.
[00:01:18] Steve Gatena: It is through his grace that we are renewed and granted the life that God wants for everyone. Peace, goodwill, love. Peace, goodwill, love. This is the message that Gerard Long shares with us this week on Pray.com's Relentless Hope Podcast. After suffering two sudden losses, the death of his 17 year old son to suicide and the death of his daughter in a drowning accident, Gerard found himself utterly devastated and completely broken.
[00:02:01] Steve Gatena: Gerard explains how he came to understand what God's grace truly means and how through God's grace, Gerard was rescued from his brokenness and his suffering. And we hear through God's grace how Gerard discovered God's calling for his life, and we hear about the new ministry that Gerard and his wife Jeannie started to help anyone broken, allowing God's grace to heal them too.
[00:02:32] Steve Gatena: Gerard teaches us that to be a great leader. We must put aside the will and desires of our egos and to lead based on God's will for us and our lives just as Jesus did. And like Jesus Gerard reminds us that great leaders must be willing to sacrifice that which they hold dearest to be a servant of God and to heed his calling.
[00:02:59] Steve Gatena: This is how we can best serve God's eternal and grand plan. Gerard teaches us that legacy is about how we'll be remembered after we're gone, and that the ultimate legacy we can leave is that we honored God's will for our lives, that we answered God's calling for us. And Gerard also reminds us that by God's grace, whatever he asks us to do, he grants us his strength, his power, and his joy to see it done.
[00:03:35] Steve Gatena: While we may live in a broken world with much suffering, Gerard's story shows us that sometimes God may use our suffering so that His grace may flow through our brokenness. His grace can heal our pain, and through his grace, God may use our suffering for His eternal power, His eternal plan, and His eternal purpose.
[00:04:04] Steve Gatena: After a trip to San Diego, Gerard Long experienced a great tragedy when Rebecca, Gerard's daughter went out for a run.
[00:04:14] Gerard Long: Well, in 2014, we were down in San Diego at a conference together, speaking together at that conference. I had to leave to go to a, an international conference in London with Jeannie, Rebecca stayed on, she had some other speaking engagements, and then on, on May the seventh, she went back to Chicago the next day, May the eighth, she went for a run and she went down to Lake Michigan. It was a very hot day, and she took her shoes and socks off and tried to cool down by the lake and we're not sure what happened next.
[00:04:45] Gerard Long: We know she had blood sugar issues. We think she, she fainted and fell into the lake and where she fell in, she couldn't get out. She tried to swim around to a boat ramp to get out. The water was 37 degrees, been a brutal winter, and she got into trouble. She started calling out for help. Four people saw her and called 911.
[00:05:08] Steve Gatena: In part one of this three part series on Relentless Hope, Gerard Long tells us his story of loss and success. By being blessed and undergoing tragic loss, Gerard Grew closer to God and started helping others who were struggling in their life.
[00:05:33] Gerard Long: I am very grateful for the heritage that God's given me, my family on my, my mom and my dad's side. Go back actually to the 16th century, the Huguenots, and, um, they've been following Jesus all that time. My parents had a wonderful walk with Christ, and I'm very grateful that, uh, they, they showed me what it looks like to, to follow Jesus.
[00:05:58] Gerard Long: And I've brought up on Bible stories and learned scripture, going to church, youth groups and things, and thankful to God that a very early age, probably four or five, I made a commitment to Jesus Christ very clearly, kneeling beside my sister's bed and asking Jesus to forgive me of my sins, to come into my heart, to be my savior, and to lead me on as a good shepherd in my life.
[00:06:22] Gerard Long: Although, you know, as I look back, I can see that I, I asked Jesus to be my savior, but I didn't really understand what it meant for him to be my Lord. And although I went on going to Christian camps and things like that, when I got into my mid-teens and I was speaking about Jesus at school, I really realized I was being a hypocrite.
[00:06:42] Gerard Long: And although I was talking about about Jesus and I knew he was real, my issue was I just couldn't make him Lord of my life. I didn't, didn't have it in me to do that. And I was living for myself, living contrary to what the Bible says, putting other people off.
[00:06:56] Gerard Long: And so I sort of made a, a bit of an agreement with the Lord. I said, if you, you take the backseat, so to speak, I'll take the steering wheel and I wanna do what I wanna do. And, uh, very self-centered. And I got into middle distance running. I was 800 meter runner I ate it, slept it, drank it, and got to a pretty high level ending up winning the English and Welsh University's championship for 800 meters.
[00:07:20] Gerard Long: And I was captain of the top track team in the country, which had, uh, Sebastian Coe who is a future, uh, gold, double gold Olympic champion. And some other Olympic, um, athletes as well. But you know, in that time, God in his mercy came after me, and through a number of circumstances in particular, I met this beautiful young lady called Jeannie uh, who was a ballerina and she'd been, she'd gone to the, the Royal Ballet School and through the love coming through her and some other things, uh, God started to speak to my heart and it came to a head on February the 14th, Fe, Valentine's Day, 1980. My brother had written to me the day before and said, Gerald, I know you got a plan for your life.
[00:08:04] Gerard Long: And I did. I had very clear objectives. I wanted to get to the Olympics. I wanted to make a lot of money be famous, but my brother wrote to me and said, Gerald, although you got a plan, I want you to know that God's got a plan for your life, and it's made out of perfect love. Well, I just couldn't get those words out of my mind.
[00:08:22] Gerard Long: And as I sat there, there was no one else around February the 14th. It was though God spoke to me and it wasn't a order board. It was very clear inside and he just said, Gerard if you go my way, you may not get all the things you want on the outside, but on the inside I'll give you fullness of life. And it was though a light came on inside, I came to understand that hey, you can get everything on the outside, but if inside you are miserable and lonely and haven't got any peace, you've got nothing.
[00:08:51] Gerard Long: But because God knows us, we don't have to have anything on the outside. If He's in our hearts, He can fill us with love, joy, peace, the things that really make life important. And so I, I did what the Bible talks about as to repent. I turned around and said, okay, God, from here on, I really want You to be Lord.
[00:09:09] Gerard Long: I want to do e everything and anything You want me to do, I want to go Your way and not my way. And at that point of doing that, I was filled with this incredible love. That's the only way I can describe that, liquid love filled my heart. And, uh, now I know it was the Holy Spirits as in Romans 5:5, that, that God pours His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
[00:09:32] Gerard Long: I fell in love with Jesus. I couldn't put the Bible down. I wanted to share with my friends, and I stopped swearing overnight. I was really washed through inside as it were, and it was a complete transformation. I'd been one of the lads on campus, uh, sleeping around, doing little things that young men do as well as pursuing my, my goal as an athlete and now I was just living for Jesus. It was a complete, complete turnaround.
[00:09:57] Gerard Long: Well, genie came to faith in Christ. Uh, we ended up getting married. We surrendered everything to Christ. Uh, running her, her ballet. Had a business, gave it all up, and we felt God leading us to London. And I took up an executive, uh, management scheme with a top international bank.
[00:10:14] Gerard Long: So there I was 22 years old. Um, we got involved with a very vibrant church in Central London, which I ended up pastoring with a couple of other guys for 17 years or so. And I was doing tent making, which basically means that my, I was working at the same time as pastoring. The three of us shared the leadership of the church and my tent making was banking and got, uh, I was in the city of London and in the corporate world, and I really understood that it was so easy for my heart to go cold towards Jesus.
[00:10:45] Gerard Long: And Matthew 6:33 became a watchword for us. Uh, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will follow.
[00:10:52] Gerard Long: Well, as long as I, as I was doing that, I was saying, Lord, I wanna see your kingdom come at work. I want to, we started praying. We saw a mini revival in the early nineties, and we saw people come to faith in Christ.
[00:11:03] Gerard Long: Six prayer meetings going on around the city, lots of things happening. And as that was happening, God was promoting me. Um, I never once sought a promotion, but I was promoted up and up within the bank. Ended up le leading the bank's Y2K initiative, millennium bug, um, and ended up working with the government, used to go to Town Street.
[00:11:22] Gerard Long: Ended up sharing a platform with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, uh, quoted in the front page and newspaper. Even the USA Today had a, one of my quotes at the time on tv. It had to be God because it wasn't me. I mean, he, God put me in that place. Well, it was an, it was an amazing opportunity there. 2001, we were called to the usa, had never intended to go overseas, but God clearly called us.
[00:11:46] Gerard Long: And then in 2003, the bank I was working for, HSBC, a big international bank, asked me to do, to manage the integration between HSBC and Household International, a 13.8 billion acquisition. So that was a huge job.
[00:12:00] Gerard Long: I moved, moved to, to Chicago now, uh, as an ex expat international banker on a very high salary, 2004. I remember saying to Jeannie Jeannie does it get any better than this? We had a both had a close walk with Jesus. We had a wonderful marriage. We had three amazing children who were great athletes, very bright, popular. We were in a great church. We were doing a thing, a course called Alpha in our, in our home, seeing people come to faith in Christ, living in this beautiful, beautiful house in a place called Lake Forest on the north shore of Chicago.
[00:12:36] Gerard Long: Does it get any better than this? It was amazing. The interesting thing was just not long after that, uh, 2005, it was as though Satan had been released to attack us. And whereas everything had turned a goal, so to speak, that we did, now everything started to fall apart. It was like, like a situation with Job, so to speak.
[00:12:57] Gerard Long: Well, we got to the bottom of the valley when, uh, the end of the year, November the eighth, our precious, youngest son, Alex, he was 17 years old and he was trying to help a boy at school, and the boy was a troubled, troubled child. And anyway, Alex ended up taking a drug with this boy and he became delusional and paranoid.
[00:13:19] Gerard Long: And on November the eighth, Alex, he snuck out of our home and went down to the beach side and committed suicide. I ne I never try and describe the pain of of that time, the words, there's not words to describe it. We'd never come across suicide at all. And now we're facing this darkness, such darkness. My precious wife, Jeannie, she went from shock to horror to anger. To terrible blame.
[00:13:50] Gerard Long: That's a horrible thing with suicide. It's not just the, the deep, deep grief, grief of, of missing your child, but it's the blame. Why didn't you do something about it? Why didn't you see it happening? She hated herself. She hated God. She hated me. And our marriage became with, came within a thread of failing and in the end, she lost her faith.
[00:14:11] Gerard Long: She couldn't reconcile how a loving God could have allowed this to happen to us. We served him with all our hearts for 24 years or so, and now this in such a horrible way. And she lost her faith for, for two years. Well, as much as Jeannie ran away from God, I ran into God and I'd get up in the middle of the night and I'd go down to my study and I would weep until I had no more tears to cry.
[00:14:36] Gerard Long: Uh, night after night, I was totally and utterly broken. And in that darkness, in those times when I cried out to God, why? Why God, why? What is, what's going on here? Uh, God showed me three clear things. The first thing I came to understand was God's grace at another level, yes, we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus, but I came to understand that actually grace is Jesus Himself.
[00:15:01] Gerard Long: It's everything we need to do God's will, to, to do the things that God has called us to in our lives. And specifically that time, I needed more love because Jeannie was hating me. I was trying to love her. I knew as a, as a husband, I needed to love my love, Jeannie. Lay my life down for her as Jesus did for the church.
[00:15:22] Gerard Long: But I was, I was getting, I was so empty. Uh, human love only goes so far. And I remember twice very clearly saying to God, I just can't do this anymore, and as I wept before God, but I'd say, I know that you want me to. So I'd just ask you, please give me more love for Jeannie and I'd go to bed and I'd wake up and the next morning and there would be more love in my heart for Jeannie, and I knew that was God's grace cuz I'd come to the end of myself. It had to be him.
[00:15:48] Gerard Long: So I understand, I understood then that God's grace is there for everyone who would receive Jesus. It's grace we all live, whether the believers or unbelievers by common grace. But then as, as followers of Jesus, he gives a specific grace for the work that he's called us to do.
[00:16:03] Gerard Long: And I understood that at another level. The second thing I saw in that darkness was eternity. And I came to understand very clearly what scripture says, that this life is just a vapor, it's just a breath. And relative to eternity, the pain and the suffering we may be going through now, as the Bible says, is not comparable with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
[00:16:24] Gerard Long: I came to understand that at a deep, deep level, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has put eternity in the heart of a man. And I think in my brokenness, my broken heart eternity was released. I came to understand it, so, so very clearly.
[00:16:39] Gerard Long: We're just two months after Alex went home, um, my sister, my precious sister, uh, I got a phone call from the UK and I was asked to get over there because she was about to pass.
[00:16:51] Gerard Long: She had bone cancer. I raced over to, uh, to where she was in a hospice. Went down and just got there. She'd hung on. I asked her to hang on, hang on. She'd hung on for me to get there. And just before she went, she'd semi-conscious on the, on her bed, she's suddenly sitting up, bolt up, right, her eyes suddenly open. And she's staring. And my mom, who's a very godly woman, she said, I know what's happening. She's seeing Jesus.
[00:17:15] Gerard Long: And that was all part of the eternity that God was showing to me. At that time, I realized that, hey, we pass from this age and we go into eternity. CS Lewis describes it the best. He said, this life is just a cover page of a never ending story.
[00:17:28] Gerard Long: And when you see eternity, actually it turns everything upside down. Now you understand that if God calls, calls us to suffering, yes, there is a calling. If you look through the scriptures all through the Bible where anyone God used, they went through incredible suffering, right? This, the center of our faith is the suffering of the cross, where Jesus, the precious sinless son of God is tortured before His heavenly Father, His mother, and His loved ones and the angels.
[00:17:54] Gerard Long: And yet, through that God rescues the world. And so God, yes, sometimes he permits suffering. He never causes it, but he permits it for a, for a greater eternal purpose. And I, you see that with Joseph, for example, with, with Peter, Jesus said, Satan has sought to sift you. Peter, I've prayed that your faith would not fail.
[00:18:13] Gerard Long: So I, I realized, okay, God, You're, You're, You've allowed this for a, for an eternal plan and purpose, which outweighs the pain that we're going through. And then the third thing that God showed me in that darkness was his heart. For those who are suffering here on earth, we live in a broken world. We live in a world that's rebelled against God. That's pushed God out.
[00:18:32] Gerard Long: And as God said right from the beginning, in doing that will cause death. And we see the consequence of rejecting God in a broken world where there's so, so much suffering. In 2017, the World Health Organization said there's, there's, um, uh, the greatest illness now globally is depression. And the greatest source of death for those under 35 is suicide.
[00:18:58] Gerard Long: And as I was there weeping one night in the middle of the night, uh, from the bottom of my stomach, I was crying. I felt an arm around me and it was so real. I looked up to see who was there, but there was no one there physically. But then I realized that there was someone there.
[00:19:14] Gerard Long: It was Jesus, and he had his arm around me. But what I noticed most of all was that He was weeping. He was weeping with me. And I realized then that God sees all the suffering in this world, every bit of pain, the pain behind the faces with the smile, the pain behind the closed doors, uh, the pain across this world, and it breaks his heart so very much.
[00:19:37] Gerard Long: Well then some people say, well, hang on, why doesn't he stop it all? And the answer is, he is gonna, there's gonna be a day when this age comes to an end. But when that day comes and there's no more opportunity for people to receive Jesus or reject him as we have today, that will be a final day of this age. And then we go into eternity either with God, if we've accepted Jesus or if we've rejected Him, we go into our chosen destiny apart from God.
[00:20:03] Gerard Long: And so there's a dilemma. Every day is another day for people to come to know Jesus, but also every day it causes God great pain and great suffering as he sees what's going on.
[00:20:14] Gerard Long: Well, I saw that God was working something in us at that time. Well, shortly around this time when I was seeing eternity, I was asked to come and lead Alpha USA. Alpha's a wonderful, wonderful program that introduces people to Jesus Christ. We've been running it since 1995 in our home and in the workplace and in different places.
[00:20:34] Gerard Long: And now I'm being asked to, to lead this incredible organization that's, uh, allowing people to come to meet with Jesus in a very non-religious, non-threatening way. And it was amazing. So I, I stepped down from my executive program with the HSBC and joined Alpha in 2007 and was with them until the end of, uh, 2014.
[00:20:53] Gerard Long: Well, shortly after I joined them, um, uh, Rebecca, she'd been doing an MBA, she was brilliant, brilliant athlete, very bright. Uh, she was at Leeds University and she was asked to go into corporate world, a beautiful young lady. And she, she said to, to Jeannie and me, she said, you know what? I, my heart's so broken, so broken because of Alex going home.
[00:21:16] Gerard Long: I just can't stand the thought of young people dying without knowing Jesus. And I want to come and join you at Alpha, dad. And so she did. It was a very sweet time for, for 10 years when she was around, she would be living with us. I had the joy of driving with her to work every day. We'd stop for a Starbucks on the way and pray together. It was a sweet time.
[00:21:38] Gerard Long: And, uh, Rebecca and I started to, to speak together on various, uh, conferences and platforms up and down the country. And she became the national director for Alpha Youth. And as a consequence of what she did, many, many, uh, young people came to know Jesus. Well, in 2014, we were down in San Diego at a conference together, speaking together at that conference.
[00:21:59] Gerard Long: I had to leave to go to a, an international conference in London with Jeannie. Rebecca stayed on, she had some other speaking engagements, and then on, on May the seventh, she went back to Chicago, the next day, may the eighth, she went for a run and she went down to Lake Michigan. It was a very hot day.
[00:22:17] Gerard Long: And she took her shoes and socks off and tried to cool down by the lake and we're not sure what happened next. We know she had blood sugar issues. We think she, she fainted and fell into the lake and where she fell in, she couldn't get out. She tried to swim around to a boat ramp to get out. The water was 37 degrees, been a brutal winter, and she got into trouble.
[00:22:40] Gerard Long: She started calling out for help. Four people saw her and called 911, but it was too late. She got hypothermia and Rebecca drowned.
[00:22:52] Gerard Long: It was such a painful time, such a painful time again. Precious Jeannie who had, who had surfaced again, come back to faith, our marriage had been restored. Now she's plunged right down again into the depths of grief, and she realized that she couldn't go on. She was too broken and she was gonna take her life, and she went up to the her to Rebecca's room and she wasn't gonna come out of that room.
[00:23:20] Gerard Long: But as she opened the door, it was like a heavenly light came into the room. She didn't see any physical being, but it was the presence of God there, was so very, very real. She slumped the floor. God spoke many things to her, but one thing was very poignant. God said to her, Jeannie your grief is not your own.
[00:23:42] Gerard Long: While Jeannie came downstairs, after that encounter, I looked up and I, she was completely changed. A bit like Moses up the mountain when he was in the presence of God, her face was glowing and all that darkness had gone. The terrible grief and pain had been lifted and she was shining with the God's glory on her.
[00:24:01] Gerard Long: Shortly after that, one of our friends came in and said, this... exactly the same thing. And then the third person, later that night, we went, we were due to go to meet some dear friends, and the lady said again, exactly the same thing. Jeannie what has happened to you? Three witnesses, to the presence of God that changed Jeannie.
[00:24:19] Gerard Long: So now Jeannie and I were just totally broken, absolutely broken, desperately missing our precious children, Rebecca and Alex. And we're saying, okay, God, we don't like this cup. It's a very bitter cup. But by your grace, and only by your grace, if you want us to, to walk this walk, we pray that you'd now use us for your glory.
[00:24:41] Gerard Long: And so after that, it was very clear God was leading us to start a, a new ministry called Awakening to God Ministries, which is all about, uh, helping people who are suffering. It's based on Isaiah 61:4.
[00:24:53] Gerard Long: The verse is that Jesus quoted when he started his ministry, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind not the brokenhearted, bring release for captives and freedom from darkness for the prisoners. And so we, that's what we'd been doing now for the last four years. We're helping the poor, the poorest of the poor in India with clean water, mosquito nets, medical aid, and food.
[00:25:17] Gerard Long: We've got a target of a hundred villages. Uh, we've already, we've already got funds for 67 villages. We've done 30, 30 already. Um, the brokenhearted come to us all the time. We have over 700,000 followers on on Facebook. And always getting messages of the broken. We've just started to think called the Warrior Program, where we're encouraging others by God's grace to allow God to turn around whatever bad things has happened in their lives.
[00:25:44] Gerard Long: Maybe abuse as a child, maybe, God forbid, they've lost a child like Jeannie and, and, and we have, and I have. Or it could be the breakup of a relationship. Any of those things. We know that God wants to turn it around for good now to help those who are suffering. And so we've started this amazing program. Uh, we hope there'll be thousands in the end, reaching out those who are addicted to drugs, those who are suicidal, those who are depressed, those who have lost hope.
[00:26:12] Gerard Long: And we can say, if God can rescue us by his grace, he can rescue anyone and he can rescue you too. And so that's, uh, that's, yeah, that's our story. Uh, it carries on. And, uh, we wanna see at the end of the day, Jesus, his name, his glory, his loveliness lifted up through our brokenness.
[00:26:38] Gerard Long: Real leadership is doing God's will, mission, vision, character. That's what leadership is. Now those will follow that, they'll see it. Another aspect of leadership that I I think is very important, um, is that we are, we persevere. We don't give up even when it gets really tough, when it's really hurting. I love when you see Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane when He was facing the weight of the cross, the pain of seeing His, His mother, watching Him die in the cross in great pain, pain of his seeing his disciples scatter.
[00:27:12] Gerard Long: I don't think He thought too much about himself, but He thought about the pain of others. That's just how Jesus was. And he cried out in Luke 22, we read in 42. Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. That's great leadership. Someone who will see through the calling on their lives.
[00:27:36] Steve Gatena: In part two of this three part series on Relentless Hope, Gerard explains that great leadership derives from mission, vision, and character. By starting with these three things and finishing the work, anyone can become a great leader.
[00:27:57] Gerard Long: What is leadership? Well, my understanding of a leader is someone that others want to follow. And as I look in my, my life, I remember the early examples of leadership started with my mum and dad, and I saw in them things that I wanted to emulate later in my life. My mom, for example, she had a very close walk with Jesus Christ.
[00:28:19] Gerard Long: And I always remember going into her room and I'd see her kneeling beside her bed, her Bible open. She wouldn't look up. She was in, in fellowship with, with God. And uh, that touched me and my dad was an incredibly loving guy. I've never met anyone since him who loves so much. I saw him love my mom. And that was always very attractive to me.
[00:28:43] Gerard Long: Their marriage was amazing, but also he loved others. I never heard him, ever, speak a bad word about anyone. He, he never let any unwholesome words out of his, outta his mouth. So they were great role models, leaders, if you like that. I want, want to, to follow.
[00:28:58] Gerard Long: Then there was, I remember a, a great guy called Roger Price. Uh, he was my geography teacher at school actually, and I was very impressed with the joy that he had in his life. He was a lot of fun to be around. Later, um, I ended up coming to Faith in Christ, uh, being filled with the Holy Spirit. We used to go to his church. He left step down from teaching. Um, became a bible, very brilliant, Bible teacher. He's now in heaven.
[00:29:23] Gerard Long: Then another, uh, leader in the church who was a, who was John Bank, and he was one of the pastors I was pastoring. He was a senior pastor and he had a, just a great sense of humor. He held everything so, so lightly. Uh, he understood God's grace in a special way, and, and he was able to see things in a different way.
[00:29:43] Gerard Long: Often he would be laughing his head off, you, you thought you had quite a serious issue, and he'd just be laughing because he was seeing the bigger picture and understood it. And then there's a couple of guys who I was also pastoring with in London, Nick West and Paul Hickman, who I think are just such great examples of leaders.
[00:29:59] Gerard Long: Perseverance said they're pastored, still pastoring the church that I was pastoring with them many years ago. They've been there for nearly 40 years now, in a really tough part of London. Uh, so much opposition, and yet they've been faithful. But of course for me, the, the greatest leader of all, uh, is Jesus himself.
[00:30:19] Gerard Long: Yes, fully God, but also fully man. And when I see how He walked in this earth, I, I just find Him incredibly beautiful, very attractive, very inspirational, and I, I wanna follow, I wanna follow him. And I, when I say to people, I'm a follower of Jesus, if I can get anywhere near how he walked, I'd be so grateful.
[00:30:38] Gerard Long: And there's really three, three parts of, of a great leader. The first one is mission. They, they understand the why. Why, uh, why am I here on Earth? If they're leading an organization, why is this organization existing? What, why we here? Jesus knew very clearly His mission. He came ultimately to be our substitute, to take the punishment that we all deserve for our sins when he died in a cross, shed His blood that we might be forgiven to bring us into a relationship with God for eternity.
[00:31:13] Gerard Long: And He set his face, it says, like flint, towards the cross. He knew his mission. , but also on the way, His mission was to show what God's love looks like. He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so he showed us what love is, and that's for us, every, any Christ follower. That's our first mission, is to show people God's love. It's the great command to love God, be filled with his love by the Holy Spirit, and then to love other people.
[00:31:41] Gerard Long: And then of course, the other great, the great, it's a great commission we talk about at the end of Matthew, where we're taking up the baton that Jesus has passed on to us to be, has his ambassadors, to share the great news of the gospel of Jesus, that he came as our savior to rescue us.
[00:31:58] Gerard Long: For anyone who put their faith in him and can come have their sins forgiven, be with God for eternity. That's, that's why we're here. That's our mission. Jesus said that where I am, that you may be also, He wants us with us through the pain that we've been through. I, I can't wait to be honest, to be in heaven, but I know that I'm here on a mission.
[00:32:17] Gerard Long: There's a specific work that God's got for me to do. The second key part of being a great leader is vision. What is vision? Vision's the ability to be very clear on the objectives. It's the what? What are we trying to achieve When God spoke to the children of Israel? He gave them a very clear dimensions. Here's the land that I've given you from the Nega, uh, through, through Lebanon up to the, the Great Euphrates. He, he gave them something that is measurable. And the key thing of me, uh, of a vision is that you can measure it. So when the great commission, it says it's the Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the Earth, it's, you can measure it.
[00:32:58] Gerard Long: For us as Christ followers that relates to family and friends. We should first and foremost be thinking about our family, showing God's love if we're married, then for men laying our lives down for our wives as Christ did for the church, for our friends, wanting to show them what God's love looks like. And ultimately being able to tell them and share with them about Jesus.
[00:33:20] Gerard Long: Our workplace. Um, thirdly, it's our town, it's our city where we're living. And then fourthly, it's the world. So that's the, that's the vision. That's the dimensions of where we're, where we should be operating as Christ followers.
[00:33:35] Gerard Long: And then the third, and the big part of being a leader is character. Is character.
[00:33:41] Gerard Long: That's the how, if you like.
[00:33:43] Gerard Long: Um, and the first thing about that is that you should be able to lead yourself. Because a lot of character's about what happens when people are not looking at you, what's happening in the unseen area. And that's a pr, a process. Our character is being transformed. Thank goodness. I'm very pleased for that, that God is working on me, cuz I know there's so many areas that I need to be changed.
[00:34:07] Gerard Long: The theologians call it a process of sanctification. It's, it's a process whereby the Holy Spirit works on us to reveal Jesus through us. And 2 Corinthians 3:18, it says that we all with unveiled faces as beholding the Lord, as we're looking at Jesus are being transformed. That's the word.
[00:34:29] Gerard Long: Metamorphosis is being transformed into his lightness, even by the spirit of God. So it's an ongoing process. Um, one way of looking at this is that God has saved us. We are spiritually, we, we have been saved. We are being saved each day, we're being transformed, and we will finally be saved when Jesus comes back and we receive our new body.
[00:34:52] Gerard Long: But there's a process going on now, and it comes from within. And character is oh, so very important. And at the core of character is love. It's, that's what we're looking to see more and more in our lives. And, uh, second Corinthians, uh, chapter 13, it talks about love in a very clear, very specific way and ends up the impossible.
[00:35:15] Gerard Long: Says you can move mountains with your faith. You can do great things, you can give your body to the flames, all of those things, but if you haven't got love, you haven't got anything. And so this part of our walk of Christ is very important. Love. What is love? Well, it's not as the world says. Um, the Bible says the first thing of love is patience.
[00:35:37] Gerard Long: Patience to understand that God's ultimately in control. He's the sovereign God. He's over all things. We don't have to panic. We don't have to be impatient with our loved ones or with our work colleagues. God's over it. We can hold things lightly, so to speak. Love is kind, loving kindness is a wonderful trait that we can be kind to people, people who can't do anything for us, to the janitor or whoever, that we're kind, we're kind and loving people.
[00:36:06] Gerard Long: We don't envy. We're humble. Humility, basically dependence on God. Uh, not, we're not proud. Pride thinks that you can do it. Actually, you can't do anything apart from God. So humility is, is very important as Christians to understand all the time, any gifts we got are are specifically from God for a purpose for the work that he's got us to do.
[00:36:28] Gerard Long: Love is not selfish, not easily angered. It forgives, it's loyal, trusts, hopes. It always perseveres. So these are really, really key characteristics and thank, thank goodness, thank God that it were being changed. I can look at that list and think, oh boy, I've got to so many areas I need to, to grow in, but God's working on me.
[00:36:50] Gerard Long: Uh, it says in Philippians 2:13, God's working in you to willing to act for his good pleasure. And so when we look at Jesus, we see how he modeled what God's love looks like. He modeled what a real leader is, his character. And that's why those disciples just love being around Him.
[00:37:07] Gerard Long: Micah 6:8 says, the Lord has shown you a man what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
[00:37:19] Gerard Long: Well, I've had the privilege to lead, um, many big organizations. I, I led, uh, the Y2K initiative in HSBC, I led Alpha USA for many years, and I remember at a time there, it was a very difficult time in the sense that every two weeks we had payroll, we had about 60, 70 people or so on our payroll.
[00:37:42] Gerard Long: And because we were a nonprofit, we totally relied on gifts coming in. And I would say at that time, when I was leading Alpha, there was probably 80% of the time, uh, we would have our, uh, finance meeting on the Monday or the Tuesday. Payroll was Thursday. We had to have money in the account for Thursday, for payroll on Friday.
[00:38:03] Gerard Long: 80% of the time we didn't have any money ready by Monday or Tuesday. And so it was a time of always having to cry out to God. And I understood in those times, God's grace flowing. Uh, God gives you the grace to do the things he's called you to do. Uh, Hebrews 13, 20 and 21. That through Jesus the great, uh, shepherd of the sheep, he will equip you with everything we need to do his will.
[00:38:28] Gerard Long: And so I would be desperate, crying out to God. This is a time of great brokenness in my life as well. And this went on and on for years. And I remember I made a mistake. I made a mistake in that time. Um, I failed as a leader because I wanted to, I was getting a bit fed up, to be honest, with having to bear this weight on my own pretty much.
[00:38:48] Gerard Long: And so I decided I'm gonna share it with some of the le other leaders in, in Alpha. And the interesting thing was, you see, God had given me grace to bear the weight. It's just that I was moving away from that. I was, I was failing as it were. And the others couldn't, couldn't cope with it. And so it was a very difficult time because they was, people struggled with what was going on.
[00:39:12] Gerard Long: And it was my mistake. I should never have done that. So I've learned through many years, mistakes in leadership, and you learn from your mistakes. But one thing we can recognize is God's grace. And ultimately through all of it, God's watching our heart. It's our heart that he looks for. Man looks on the outward appearance, and so often leaders today, they're trying to do this and do that.
[00:39:36] Gerard Long: At the end of the day, we're, we're, it's more, far more important to be human beings as opposed to human doings. And God wants our hearts. He can ch, he can change anything at any time. He can do anything he wants, but he's looking for our hearts. He's looking to work in us for his good pleasure.
[00:39:55] Gerard Long: It's interesting with Joseph, when he was being molded in his time of great brokenness, he was put in, uh, as a slave for 10 years. Then he was in, in, um, prison for two years forcefully accused by Potiphar's wife put in jail and we, we read in Psalm 105 that he had the shackles on him, he had an iron around his neck. Rabbinical teaching says that those verses actually mean that God was putting iron in his soul. And that's often what happens when we're going through a hard time. God's putting iron in our soul for what he has for us, not just in this age, but in the age to come.
[00:40:32] Gerard Long: God's preparing a people that are eager to do his will.
[00:40:37] Gerard Long: Well, one of my favorite scriptures that tie in with that is Proverbs 4:23, and this is one of the things I often encourage young people to, to hold on to. Above everything else my son, keep your heart for out of it flows the wellspring of life. What does that mean? Well, we're basically talking about keeping a heart that's in love with Jesus Christ. That's the most important thing, that we love him with everything we've got. Because when that love is filling our hearts, our one passion is to do his will.
[00:41:10] Gerard Long: You know when you really love someone, maybe it's your wife, maybe it's your mom or dad. Maybe it's a friend. You wanna please them. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 says, the love of Christ compels us, the apostle Paul said he'd just been talking about all of his pain and suffering for the first four chapters pretty much.
[00:41:28] Gerard Long: He's now saying the love of Christ compels us for we're convinced that one died for all and he died for all of those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. And so the heart of a leader is first and foremost, it's God's will.
[00:41:44] Gerard Long: Jesus modeled that when he was here on Earth. Remember he said several times I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of Him, He sent me. My food is to do His will. And that should be our heart. First and foremost is to please God. That's why in the unseen areas, if we live like that, people may not see what we're doing, but God sees it.
[00:42:04] Gerard Long: Mother Teresa has a great, great saying, and uh, she said this, she said, I don't pray for success. I pray for faithfulness. You see, at the end of the day, what really counts is what God says about our walk. We all want to hear those great words. Well done good and faithful servant, you ran a good race. And that's what we want.
[00:42:23] Gerard Long: And when you see the eternal perspective, you realize it's not worth living for anything other than for God's will while you are here on earth. Someone said, once when we get to heaven, Jesus will ask us two questions. number one, did you love? And number two, who did you bring with you?
[00:42:42] Gerard Long: And that's a lovely way of thinking about our lives is, is thinking, okay, Lord, it's whatever you want me to do. I'll do it. I like to think of it being on a frictionless surface. Um, that, that you'll go wherever you want, God wants you to go. Um, He'll send you wherever you, you are, and you'll be willing to go and do whatever He wants you to do to lay your life down as He wants you to lay your life down. You know, and that may be to be a preacher and a teacher.
[00:43:08] Gerard Long: It may be to be in banking for 30 years like I was. It may be to be working at home. It may be to be in, in the corporate world in some way in finance or banking. I mean, look at the disciples. They were a mixed bunch of people, business people, fishermen, finance, all sorts of different areas they are in.
[00:43:26] Gerard Long: You see, uh, calling is whatever God wants us to be, where he wants us to be shining for him. Real leadership is doing God's will, mission, vision, character. That's what leadership is. Now, those who follow that, they'll see it.
[00:43:40] Gerard Long: Another aspect of leadership that I, I think is very important, um, is that we are, we persevere.
[00:43:48] Gerard Long: We don't give up, even when it gets really tough, when it's really hurting. I love when you see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he was facing the weight of the cross, the pain of seeing his, his mother, watching him die in the cross in great pain, the pain of his seeing his disciples scatter. I don't think he thought too much about himself, but he thought about the pain of others. That's just how Jesus was.
[00:44:11] Gerard Long: And he cried out in Luke 22, we read in 42. Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. That's great leadership. Someone who will see through the calling on their lives. Winston Churchill, who led Britain through the darkest years when Nazi Germany was about to crush them, he said, never ever, ever, ever give up.
[00:44:40] Gerard Long: And that's a great word. If you wanna be a great leader, you will see through the calling by God's grace. Of course, the other area of, of, uh, of being a leader is that you know where your source of life comes from. You know, where your source of strength comes from. You might remember the story of David, um, in Chronicles when he was in a really dire strait.
[00:45:01] Gerard Long: Um, his, he was being cha had been chased by, by king Saul to kill him. Um, he'd been, his, his men have been overtaken by the Amalekites, they've taken his, his, his wife and children. His men were about to stone him. He was in a desperate state. And a little verse there says, I think it's the 2 Chronicles 30:6, he says, David strengthened himself in God.
[00:45:25] Gerard Long: And as a leader, we need to know how to strengthen ourself in God. And that means we'll be people of great prayer. We'll be prayer worries. Any, any men and women of God through the Bible, through history, you'll always fight that. Find at their core. They were great prayer warriors.
[00:45:42] Gerard Long: They spent time in God's presence like Jesus modeled, He modeled it for us. And of course, they were great people of the word as well, because it's God's word that gives us strength inside, we hold onto his promises and also great people open to the Holy Spirit. He's the one who gives us the power. Jesus himself said, I can do, on my own I can do nothing.
[00:46:02] Gerard Long: Disciples prior to Pentecost were weakened, timid, and then the Holy Spirit came and he empowered them to be God's witnesses. Another great thing of leadership is courage. When God spoke to, spoke to Joshua, to go in to take the promised land and we're here to take land for the kingdom of God, he spoke to Joshua and He said to him, be strong, and that comes for the Holy Spirit. Be strong and be very courageous.
[00:46:30] Gerard Long: What is courage? Courage is a willingness to do what's right, whatever the cost. To go for it, to be willing to lay your life down, to see God's kingdom come. I love what William Carey, he's known as the father of missions, um, in this 1700s, he went to India and he said, expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
[00:46:57] Gerard Long: And so leaders who will be people with a vision, people who've got great character, Daniel 11:32, it says, those who know their God will be strong and do exploits and a willingness to hold on whatever the cost. So for me, that's what leadership is. Jesus modeled it, mission, vision, great character, and a willingness to lay your life down and finish the work.
[00:47:21] Gerard Long: John 17:4. Jesus said, I've brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
[00:47:34] Gerard Long: The early church who, when the plagues came to a city, everybody ran away except for the Christians. They stayed and they cared for the sick and the dying. And so much so their lives were so an example of God's love and God's power that Constantine later said, these Christians have got the power that we don't understand. We gotta all become Christians. And he, he declared that they were, Christianity would be the religion of the Roman Empire, but what were they doing? They were letting their light shine before men, that man, they could see their good deeds and glorify their father in heaven.
[00:48:07] Gerard Long: And we see it all through scripture that God takes the broken, he takes the untouchables, he takes the ones that the world said, they can never be any good. They can't do anything. And he turns them around.
[00:48:22] Steve Gatena: In part three of this three part series on Relentless Hope, Gerard explains how we're called to pass on our mission to new people. By empathizing with others, we can leave a legacy of helping others despite our differences.
[00:48:43] Gerard Long: What do we understand by legacy, or my understanding of legacy is what I, what will I be remembered for? Uh, what are the things that I would like people to, to see that I've left behind for them? The very basic, I suppose if you boil it down to a few words, it would be, what, what do I want on my gravestone, so to speak?
[00:49:04] Gerard Long: And I think for me that would be he loved Jesus. Um, making it more specific and, and wider, I would like to pass on the things, the treasures that God has shown me on my journey on this earth. The one ways that I come to understand God and in his glory, we have a ministry called Awakening to God Ministries, and I'd love people to have an awakening in their lives to what I've seen of God's glory. And what I mean by that is his beauty, his loving kindness.
[00:49:38] Gerard Long: Says in Jeremiah 9:23 and 24, they're not the wise man boast in his wisdom or the strong man boast in his strength, or the rich man boast in his riches. But let him who boast in this, that he knows and understands me, that I am the God who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. In these I delight declares the Lord.
[00:50:01] Gerard Long: And so I'd love to be able to pass on the, the beauty of God that I've come to see even in our utter brokenness. We've been through great, great brokenness to me and, uh, our, our son Ben, in the passing of Alex, our youngest son, Rebecca, our daughter, into heaven. I've seen God show me things of himself that, uh, are so amazing, his sovereignty for example, the fact that God is over all things says in Hebrews 1, that he holds everything together by the power of his word. In other words, the atoms are all held together. Anything on this earth functions, because God's allows it to function. We call it common grace. Everybody on this earth, every living being, uh, lives and exists and has their being because God allows us to, he holds it together.
[00:50:54] Gerard Long: When you see that power, that sovereignty, God sees all things. He knows all things. You come to realize that God's working a much bigger eternal plan through what we see going on here on Earth. And that helps us. It helps us in our individual lives when things don't go to plan, for example.
[00:51:13] Gerard Long: I mentioned in the, uh, podcast we did on our life, how our lives fell apart Jeanny and I, uh, when our youngest son, uh, in 2005 at 17 years old, committed suicide. That shouldn't have happened. . We had been following Jesus. We'd been praying the blood of of Jesus over our children. We'd been doing everything we thought we could do to lay our lives down for God. And then that happened.
[00:51:37] Gerard Long: How do you explain that? How do you answer that big question? Why God? And God showed me in that time eternity. He showed me that he's working things in our lives for an eternal plan and purpose that outweighs the pain that we were going through. Scripture talks many times about that, in fact, to the apostle Paul who spoke so much about his suffering and how God was using it for his grace to flow through his brokenness to touch others.
[00:52:05] Gerard Long: 2 Corinthians in 4:16-18, the Apostle Paul says, therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we're wasting away, inwardly we're being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all.
[00:52:25] Gerard Long: Therefore we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen for what is seen is temporary, for what is unseen is eternal. And so when you start to get a bigger, an awakening to a bigger understanding of who God is and his eternal plan, you realize that this life is just a vapor. It helps you to see things differently in the things in our lives.
[00:52:48] Gerard Long: It turns everything upside down. When you see that, then you really should only be living for God's will and you'd only be living for, uh, to do his work here on earth. Nothing to do with ourselves. Jesus modeled it only to do his will, and part of that awakening is an awakening to the cross of Jesus. In, in John 12, Jesus spoke, if anyone wants to follow him, uh, he talk, he talked about the grain of wheat has to fall to the ground and die.
[00:53:15] Gerard Long: If it dies, it brings forth much fruit. And that's about us laying our lives down, denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. And part of the big, uh, awakening that Jeannie and I have, which we pass on, is an awakening to sometimes, not always, but sometimes God calls us to suffering. It's a calling, a calling on our lives.
[00:53:40] Gerard Long: Now, sometimes we bring suffering on our, on ourselves through the bad decisions. We go against what God says not to do, and we do it. And that causes suffering. And we, we learn that, hey, if God says not to do, it's for a reason. But other times the suffering that happens in this world, just because we live in a broken world and it affects us even as followers of Jesus, sometimes God will permit it.
[00:54:02] Gerard Long: He never causes evil, but sometimes he may permit it for his eternal power plan and purpose. We see that with the story of Joseph, for example, all through the bible. Great suffering from many people, old and New Testament and all through history, God, God does it for some reason, uh, for sometimes to, so that his grace can come through our brokenness.
[00:54:24] Gerard Long: So it's an, it's an awakening to God's glory, awakening to God's ways. Uh, it's an awakening to His call on our lives, and that's what I'd love to pass on as a legacy that people will not only see God in a, in a bigger way, but also see that He's called each one of us to a specific work. Ephesians 2:10, it talks about a work that He's planned for us from the creation of this universe in Christ Jesus.
[00:54:50] Gerard Long: Jeremiah 29:11, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to bless you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
[00:55:00] Gerard Long: And so when you see that, when you see eternity, when you see God's glory, when you see that he's got a plan for us, then it helps to set us free to live only for God's will on this earth.
[00:55:12] Gerard Long: Why would you live for anything else other than his will? It wouldn't make no any sense at all. Jesus spoke about building up treasure in heaven, and that's one of the things that we rarely hear spoken about in church today, but over a hundred times in the New Testament, it speaks about the, the, the eternal, um, the the eternal gifts, um, and rewards, the eternal rewards that God has got for us, for our faithfulness here on earth.
[00:55:39] Gerard Long: Now, these aren't selfish rewards. Thank, thank goodness, thank God that in heaven it'll all be about Jesus. It's not about being selfish and all I can get this and no, no. It's all about what guilt God gives us to serve him. Yes, we'll have work in heaven. Yes, we'll have responsibilities to do. Jesus spoke about it when he said about the parable of the talents, and he said the one who had 10 talents, he returned it with 10. He said, you'll be given 10 cities to be responsible for.
[00:56:06] Gerard Long: I dunno exactly what each individual work will be given, but will we be given responsibility. To serve God and to please him, and that will be our joy in heaven. Jesus modeled it while he was here on earth. Our joy in heaven will be doing his will and to please him.
[00:56:20] Gerard Long: So it's a calling to give ourselves, Lord, whatever you want, I'll do it. I'll, I'll follow you and I'll lay my life down if you want me to do that. And that's, that's a, an understanding, that's an awakening that we need so much today. We live in a very, um, narcissistic culture where we're all living for, for ourselves, so to speak.
[00:56:42] Gerard Long: How can I get more of this and more of that and be more comfortable and do that? Whereas you see the early church, it says in, in revelations 12:11, it says, they overcame him, that's Satan, by the blood of the lamb, the word of the, their testimony, and they love not their lives unto. And one of the things I hope will be my legacy will be an understanding that God calls us to lay our lives down.
[00:57:07] Gerard Long: If we're husbands, he calls us to lay our lives down for our, our wives. He calls us to lay our lives down, to do his will. And sometimes it's hard, but here's the great thing, that by his grace, whatever he asks us to do, he'll give us the grace to do it. Not not to grovel through, but to do it with his strength, with his power, and with his joy.
[00:57:30] Gerard Long: And that's really showing the victory of the cross of Jesus. It's by living through these things and sometimes it's hard things. Philippians 1:29, it says, you've been given the privilege not only to believe in Christ, but also the privilege to suffer for Him. And that's one of the things we're doing now in our ministry is we're passing on the calling that God's put on Jeannie and me.
[00:57:52] Gerard Long: It's a calling to pass on the comfort that God's given us after Alex went home and we were thrown into utter darkness, utter pain. 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, with the comfort that you've been comforted, you are able to comfort others. And one of the things we greatly need today in a world where there is so much suffering and so much pain, is that we need people to come alongside others, to put our arm around them and to say, I understand.
[00:58:20] Gerard Long: And you know, you can only understand if you've walked the walk that they're going through. That's called empathy. Everyone can have compassion, and that's good. We should have compassion, but empathy is something that we have, God gives it to us, when we've gone through what someone else is going through and that connects with 'em.
[00:58:37] Gerard Long: It's lovely that Jesus, when he, he says that he came and walked on this earth. He went through all the things that we go through. So that he can empathize with us. He could show us, uh, that he understands and give us what we need. And that's the promise of God's grace. God's grace very simply is Jesus his life.
[00:58:55] Gerard Long: It's His life that overcame everything in this world. And He gave us his life. When we take the, the, the, uh, the bread and the wine, this is my body given for you, uh, my blood shed for you, forgiveness of sins, but His body, His life given. So He said of the Holy Spirit in, in John 16:14, he says, He will, He, the Holy Spirit will take from what is mine, in other words, his victorious life. And he'll make it known to you.
[00:59:24] Gerard Long: And there's a lovely, there's a lovely scripture that talks in in 2 Corinthians 2:40 and it says that, that God, um, is working. God continually leads us in triumph, in Christ and through, through us defuses the aroma of Jesus in every place. You see, that's what happens when, when God is working through our life, our brokenness is that His grace comes out.
[00:59:48] Gerard Long: The apostle Paul said, death works in me. That life might work in you. And that's part of the legacy we want to leave. It's a legacy of great comfort and great hope to people who are suffering, people who are going through things who no fault of their own. Jesus. When he, when he started his ministry, he described the various groups of suffering.
[01:00:08] Gerard Long: There's the poor. We do a lot of work in India now in with villages that they are the poorest of the poor. They're known as the untouchables. And we go out and we show God's love. We're working with a missionary team as well. We show God's love what it looks like. Um, we give them clean water, transforms their life, just having clean water.
[01:00:28] Gerard Long: We clean water wells. Um, it's beautiful. We've done 30 already where our goal is a hundred. and we give the mosquito nets. Every home has a mosquito net. And imagine as a mother to know that your children are sleeping safely that night, means a huge amount. Medical aid and food, the poorest of the poor.
[01:00:47] Gerard Long: And then Jesus said, I've come to bind up the broken-hearted.
[01:00:51] Gerard Long: Oh, there's so much brokenness in this world today, so much brokenness and our heart is to be able to, to come alongside them. We know brokenness, Jeannie and I know what brokenness is, and we can come alongside them and say, do you know what, um, we're, we're here for you. We're here to hear your pain. We're here to weep with you. We're here to pray with you.
[01:01:13] Gerard Long: We know we can't fix people. Only Jesus can do that. But we can show them his love. We can hold their hands, so to speak, and come alongside them. And so we can be his hands and feet here on earth.
[01:01:24] Gerard Long: The third group were the captives, Jesus said, I've come to, to bring freedom to the captive.
[01:01:29] Gerard Long: Captives of people who have had things happen in their lives through no fault of their own. Maybe they were abused as children. Maybe they lost their health. Maybe they lost their finances. Maybe a relationship didn't work out as they hoped. Maybe their plans came to nothing. They didn't directly cause it just that we live in this broken world.
[01:01:48] Gerard Long: Maybe like for us, Satan came at them and and caused them great pain. God wants to turn it around, for good. That's what, that's what we read in Genesis 50:20. Joseph turned to his brothers, who had been so, so evil to him, nearly, nearly killed, and sold him into slavery. He said to them, you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good. In other words, God was over this. He intended it good for so, so now that there can be the rescuing of many lives, and remember, Joseph was used by God to rescue the known world. There was a great famine, amazing. God prepared him through that brokenness. And so it's a message of great hope that prisoners are people who have made bad decisions.
[01:02:33] Gerard Long: Maybe they're addicts, drug addicts, alcohol, could be pornography, all sorts of addiction that people are locked into and they're, they're slaves to that, whatever that thing is. And then of course, people who are incarcerated, they've made bad decisions.
[01:02:48] Gerard Long: Whatever group those people fall into, Jesus said, I've come to help them. I've come to rescue them. I've come to declare to them the year of the Lord's favor. That's the year of Jubilee. That's the year when everything is canceled out, and you can start afresh. What a great message of hope that is in a world when there's no no hope. And you know, one of the things that we see is that God is wanting to speak to the younger generation today, people who are leaving the church in the West anyway, in, in millions.
[01:03:20] Gerard Long: And one of the questions they're asking is, what difference are you making in the world? Well, we're he, we're hoping and praying through awaiting to God ministries that they can see very, very clearly that God's love is a practical love. And that's the love that happened in the early church. Boy did they leave us a legacy.
[01:03:37] Gerard Long: The early church who, when the plagues came to a city, everybody ran away except for the Christians. They stayed and they cared for the sick and the dying. And so much so their lives were so an example of God's love and God's power that Constantine later said, these Christians have got a power that we don't understand.
[01:03:56] Gerard Long: We gotta all become Christians. And he, he declared that they were Christianity, we would be the religion of the Roman Empire. But what were they doing? They were letting their light shine before men, that men, they could see their good deeds and glorify their father in heaven. And we see it all through scripture that God takes the broken, he takes the untouchables, he takes the ones that the world said, they can never be any good.
[01:04:20] Gerard Long: They can't do anything, and he turns them around. That was David's mighty men. You may know the story in the Old Testament. And they, they were the ones who came to David. He, he was broken in the wilderness., Saul was trying to kill him, and, uh, 400 then eventually 600 people came out to, to him in the wilderness.
[01:04:36] Gerard Long: People who were in debt, people who were broken, people who, who had had no hope for the future. What happened to them? They became David's mighty men, and you can read about them. Did incredible feats. What does that show us today? It says that God's grace is here for us. God's grace that can turn, um, lambs into lions God, God's grace that says, Hey, by the spirit of God inside you, you can become far greater than you ever thought possible.
[01:05:05] Gerard Long: He's able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine, and however broken people may be, we hope our legacy, I hope my legacy, will be one that sends a message, yes, of comfort, that God cares about you. He wants to redeem you from whatever pain you are in. He wants to restore you. And the third thing He wants to do, he wants to cause you to triumph.
[01:05:27] Gerard Long: He wants you to be a person that diffuses the fragrance of Jesus. That's His body, that's his grace through your brokenness into a world that's so dark and so broken. This is the great message, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, it takes great courage. That's what warriors are, and we started this initiative called Warriors for people who will say, yes, I want to allow God to use my brokenness to help others.
[01:05:55] Gerard Long: People who have been in human trafficking, we know of a young girl who was taken in at age 11 into sex trafficking and at 15 she came out and the first thing she said was, I want to now spend the rest of our life to help other girls get out of what, what I've just been through.
[01:06:12] Gerard Long: People who were in a terrible atrocities. We know a young man who was in in Rwanda and he was a refugee. Terrible atrocity had been going on there and he was very broken on the street. He was a street kid. We met him in Chicago and he said, you know what? I want to now help people who are refugees because I know what it's like and I want to help them and love them.
[01:06:33] Gerard Long: You see, this is what God wants to do in these days, I believe. He's making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. At the end of Isaiah 61, um, verse four, uh, Jesus spoke the words in Isaiah 61:1 when he started His ministry. Well, verse four says, says this, they, well, who are they? It's the poor, the broken, the captives and the prisoners.
[01:06:59] Gerard Long: They will be the ones who restore the ancient cities and, and the areas of desolation. 1 Corinthians 1, it says, not many of you when you were called were of noble birth. Not many of you were, were famous. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. Not many of you had many letters after your name. Not many of you were your brilliant No, but God takes the broken of this world. He takes those who are not to nullify the ones who are.
[01:07:24] Gerard Long: So our, one of our legacy we want to be is a legacy to the suffering because we've been through suffering. We are suffering. We miss desperately every day, our precious, Rebecca and Alex, every day we suffer. We, we miss seeing them grow up. We miss desperately seeing them be all that God had, had, had planned for them to be, so to speak.
[01:07:44] Gerard Long: Uh, taking it, Rebecca down the aisle, seeing her get, seeing them get married, seeing our grandchildren, yes, we miss that so much. And our youngest son, Ben, misses it as well. Uh, he's, he's, he's broken like we are in a, in a sense, but by God's grace, we wanna say, Lord, now use it. Turn this around. What Satan intended for evil, turn it around to kick him in the teeth, so to speak, and to see your glory.
[01:08:08] Gerard Long: Come to see a whole army of people who are broken, who are suffering, become great champions and warriors for your kingdom and for your glory. That's what we hope our, our legacy, my legacy will be when it's all said and done.
[01:08:27] Steve Gatena: Throughout our lives, sometimes we endure terrible hardships and tragedies that leave us completely broken. In these moments, it can feel hopeless. Yet there is a path to salvation, to peace, to healing, and that path is through Jesus to God and God's grace.
[01:08:49] Steve Gatena: By God's grace, he can rescue anyone from their suffering and by God's grace, he may use our brokenness to break through so that we may understand that God has a grand plan far beyond anything we can imagine, and if we can trust in God and allow him to pierce the veil of brokenness upon our heart. We may come to note God's calling for us, for each of us is called to serve God in our own unique way.
[01:09:24] Steve Gatena: To abide by thy will not our will.
[01:09:30] Steve Gatena: In part one of this three part series. These are the lessons that Gerard Long shares with us on this episode of Pray.com's, Relentless Hope. After the sudden deaths of two of Gerard's children, he was left absolutely broken.
[01:09:50] Steve Gatena: But by the grace of God, Gerard found salvation from his suffering. And by God's grace, Gerard heard God's calling for both Gerard and his wife to start a new ministry focused on helping heal the broken.
[01:10:08] Steve Gatena: As Gerard teaches us, that while he and his wife can't heal the broken directly, only God does that, they can deliver God's messages of love, faith, salvation, hope, redemption, and grace to anyone in suffering.
[01:10:28] Steve Gatena: In part two of this three part series, Gerard encourages us to be true servants of God living his calling for us just like Jesus did. Gerard reminds us that Jesus didn't deserve his suffering, but he was called to the cross for a higher purpose like Jesus. Sometimes we too are called to suffering for a higher purpose.
[01:10:57] Steve Gatena: Not that we deserve to suffer, but that there is an eternal plan beyond our comprehension, so we must trust in God, and seek to serve His will.
[01:11:11] Steve Gatena: Part three of this three part series. Gerard reminds us that leaving a legacy is about how we'll be remembered after we're gone, and that for those who honor God's calling to lay down our wants and desires to do God's will, through God's grace, he will give us what we need to see it done.
[01:11:35] Steve Gatena: Through God's grace, we are given God's strength, God's mercy, and God's joy no matter where we find ourselves in this moment, Gerard reminds us that by God's grace he will restore our hearts. He will change our thoughts, and he will reveal the extraordinary calling that he has placed inside each of us.
[01:12:06] Steve Gatena: I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode of Relentless Hope, and if you have enjoyed it, I encourage you to share it with someone you love. You never know the impact that one inspiring story can have on someone's life. Until next time, remember to give hope a voice.
Overcoming the Nightmare of Losing My Children - Gerard Long
[00:00:00] Steve Gatena: We are blessed with God's grace, his life, power, and mercy are given to us unearned. God pours out his endless joy, goodness, and healing to those in need. His grace gives us the strength to endure all suffering and hardship. For God's grace is always with us. It's with us through our sins, our pain, our brokenness.
[00:00:36] Steve Gatena: And through God's grace, we may come to know that our suffering is never in vain. While God does not cause tragedies or suffering, sometimes he allows it, for God's plan is eternal and beyond our understanding. Sometimes God calls us to suffering so that he may use our brokenness to reach us. Sometimes it's our suffering that causes us to open our hearts and our minds giving them fully to God so that through his grace he can work to change our hearts and minds for the better.
[00:01:18] Steve Gatena: It is through his grace that we are renewed and granted the life that God wants for everyone. Peace, goodwill, love. Peace, goodwill, love. This is the message that Gerard Long shares with us this week on Pray.com's Relentless Hope Podcast. After suffering two sudden losses, the death of his 17 year old son to suicide and the death of his daughter in a drowning accident, Gerard found himself utterly devastated and completely broken.
[00:02:01] Steve Gatena: Gerard explains how he came to understand what God's grace truly means and how through God's grace, Gerard was rescued from his brokenness and his suffering. And we hear through God's grace how Gerard discovered God's calling for his life, and we hear about the new ministry that Gerard and his wife Jeannie started to help anyone broken, allowing God's grace to heal them too.
[00:02:32] Steve Gatena: Gerard teaches us that to be a great leader. We must put aside the will and desires of our egos and to lead based on God's will for us and our lives just as Jesus did. And like Jesus Gerard reminds us that great leaders must be willing to sacrifice that which they hold dearest to be a servant of God and to heed his calling.
[00:02:59] Steve Gatena: This is how we can best serve God's eternal and grand plan. Gerard teaches us that legacy is about how we'll be remembered after we're gone, and that the ultimate legacy we can leave is that we honored God's will for our lives, that we answered God's calling for us. And Gerard also reminds us that by God's grace, whatever he asks us to do, he grants us his strength, his power, and his joy to see it done.
[00:03:35] Steve Gatena: While we may live in a broken world with much suffering, Gerard's story shows us that sometimes God may use our suffering so that His grace may flow through our brokenness. His grace can heal our pain, and through his grace, God may use our suffering for His eternal power, His eternal plan, and His eternal purpose.
[00:04:04] Steve Gatena: After a trip to San Diego, Gerard Long experienced a great tragedy when Rebecca, Gerard's daughter went out for a run.
[00:04:14] Gerard Long: Well, in 2014, we were down in San Diego at a conference together, speaking together at that conference. I had to leave to go to a, an international conference in London with Jeannie, Rebecca stayed on, she had some other speaking engagements, and then on, on May the seventh, she went back to Chicago the next day, May the eighth, she went for a run and she went down to Lake Michigan. It was a very hot day, and she took her shoes and socks off and tried to cool down by the lake and we're not sure what happened next.
[00:04:45] Gerard Long: We know she had blood sugar issues. We think she, she fainted and fell into the lake and where she fell in, she couldn't get out. She tried to swim around to a boat ramp to get out. The water was 37 degrees, been a brutal winter, and she got into trouble. She started calling out for help. Four people saw her and called 911.
[00:05:08] Steve Gatena: In part one of this three part series on Relentless Hope, Gerard Long tells us his story of loss and success. By being blessed and undergoing tragic loss, Gerard Grew closer to God and started helping others who were struggling in their life.
[00:05:33] Gerard Long: I am very grateful for the heritage that God's given me, my family on my, my mom and my dad's side. Go back actually to the 16th century, the Huguenots, and, um, they've been following Jesus all that time. My parents had a wonderful walk with Christ, and I'm very grateful that, uh, they, they showed me what it looks like to, to follow Jesus.
[00:05:58] Gerard Long: And I've brought up on Bible stories and learned scripture, going to church, youth groups and things, and thankful to God that a very early age, probably four or five, I made a commitment to Jesus Christ very clearly, kneeling beside my sister's bed and asking Jesus to forgive me of my sins, to come into my heart, to be my savior, and to lead me on as a good shepherd in my life.
[00:06:22] Gerard Long: Although, you know, as I look back, I can see that I, I asked Jesus to be my savior, but I didn't really understand what it meant for him to be my Lord. And although I went on going to Christian camps and things like that, when I got into my mid-teens and I was speaking about Jesus at school, I really realized I was being a hypocrite.
[00:06:42] Gerard Long: And although I was talking about about Jesus and I knew he was real, my issue was I just couldn't make him Lord of my life. I didn't, didn't have it in me to do that. And I was living for myself, living contrary to what the Bible says, putting other people off.
[00:06:56] Gerard Long: And so I sort of made a, a bit of an agreement with the Lord. I said, if you, you take the backseat, so to speak, I'll take the steering wheel and I wanna do what I wanna do. And, uh, very self-centered. And I got into middle distance running. I was 800 meter runner I ate it, slept it, drank it, and got to a pretty high level ending up winning the English and Welsh University's championship for 800 meters.
[00:07:20] Gerard Long: And I was captain of the top track team in the country, which had, uh, Sebastian Coe who is a future, uh, gold, double gold Olympic champion. And some other Olympic, um, athletes as well. But you know, in that time, God in his mercy came after me, and through a number of circumstances in particular, I met this beautiful young lady called Jeannie uh, who was a ballerina and she'd been, she'd gone to the, the Royal Ballet School and through the love coming through her and some other things, uh, God started to speak to my heart and it came to a head on February the 14th, Fe, Valentine's Day, 1980. My brother had written to me the day before and said, Gerald, I know you got a plan for your life.
[00:08:04] Gerard Long: And I did. I had very clear objectives. I wanted to get to the Olympics. I wanted to make a lot of money be famous, but my brother wrote to me and said, Gerald, although you got a plan, I want you to know that God's got a plan for your life, and it's made out of perfect love. Well, I just couldn't get those words out of my mind.
[00:08:22] Gerard Long: And as I sat there, there was no one else around February the 14th. It was though God spoke to me and it wasn't a order board. It was very clear inside and he just said, Gerard if you go my way, you may not get all the things you want on the outside, but on the inside I'll give you fullness of life. And it was though a light came on inside, I came to understand that hey, you can get everything on the outside, but if inside you are miserable and lonely and haven't got any peace, you've got nothing.
[00:08:51] Gerard Long: But because God knows us, we don't have to have anything on the outside. If He's in our hearts, He can fill us with love, joy, peace, the things that really make life important. And so I, I did what the Bible talks about as to repent. I turned around and said, okay, God, from here on, I really want You to be Lord.
[00:09:09] Gerard Long: I want to do e everything and anything You want me to do, I want to go Your way and not my way. And at that point of doing that, I was filled with this incredible love. That's the only way I can describe that, liquid love filled my heart. And, uh, now I know it was the Holy Spirits as in Romans 5:5, that, that God pours His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
[00:09:32] Gerard Long: I fell in love with Jesus. I couldn't put the Bible down. I wanted to share with my friends, and I stopped swearing overnight. I was really washed through inside as it were, and it was a complete transformation. I'd been one of the lads on campus, uh, sleeping around, doing little things that young men do as well as pursuing my, my goal as an athlete and now I was just living for Jesus. It was a complete, complete turnaround.
[00:09:57] Gerard Long: Well, genie came to faith in Christ. Uh, we ended up getting married. We surrendered everything to Christ. Uh, running her, her ballet. Had a business, gave it all up, and we felt God leading us to London. And I took up an executive, uh, management scheme with a top international bank.
[00:10:14] Gerard Long: So there I was 22 years old. Um, we got involved with a very vibrant church in Central London, which I ended up pastoring with a couple of other guys for 17 years or so. And I was doing tent making, which basically means that my, I was working at the same time as pastoring. The three of us shared the leadership of the church and my tent making was banking and got, uh, I was in the city of London and in the corporate world, and I really understood that it was so easy for my heart to go cold towards Jesus.
[00:10:45] Gerard Long: And Matthew 6:33 became a watchword for us. Uh, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and everything else will follow.
[00:10:52] Gerard Long: Well, as long as I, as I was doing that, I was saying, Lord, I wanna see your kingdom come at work. I want to, we started praying. We saw a mini revival in the early nineties, and we saw people come to faith in Christ.
[00:11:03] Gerard Long: Six prayer meetings going on around the city, lots of things happening. And as that was happening, God was promoting me. Um, I never once sought a promotion, but I was promoted up and up within the bank. Ended up le leading the bank's Y2K initiative, millennium bug, um, and ended up working with the government, used to go to Town Street.
[00:11:22] Gerard Long: Ended up sharing a platform with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, uh, quoted in the front page and newspaper. Even the USA Today had a, one of my quotes at the time on tv. It had to be God because it wasn't me. I mean, he, God put me in that place. Well, it was an, it was an amazing opportunity there. 2001, we were called to the usa, had never intended to go overseas, but God clearly called us.
[00:11:46] Gerard Long: And then in 2003, the bank I was working for, HSBC, a big international bank, asked me to do, to manage the integration between HSBC and Household International, a 13.8 billion acquisition. So that was a huge job.
[00:12:00] Gerard Long: I moved, moved to, to Chicago now, uh, as an ex expat international banker on a very high salary, 2004. I remember saying to Jeannie Jeannie does it get any better than this? We had a both had a close walk with Jesus. We had a wonderful marriage. We had three amazing children who were great athletes, very bright, popular. We were in a great church. We were doing a thing, a course called Alpha in our, in our home, seeing people come to faith in Christ, living in this beautiful, beautiful house in a place called Lake Forest on the north shore of Chicago.
[00:12:36] Gerard Long: Does it get any better than this? It was amazing. The interesting thing was just not long after that, uh, 2005, it was as though Satan had been released to attack us. And whereas everything had turned a goal, so to speak, that we did, now everything started to fall apart. It was like, like a situation with Job, so to speak.
[00:12:57] Gerard Long: Well, we got to the bottom of the valley when, uh, the end of the year, November the eighth, our precious, youngest son, Alex, he was 17 years old and he was trying to help a boy at school, and the boy was a troubled, troubled child. And anyway, Alex ended up taking a drug with this boy and he became delusional and paranoid.
[00:13:19] Gerard Long: And on November the eighth, Alex, he snuck out of our home and went down to the beach side and committed suicide. I ne I never try and describe the pain of of that time, the words, there's not words to describe it. We'd never come across suicide at all. And now we're facing this darkness, such darkness. My precious wife, Jeannie, she went from shock to horror to anger. To terrible blame.
[00:13:50] Gerard Long: That's a horrible thing with suicide. It's not just the, the deep, deep grief, grief of, of missing your child, but it's the blame. Why didn't you do something about it? Why didn't you see it happening? She hated herself. She hated God. She hated me. And our marriage became with, came within a thread of failing and in the end, she lost her faith.
[00:14:11] Gerard Long: She couldn't reconcile how a loving God could have allowed this to happen to us. We served him with all our hearts for 24 years or so, and now this in such a horrible way. And she lost her faith for, for two years. Well, as much as Jeannie ran away from God, I ran into God and I'd get up in the middle of the night and I'd go down to my study and I would weep until I had no more tears to cry.
[00:14:36] Gerard Long: Uh, night after night, I was totally and utterly broken. And in that darkness, in those times when I cried out to God, why? Why God, why? What is, what's going on here? Uh, God showed me three clear things. The first thing I came to understand was God's grace at another level, yes, we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus, but I came to understand that actually grace is Jesus Himself.
[00:15:01] Gerard Long: It's everything we need to do God's will, to, to do the things that God has called us to in our lives. And specifically that time, I needed more love because Jeannie was hating me. I was trying to love her. I knew as a, as a husband, I needed to love my love, Jeannie. Lay my life down for her as Jesus did for the church.
[00:15:22] Gerard Long: But I was, I was getting, I was so empty. Uh, human love only goes so far. And I remember twice very clearly saying to God, I just can't do this anymore, and as I wept before God, but I'd say, I know that you want me to. So I'd just ask you, please give me more love for Jeannie and I'd go to bed and I'd wake up and the next morning and there would be more love in my heart for Jeannie, and I knew that was God's grace cuz I'd come to the end of myself. It had to be him.
[00:15:48] Gerard Long: So I understand, I understood then that God's grace is there for everyone who would receive Jesus. It's grace we all live, whether the believers or unbelievers by common grace. But then as, as followers of Jesus, he gives a specific grace for the work that he's called us to do.
[00:16:03] Gerard Long: And I understood that at another level. The second thing I saw in that darkness was eternity. And I came to understand very clearly what scripture says, that this life is just a vapor, it's just a breath. And relative to eternity, the pain and the suffering we may be going through now, as the Bible says, is not comparable with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
[00:16:24] Gerard Long: I came to understand that at a deep, deep level, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that God has put eternity in the heart of a man. And I think in my brokenness, my broken heart eternity was released. I came to understand it, so, so very clearly.
[00:16:39] Gerard Long: We're just two months after Alex went home, um, my sister, my precious sister, uh, I got a phone call from the UK and I was asked to get over there because she was about to pass.
[00:16:51] Gerard Long: She had bone cancer. I raced over to, uh, to where she was in a hospice. Went down and just got there. She'd hung on. I asked her to hang on, hang on. She'd hung on for me to get there. And just before she went, she'd semi-conscious on the, on her bed, she's suddenly sitting up, bolt up, right, her eyes suddenly open. And she's staring. And my mom, who's a very godly woman, she said, I know what's happening. She's seeing Jesus.
[00:17:15] Gerard Long: And that was all part of the eternity that God was showing to me. At that time, I realized that, hey, we pass from this age and we go into eternity. CS Lewis describes it the best. He said, this life is just a cover page of a never ending story.
[00:17:28] Gerard Long: And when you see eternity, actually it turns everything upside down. Now you understand that if God calls, calls us to suffering, yes, there is a calling. If you look through the scriptures all through the Bible where anyone God used, they went through incredible suffering, right? This, the center of our faith is the suffering of the cross, where Jesus, the precious sinless son of God is tortured before His heavenly Father, His mother, and His loved ones and the angels.
[00:17:54] Gerard Long: And yet, through that God rescues the world. And so God, yes, sometimes he permits suffering. He never causes it, but he permits it for a, for a greater eternal purpose. And I, you see that with Joseph, for example, with, with Peter, Jesus said, Satan has sought to sift you. Peter, I've prayed that your faith would not fail.
[00:18:13] Gerard Long: So I, I realized, okay, God, You're, You're, You've allowed this for a, for an eternal plan and purpose, which outweighs the pain that we're going through. And then the third thing that God showed me in that darkness was his heart. For those who are suffering here on earth, we live in a broken world. We live in a world that's rebelled against God. That's pushed God out.
[00:18:32] Gerard Long: And as God said right from the beginning, in doing that will cause death. And we see the consequence of rejecting God in a broken world where there's so, so much suffering. In 2017, the World Health Organization said there's, there's, um, uh, the greatest illness now globally is depression. And the greatest source of death for those under 35 is suicide.
[00:18:58] Gerard Long: And as I was there weeping one night in the middle of the night, uh, from the bottom of my stomach, I was crying. I felt an arm around me and it was so real. I looked up to see who was there, but there was no one there physically. But then I realized that there was someone there.
[00:19:14] Gerard Long: It was Jesus, and he had his arm around me. But what I noticed most of all was that He was weeping. He was weeping with me. And I realized then that God sees all the suffering in this world, every bit of pain, the pain behind the faces with the smile, the pain behind the closed doors, uh, the pain across this world, and it breaks his heart so very much.
[00:19:37] Gerard Long: Well then some people say, well, hang on, why doesn't he stop it all? And the answer is, he is gonna, there's gonna be a day when this age comes to an end. But when that day comes and there's no more opportunity for people to receive Jesus or reject him as we have today, that will be a final day of this age. And then we go into eternity either with God, if we've accepted Jesus or if we've rejected Him, we go into our chosen destiny apart from God.
[00:20:03] Gerard Long: And so there's a dilemma. Every day is another day for people to come to know Jesus, but also every day it causes God great pain and great suffering as he sees what's going on.
[00:20:14] Gerard Long: Well, I saw that God was working something in us at that time. Well, shortly around this time when I was seeing eternity, I was asked to come and lead Alpha USA. Alpha's a wonderful, wonderful program that introduces people to Jesus Christ. We've been running it since 1995 in our home and in the workplace and in different places.
[00:20:34] Gerard Long: And now I'm being asked to, to lead this incredible organization that's, uh, allowing people to come to meet with Jesus in a very non-religious, non-threatening way. And it was amazing. So I, I stepped down from my executive program with the HSBC and joined Alpha in 2007 and was with them until the end of, uh, 2014.
[00:20:53] Gerard Long: Well, shortly after I joined them, um, uh, Rebecca, she'd been doing an MBA, she was brilliant, brilliant athlete, very bright. Uh, she was at Leeds University and she was asked to go into corporate world, a beautiful young lady. And she, she said to, to Jeannie and me, she said, you know what? I, my heart's so broken, so broken because of Alex going home.
[00:21:16] Gerard Long: I just can't stand the thought of young people dying without knowing Jesus. And I want to come and join you at Alpha, dad. And so she did. It was a very sweet time for, for 10 years when she was around, she would be living with us. I had the joy of driving with her to work every day. We'd stop for a Starbucks on the way and pray together. It was a sweet time.
[00:21:38] Gerard Long: And, uh, Rebecca and I started to, to speak together on various, uh, conferences and platforms up and down the country. And she became the national director for Alpha Youth. And as a consequence of what she did, many, many, uh, young people came to know Jesus. Well, in 2014, we were down in San Diego at a conference together, speaking together at that conference.
[00:21:59] Gerard Long: I had to leave to go to a, an international conference in London with Jeannie. Rebecca stayed on, she had some other speaking engagements, and then on, on May the seventh, she went back to Chicago, the next day, may the eighth, she went for a run and she went down to Lake Michigan. It was a very hot day.
[00:22:17] Gerard Long: And she took her shoes and socks off and tried to cool down by the lake and we're not sure what happened next. We know she had blood sugar issues. We think she, she fainted and fell into the lake and where she fell in, she couldn't get out. She tried to swim around to a boat ramp to get out. The water was 37 degrees, been a brutal winter, and she got into trouble.
[00:22:40] Gerard Long: She started calling out for help. Four people saw her and called 911, but it was too late. She got hypothermia and Rebecca drowned.
[00:22:52] Gerard Long: It was such a painful time, such a painful time again. Precious Jeannie who had, who had surfaced again, come back to faith, our marriage had been restored. Now she's plunged right down again into the depths of grief, and she realized that she couldn't go on. She was too broken and she was gonna take her life, and she went up to the her to Rebecca's room and she wasn't gonna come out of that room.
[00:23:20] Gerard Long: But as she opened the door, it was like a heavenly light came into the room. She didn't see any physical being, but it was the presence of God there, was so very, very real. She slumped the floor. God spoke many things to her, but one thing was very poignant. God said to her, Jeannie your grief is not your own.
[00:23:42] Gerard Long: While Jeannie came downstairs, after that encounter, I looked up and I, she was completely changed. A bit like Moses up the mountain when he was in the presence of God, her face was glowing and all that darkness had gone. The terrible grief and pain had been lifted and she was shining with the God's glory on her.
[00:24:01] Gerard Long: Shortly after that, one of our friends came in and said, this... exactly the same thing. And then the third person, later that night, we went, we were due to go to meet some dear friends, and the lady said again, exactly the same thing. Jeannie what has happened to you? Three witnesses, to the presence of God that changed Jeannie.
[00:24:19] Gerard Long: So now Jeannie and I were just totally broken, absolutely broken, desperately missing our precious children, Rebecca and Alex. And we're saying, okay, God, we don't like this cup. It's a very bitter cup. But by your grace, and only by your grace, if you want us to, to walk this walk, we pray that you'd now use us for your glory.
[00:24:41] Gerard Long: And so after that, it was very clear God was leading us to start a, a new ministry called Awakening to God Ministries, which is all about, uh, helping people who are suffering. It's based on Isaiah 61:4.
[00:24:53] Gerard Long: The verse is that Jesus quoted when he started his ministry, the spirit of the Lord is upon me. He's anointed me to preach good news to the poor, to bind not the brokenhearted, bring release for captives and freedom from darkness for the prisoners. And so we, that's what we'd been doing now for the last four years. We're helping the poor, the poorest of the poor in India with clean water, mosquito nets, medical aid, and food.
[00:25:17] Gerard Long: We've got a target of a hundred villages. Uh, we've already, we've already got funds for 67 villages. We've done 30, 30 already. Um, the brokenhearted come to us all the time. We have over 700,000 followers on on Facebook. And always getting messages of the broken. We've just started to think called the Warrior Program, where we're encouraging others by God's grace to allow God to turn around whatever bad things has happened in their lives.
[00:25:44] Gerard Long: Maybe abuse as a child, maybe, God forbid, they've lost a child like Jeannie and, and, and we have, and I have. Or it could be the breakup of a relationship. Any of those things. We know that God wants to turn it around for good now to help those who are suffering. And so we've started this amazing program. Uh, we hope there'll be thousands in the end, reaching out those who are addicted to drugs, those who are suicidal, those who are depressed, those who have lost hope.
[00:26:12] Gerard Long: And we can say, if God can rescue us by his grace, he can rescue anyone and he can rescue you too. And so that's, uh, that's, yeah, that's our story. Uh, it carries on. And, uh, we wanna see at the end of the day, Jesus, his name, his glory, his loveliness lifted up through our brokenness.
[00:26:38] Gerard Long: Real leadership is doing God's will, mission, vision, character. That's what leadership is. Now those will follow that, they'll see it. Another aspect of leadership that I I think is very important, um, is that we are, we persevere. We don't give up even when it gets really tough, when it's really hurting. I love when you see Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane when He was facing the weight of the cross, the pain of seeing His, His mother, watching Him die in the cross in great pain, pain of his seeing his disciples scatter.
[00:27:12] Gerard Long: I don't think He thought too much about himself, but He thought about the pain of others. That's just how Jesus was. And he cried out in Luke 22, we read in 42. Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. That's great leadership. Someone who will see through the calling on their lives.
[00:27:36] Steve Gatena: In part two of this three part series on Relentless Hope, Gerard explains that great leadership derives from mission, vision, and character. By starting with these three things and finishing the work, anyone can become a great leader.
[00:27:57] Gerard Long: What is leadership? Well, my understanding of a leader is someone that others want to follow. And as I look in my, my life, I remember the early examples of leadership started with my mum and dad, and I saw in them things that I wanted to emulate later in my life. My mom, for example, she had a very close walk with Jesus Christ.
[00:28:19] Gerard Long: And I always remember going into her room and I'd see her kneeling beside her bed, her Bible open. She wouldn't look up. She was in, in fellowship with, with God. And uh, that touched me and my dad was an incredibly loving guy. I've never met anyone since him who loves so much. I saw him love my mom. And that was always very attractive to me.
[00:28:43] Gerard Long: Their marriage was amazing, but also he loved others. I never heard him, ever, speak a bad word about anyone. He, he never let any unwholesome words out of his, outta his mouth. So they were great role models, leaders, if you like that. I want, want to, to follow.
[00:28:58] Gerard Long: Then there was, I remember a, a great guy called Roger Price. Uh, he was my geography teacher at school actually, and I was very impressed with the joy that he had in his life. He was a lot of fun to be around. Later, um, I ended up coming to Faith in Christ, uh, being filled with the Holy Spirit. We used to go to his church. He left step down from teaching. Um, became a bible, very brilliant, Bible teacher. He's now in heaven.
[00:29:23] Gerard Long: Then another, uh, leader in the church who was a, who was John Bank, and he was one of the pastors I was pastoring. He was a senior pastor and he had a, just a great sense of humor. He held everything so, so lightly. Uh, he understood God's grace in a special way, and, and he was able to see things in a different way.
[00:29:43] Gerard Long: Often he would be laughing his head off, you, you thought you had quite a serious issue, and he'd just be laughing because he was seeing the bigger picture and understood it. And then there's a couple of guys who I was also pastoring with in London, Nick West and Paul Hickman, who I think are just such great examples of leaders.
[00:29:59] Gerard Long: Perseverance said they're pastored, still pastoring the church that I was pastoring with them many years ago. They've been there for nearly 40 years now, in a really tough part of London. Uh, so much opposition, and yet they've been faithful. But of course for me, the, the greatest leader of all, uh, is Jesus himself.
[00:30:19] Gerard Long: Yes, fully God, but also fully man. And when I see how He walked in this earth, I, I just find Him incredibly beautiful, very attractive, very inspirational, and I, I wanna follow, I wanna follow him. And I, when I say to people, I'm a follower of Jesus, if I can get anywhere near how he walked, I'd be so grateful.
[00:30:38] Gerard Long: And there's really three, three parts of, of a great leader. The first one is mission. They, they understand the why. Why, uh, why am I here on Earth? If they're leading an organization, why is this organization existing? What, why we here? Jesus knew very clearly His mission. He came ultimately to be our substitute, to take the punishment that we all deserve for our sins when he died in a cross, shed His blood that we might be forgiven to bring us into a relationship with God for eternity.
[00:31:13] Gerard Long: And He set his face, it says, like flint, towards the cross. He knew his mission. , but also on the way, His mission was to show what God's love looks like. He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so he showed us what love is, and that's for us, every, any Christ follower. That's our first mission, is to show people God's love. It's the great command to love God, be filled with his love by the Holy Spirit, and then to love other people.
[00:31:41] Gerard Long: And then of course, the other great, the great, it's a great commission we talk about at the end of Matthew, where we're taking up the baton that Jesus has passed on to us to be, has his ambassadors, to share the great news of the gospel of Jesus, that he came as our savior to rescue us.
[00:31:58] Gerard Long: For anyone who put their faith in him and can come have their sins forgiven, be with God for eternity. That's, that's why we're here. That's our mission. Jesus said that where I am, that you may be also, He wants us with us through the pain that we've been through. I, I can't wait to be honest, to be in heaven, but I know that I'm here on a mission.
[00:32:17] Gerard Long: There's a specific work that God's got for me to do. The second key part of being a great leader is vision. What is vision? Vision's the ability to be very clear on the objectives. It's the what? What are we trying to achieve When God spoke to the children of Israel? He gave them a very clear dimensions. Here's the land that I've given you from the Nega, uh, through, through Lebanon up to the, the Great Euphrates. He, he gave them something that is measurable. And the key thing of me, uh, of a vision is that you can measure it. So when the great commission, it says it's the Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the Earth, it's, you can measure it.
[00:32:58] Gerard Long: For us as Christ followers that relates to family and friends. We should first and foremost be thinking about our family, showing God's love if we're married, then for men laying our lives down for our wives as Christ did for the church, for our friends, wanting to show them what God's love looks like. And ultimately being able to tell them and share with them about Jesus.
[00:33:20] Gerard Long: Our workplace. Um, thirdly, it's our town, it's our city where we're living. And then fourthly, it's the world. So that's the, that's the vision. That's the dimensions of where we're, where we should be operating as Christ followers.
[00:33:35] Gerard Long: And then the third, and the big part of being a leader is character. Is character.
[00:33:41] Gerard Long: That's the how, if you like.
[00:33:43] Gerard Long: Um, and the first thing about that is that you should be able to lead yourself. Because a lot of character's about what happens when people are not looking at you, what's happening in the unseen area. And that's a pr, a process. Our character is being transformed. Thank goodness. I'm very pleased for that, that God is working on me, cuz I know there's so many areas that I need to be changed.
[00:34:07] Gerard Long: The theologians call it a process of sanctification. It's, it's a process whereby the Holy Spirit works on us to reveal Jesus through us. And 2 Corinthians 3:18, it says that we all with unveiled faces as beholding the Lord, as we're looking at Jesus are being transformed. That's the word.
[00:34:29] Gerard Long: Metamorphosis is being transformed into his lightness, even by the spirit of God. So it's an ongoing process. Um, one way of looking at this is that God has saved us. We are spiritually, we, we have been saved. We are being saved each day, we're being transformed, and we will finally be saved when Jesus comes back and we receive our new body.
[00:34:52] Gerard Long: But there's a process going on now, and it comes from within. And character is oh, so very important. And at the core of character is love. It's, that's what we're looking to see more and more in our lives. And, uh, second Corinthians, uh, chapter 13, it talks about love in a very clear, very specific way and ends up the impossible.
[00:35:15] Gerard Long: Says you can move mountains with your faith. You can do great things, you can give your body to the flames, all of those things, but if you haven't got love, you haven't got anything. And so this part of our walk of Christ is very important. Love. What is love? Well, it's not as the world says. Um, the Bible says the first thing of love is patience.
[00:35:37] Gerard Long: Patience to understand that God's ultimately in control. He's the sovereign God. He's over all things. We don't have to panic. We don't have to be impatient with our loved ones or with our work colleagues. God's over it. We can hold things lightly, so to speak. Love is kind, loving kindness is a wonderful trait that we can be kind to people, people who can't do anything for us, to the janitor or whoever, that we're kind, we're kind and loving people.
[00:36:06] Gerard Long: We don't envy. We're humble. Humility, basically dependence on God. Uh, not, we're not proud. Pride thinks that you can do it. Actually, you can't do anything apart from God. So humility is, is very important as Christians to understand all the time, any gifts we got are are specifically from God for a purpose for the work that he's got us to do.
[00:36:28] Gerard Long: Love is not selfish, not easily angered. It forgives, it's loyal, trusts, hopes. It always perseveres. So these are really, really key characteristics and thank, thank goodness, thank God that it were being changed. I can look at that list and think, oh boy, I've got to so many areas I need to, to grow in, but God's working on me.
[00:36:50] Gerard Long: Uh, it says in Philippians 2:13, God's working in you to willing to act for his good pleasure. And so when we look at Jesus, we see how he modeled what God's love looks like. He modeled what a real leader is, his character. And that's why those disciples just love being around Him.
[00:37:07] Gerard Long: Micah 6:8 says, the Lord has shown you a man what is good, and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
[00:37:19] Gerard Long: Well, I've had the privilege to lead, um, many big organizations. I, I led, uh, the Y2K initiative in HSBC, I led Alpha USA for many years, and I remember at a time there, it was a very difficult time in the sense that every two weeks we had payroll, we had about 60, 70 people or so on our payroll.
[00:37:42] Gerard Long: And because we were a nonprofit, we totally relied on gifts coming in. And I would say at that time, when I was leading Alpha, there was probably 80% of the time, uh, we would have our, uh, finance meeting on the Monday or the Tuesday. Payroll was Thursday. We had to have money in the account for Thursday, for payroll on Friday.
[00:38:03] Gerard Long: 80% of the time we didn't have any money ready by Monday or Tuesday. And so it was a time of always having to cry out to God. And I understood in those times, God's grace flowing. Uh, God gives you the grace to do the things he's called you to do. Uh, Hebrews 13, 20 and 21. That through Jesus the great, uh, shepherd of the sheep, he will equip you with everything we need to do his will.
[00:38:28] Gerard Long: And so I would be desperate, crying out to God. This is a time of great brokenness in my life as well. And this went on and on for years. And I remember I made a mistake. I made a mistake in that time. Um, I failed as a leader because I wanted to, I was getting a bit fed up, to be honest, with having to bear this weight on my own pretty much.
[00:38:48] Gerard Long: And so I decided I'm gonna share it with some of the le other leaders in, in Alpha. And the interesting thing was, you see, God had given me grace to bear the weight. It's just that I was moving away from that. I was, I was failing as it were. And the others couldn't, couldn't cope with it. And so it was a very difficult time because they was, people struggled with what was going on.
[00:39:12] Gerard Long: And it was my mistake. I should never have done that. So I've learned through many years, mistakes in leadership, and you learn from your mistakes. But one thing we can recognize is God's grace. And ultimately through all of it, God's watching our heart. It's our heart that he looks for. Man looks on the outward appearance, and so often leaders today, they're trying to do this and do that.
[00:39:36] Gerard Long: At the end of the day, we're, we're, it's more, far more important to be human beings as opposed to human doings. And God wants our hearts. He can ch, he can change anything at any time. He can do anything he wants, but he's looking for our hearts. He's looking to work in us for his good pleasure.
[00:39:55] Gerard Long: It's interesting with Joseph, when he was being molded in his time of great brokenness, he was put in, uh, as a slave for 10 years. Then he was in, in, um, prison for two years forcefully accused by Potiphar's wife put in jail and we, we read in Psalm 105 that he had the shackles on him, he had an iron around his neck. Rabbinical teaching says that those verses actually mean that God was putting iron in his soul. And that's often what happens when we're going through a hard time. God's putting iron in our soul for what he has for us, not just in this age, but in the age to come.
[00:40:32] Gerard Long: God's preparing a people that are eager to do his will.
[00:40:37] Gerard Long: Well, one of my favorite scriptures that tie in with that is Proverbs 4:23, and this is one of the things I often encourage young people to, to hold on to. Above everything else my son, keep your heart for out of it flows the wellspring of life. What does that mean? Well, we're basically talking about keeping a heart that's in love with Jesus Christ. That's the most important thing, that we love him with everything we've got. Because when that love is filling our hearts, our one passion is to do his will.
[00:41:10] Gerard Long: You know when you really love someone, maybe it's your wife, maybe it's your mom or dad. Maybe it's a friend. You wanna please them. 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 says, the love of Christ compels us, the apostle Paul said he'd just been talking about all of his pain and suffering for the first four chapters pretty much.
[00:41:28] Gerard Long: He's now saying the love of Christ compels us for we're convinced that one died for all and he died for all of those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again. And so the heart of a leader is first and foremost, it's God's will.
[00:41:44] Gerard Long: Jesus modeled that when he was here on Earth. Remember he said several times I've come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of Him, He sent me. My food is to do His will. And that should be our heart. First and foremost is to please God. That's why in the unseen areas, if we live like that, people may not see what we're doing, but God sees it.
[00:42:04] Gerard Long: Mother Teresa has a great, great saying, and uh, she said this, she said, I don't pray for success. I pray for faithfulness. You see, at the end of the day, what really counts is what God says about our walk. We all want to hear those great words. Well done good and faithful servant, you ran a good race. And that's what we want.
[00:42:23] Gerard Long: And when you see the eternal perspective, you realize it's not worth living for anything other than for God's will while you are here on earth. Someone said, once when we get to heaven, Jesus will ask us two questions. number one, did you love? And number two, who did you bring with you?
[00:42:42] Gerard Long: And that's a lovely way of thinking about our lives is, is thinking, okay, Lord, it's whatever you want me to do. I'll do it. I like to think of it being on a frictionless surface. Um, that, that you'll go wherever you want, God wants you to go. Um, He'll send you wherever you, you are, and you'll be willing to go and do whatever He wants you to do to lay your life down as He wants you to lay your life down. You know, and that may be to be a preacher and a teacher.
[00:43:08] Gerard Long: It may be to be in banking for 30 years like I was. It may be to be working at home. It may be to be in, in the corporate world in some way in finance or banking. I mean, look at the disciples. They were a mixed bunch of people, business people, fishermen, finance, all sorts of different areas they are in.
[00:43:26] Gerard Long: You see, uh, calling is whatever God wants us to be, where he wants us to be shining for him. Real leadership is doing God's will, mission, vision, character. That's what leadership is. Now, those who follow that, they'll see it.
[00:43:40] Gerard Long: Another aspect of leadership that I, I think is very important, um, is that we are, we persevere.
[00:43:48] Gerard Long: We don't give up, even when it gets really tough, when it's really hurting. I love when you see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he was facing the weight of the cross, the pain of seeing his, his mother, watching him die in the cross in great pain, the pain of his seeing his disciples scatter. I don't think he thought too much about himself, but he thought about the pain of others. That's just how Jesus was.
[00:44:11] Gerard Long: And he cried out in Luke 22, we read in 42. Father, if it be possible, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. That's great leadership. Someone who will see through the calling on their lives. Winston Churchill, who led Britain through the darkest years when Nazi Germany was about to crush them, he said, never ever, ever, ever give up.
[00:44:40] Gerard Long: And that's a great word. If you wanna be a great leader, you will see through the calling by God's grace. Of course, the other area of, of, uh, of being a leader is that you know where your source of life comes from. You know, where your source of strength comes from. You might remember the story of David, um, in Chronicles when he was in a really dire strait.
[00:45:01] Gerard Long: Um, his, he was being cha had been chased by, by king Saul to kill him. Um, he'd been, his, his men have been overtaken by the Amalekites, they've taken his, his, his wife and children. His men were about to stone him. He was in a desperate state. And a little verse there says, I think it's the 2 Chronicles 30:6, he says, David strengthened himself in God.
[00:45:25] Gerard Long: And as a leader, we need to know how to strengthen ourself in God. And that means we'll be people of great prayer. We'll be prayer worries. Any, any men and women of God through the Bible, through history, you'll always fight that. Find at their core. They were great prayer warriors.
[00:45:42] Gerard Long: They spent time in God's presence like Jesus modeled, He modeled it for us. And of course, they were great people of the word as well, because it's God's word that gives us strength inside, we hold onto his promises and also great people open to the Holy Spirit. He's the one who gives us the power. Jesus himself said, I can do, on my own I can do nothing.
[00:46:02] Gerard Long: Disciples prior to Pentecost were weakened, timid, and then the Holy Spirit came and he empowered them to be God's witnesses. Another great thing of leadership is courage. When God spoke to, spoke to Joshua, to go in to take the promised land and we're here to take land for the kingdom of God, he spoke to Joshua and He said to him, be strong, and that comes for the Holy Spirit. Be strong and be very courageous.
[00:46:30] Gerard Long: What is courage? Courage is a willingness to do what's right, whatever the cost. To go for it, to be willing to lay your life down, to see God's kingdom come. I love what William Carey, he's known as the father of missions, um, in this 1700s, he went to India and he said, expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.
[00:46:57] Gerard Long: And so leaders who will be people with a vision, people who've got great character, Daniel 11:32, it says, those who know their God will be strong and do exploits and a willingness to hold on whatever the cost. So for me, that's what leadership is. Jesus modeled it, mission, vision, great character, and a willingness to lay your life down and finish the work.
[00:47:21] Gerard Long: John 17:4. Jesus said, I've brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
[00:47:34] Gerard Long: The early church who, when the plagues came to a city, everybody ran away except for the Christians. They stayed and they cared for the sick and the dying. And so much so their lives were so an example of God's love and God's power that Constantine later said, these Christians have got the power that we don't understand. We gotta all become Christians. And he, he declared that they were, Christianity would be the religion of the Roman Empire, but what were they doing? They were letting their light shine before men, that man, they could see their good deeds and glorify their father in heaven.
[00:48:07] Gerard Long: And we see it all through scripture that God takes the broken, he takes the untouchables, he takes the ones that the world said, they can never be any good. They can't do anything. And he turns them around.
[00:48:22] Steve Gatena: In part three of this three part series on Relentless Hope, Gerard explains how we're called to pass on our mission to new people. By empathizing with others, we can leave a legacy of helping others despite our differences.
[00:48:43] Gerard Long: What do we understand by legacy, or my understanding of legacy is what I, what will I be remembered for? Uh, what are the things that I would like people to, to see that I've left behind for them? The very basic, I suppose if you boil it down to a few words, it would be, what, what do I want on my gravestone, so to speak?
[00:49:04] Gerard Long: And I think for me that would be he loved Jesus. Um, making it more specific and, and wider, I would like to pass on the things, the treasures that God has shown me on my journey on this earth. The one ways that I come to understand God and in his glory, we have a ministry called Awakening to God Ministries, and I'd love people to have an awakening in their lives to what I've seen of God's glory. And what I mean by that is his beauty, his loving kindness.
[00:49:38] Gerard Long: Says in Jeremiah 9:23 and 24, they're not the wise man boast in his wisdom or the strong man boast in his strength, or the rich man boast in his riches. But let him who boast in this, that he knows and understands me, that I am the God who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on the earth. In these I delight declares the Lord.
[00:50:01] Gerard Long: And so I'd love to be able to pass on the, the beauty of God that I've come to see even in our utter brokenness. We've been through great, great brokenness to me and, uh, our, our son Ben, in the passing of Alex, our youngest son, Rebecca, our daughter, into heaven. I've seen God show me things of himself that, uh, are so amazing, his sovereignty for example, the fact that God is over all things says in Hebrews 1, that he holds everything together by the power of his word. In other words, the atoms are all held together. Anything on this earth functions, because God's allows it to function. We call it common grace. Everybody on this earth, every living being, uh, lives and exists and has their being because God allows us to, he holds it together.
[00:50:54] Gerard Long: When you see that power, that sovereignty, God sees all things. He knows all things. You come to realize that God's working a much bigger eternal plan through what we see going on here on Earth. And that helps us. It helps us in our individual lives when things don't go to plan, for example.
[00:51:13] Gerard Long: I mentioned in the, uh, podcast we did on our life, how our lives fell apart Jeanny and I, uh, when our youngest son, uh, in 2005 at 17 years old, committed suicide. That shouldn't have happened. . We had been following Jesus. We'd been praying the blood of of Jesus over our children. We'd been doing everything we thought we could do to lay our lives down for God. And then that happened.
[00:51:37] Gerard Long: How do you explain that? How do you answer that big question? Why God? And God showed me in that time eternity. He showed me that he's working things in our lives for an eternal plan and purpose that outweighs the pain that we were going through. Scripture talks many times about that, in fact, to the apostle Paul who spoke so much about his suffering and how God was using it for his grace to flow through his brokenness to touch others.
[00:52:05] Gerard Long: 2 Corinthians in 4:16-18, the Apostle Paul says, therefore, we do not lose heart, though outwardly we're wasting away, inwardly we're being renewed day by day for our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all.
[00:52:25] Gerard Long: Therefore we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen for what is seen is temporary, for what is unseen is eternal. And so when you start to get a bigger, an awakening to a bigger understanding of who God is and his eternal plan, you realize that this life is just a vapor. It helps you to see things differently in the things in our lives.
[00:52:48] Gerard Long: It turns everything upside down. When you see that, then you really should only be living for God's will and you'd only be living for, uh, to do his work here on earth. Nothing to do with ourselves. Jesus modeled it only to do his will, and part of that awakening is an awakening to the cross of Jesus. In, in John 12, Jesus spoke, if anyone wants to follow him, uh, he talk, he talked about the grain of wheat has to fall to the ground and die.
[00:53:15] Gerard Long: If it dies, it brings forth much fruit. And that's about us laying our lives down, denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. And part of the big, uh, awakening that Jeannie and I have, which we pass on, is an awakening to sometimes, not always, but sometimes God calls us to suffering. It's a calling, a calling on our lives.
[00:53:40] Gerard Long: Now, sometimes we bring suffering on our, on ourselves through the bad decisions. We go against what God says not to do, and we do it. And that causes suffering. And we, we learn that, hey, if God says not to do, it's for a reason. But other times the suffering that happens in this world, just because we live in a broken world and it affects us even as followers of Jesus, sometimes God will permit it.
[00:54:02] Gerard Long: He never causes evil, but sometimes he may permit it for his eternal power plan and purpose. We see that with the story of Joseph, for example, all through the bible. Great suffering from many people, old and New Testament and all through history, God, God does it for some reason, uh, for sometimes to, so that his grace can come through our brokenness.
[00:54:24] Gerard Long: So it's an, it's an awakening to God's glory, awakening to God's ways. Uh, it's an awakening to His call on our lives, and that's what I'd love to pass on as a legacy that people will not only see God in a, in a bigger way, but also see that He's called each one of us to a specific work. Ephesians 2:10, it talks about a work that He's planned for us from the creation of this universe in Christ Jesus.
[00:54:50] Gerard Long: Jeremiah 29:11, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to bless you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.
[00:55:00] Gerard Long: And so when you see that, when you see eternity, when you see God's glory, when you see that he's got a plan for us, then it helps to set us free to live only for God's will on this earth.
[00:55:12] Gerard Long: Why would you live for anything else other than his will? It wouldn't make no any sense at all. Jesus spoke about building up treasure in heaven, and that's one of the things that we rarely hear spoken about in church today, but over a hundred times in the New Testament, it speaks about the, the, the eternal, um, the the eternal gifts, um, and rewards, the eternal rewards that God has got for us, for our faithfulness here on earth.
[00:55:39] Gerard Long: Now, these aren't selfish rewards. Thank, thank goodness, thank God that in heaven it'll all be about Jesus. It's not about being selfish and all I can get this and no, no. It's all about what guilt God gives us to serve him. Yes, we'll have work in heaven. Yes, we'll have responsibilities to do. Jesus spoke about it when he said about the parable of the talents, and he said the one who had 10 talents, he returned it with 10. He said, you'll be given 10 cities to be responsible for.
[00:56:06] Gerard Long: I dunno exactly what each individual work will be given, but will we be given responsibility. To serve God and to please him, and that will be our joy in heaven. Jesus modeled it while he was here on earth. Our joy in heaven will be doing his will and to please him.
[00:56:20] Gerard Long: So it's a calling to give ourselves, Lord, whatever you want, I'll do it. I'll, I'll follow you and I'll lay my life down if you want me to do that. And that's, that's a, an understanding, that's an awakening that we need so much today. We live in a very, um, narcissistic culture where we're all living for, for ourselves, so to speak.
[00:56:42] Gerard Long: How can I get more of this and more of that and be more comfortable and do that? Whereas you see the early church, it says in, in revelations 12:11, it says, they overcame him, that's Satan, by the blood of the lamb, the word of the, their testimony, and they love not their lives unto. And one of the things I hope will be my legacy will be an understanding that God calls us to lay our lives down.
[00:57:07] Gerard Long: If we're husbands, he calls us to lay our lives down for our, our wives. He calls us to lay our lives down, to do his will. And sometimes it's hard, but here's the great thing, that by his grace, whatever he asks us to do, he'll give us the grace to do it. Not not to grovel through, but to do it with his strength, with his power, and with his joy.
[00:57:30] Gerard Long: And that's really showing the victory of the cross of Jesus. It's by living through these things and sometimes it's hard things. Philippians 1:29, it says, you've been given the privilege not only to believe in Christ, but also the privilege to suffer for Him. And that's one of the things we're doing now in our ministry is we're passing on the calling that God's put on Jeannie and me.
[00:57:52] Gerard Long: It's a calling to pass on the comfort that God's given us after Alex went home and we were thrown into utter darkness, utter pain. 2 Corinthians 1:4 says, with the comfort that you've been comforted, you are able to comfort others. And one of the things we greatly need today in a world where there is so much suffering and so much pain, is that we need people to come alongside others, to put our arm around them and to say, I understand.
[00:58:20] Gerard Long: And you know, you can only understand if you've walked the walk that they're going through. That's called empathy. Everyone can have compassion, and that's good. We should have compassion, but empathy is something that we have, God gives it to us, when we've gone through what someone else is going through and that connects with 'em.
[00:58:37] Gerard Long: It's lovely that Jesus, when he, he says that he came and walked on this earth. He went through all the things that we go through. So that he can empathize with us. He could show us, uh, that he understands and give us what we need. And that's the promise of God's grace. God's grace very simply is Jesus his life.
[00:58:55] Gerard Long: It's His life that overcame everything in this world. And He gave us his life. When we take the, the, the, uh, the bread and the wine, this is my body given for you, uh, my blood shed for you, forgiveness of sins, but His body, His life given. So He said of the Holy Spirit in, in John 16:14, he says, He will, He, the Holy Spirit will take from what is mine, in other words, his victorious life. And he'll make it known to you.
[00:59:24] Gerard Long: And there's a lovely, there's a lovely scripture that talks in in 2 Corinthians 2:40 and it says that, that God, um, is working. God continually leads us in triumph, in Christ and through, through us defuses the aroma of Jesus in every place. You see, that's what happens when, when God is working through our life, our brokenness is that His grace comes out.
[00:59:48] Gerard Long: The apostle Paul said, death works in me. That life might work in you. And that's part of the legacy we want to leave. It's a legacy of great comfort and great hope to people who are suffering, people who are going through things who no fault of their own. Jesus. When he, when he started his ministry, he described the various groups of suffering.
[01:00:08] Gerard Long: There's the poor. We do a lot of work in India now in with villages that they are the poorest of the poor. They're known as the untouchables. And we go out and we show God's love. We're working with a missionary team as well. We show God's love what it looks like. Um, we give them clean water, transforms their life, just having clean water.
[01:00:28] Gerard Long: We clean water wells. Um, it's beautiful. We've done 30 already where our goal is a hundred. and we give the mosquito nets. Every home has a mosquito net. And imagine as a mother to know that your children are sleeping safely that night, means a huge amount. Medical aid and food, the poorest of the poor.
[01:00:47] Gerard Long: And then Jesus said, I've come to bind up the broken-hearted.
[01:00:51] Gerard Long: Oh, there's so much brokenness in this world today, so much brokenness and our heart is to be able to, to come alongside them. We know brokenness, Jeannie and I know what brokenness is, and we can come alongside them and say, do you know what, um, we're, we're here for you. We're here to hear your pain. We're here to weep with you. We're here to pray with you.
[01:01:13] Gerard Long: We know we can't fix people. Only Jesus can do that. But we can show them his love. We can hold their hands, so to speak, and come alongside them. And so we can be his hands and feet here on earth.
[01:01:24] Gerard Long: The third group were the captives, Jesus said, I've come to, to bring freedom to the captive.
[01:01:29] Gerard Long: Captives of people who have had things happen in their lives through no fault of their own. Maybe they were abused as children. Maybe they lost their health. Maybe they lost their finances. Maybe a relationship didn't work out as they hoped. Maybe their plans came to nothing. They didn't directly cause it just that we live in this broken world.
[01:01:48] Gerard Long: Maybe like for us, Satan came at them and and caused them great pain. God wants to turn it around, for good. That's what, that's what we read in Genesis 50:20. Joseph turned to his brothers, who had been so, so evil to him, nearly, nearly killed, and sold him into slavery. He said to them, you intended it for evil, but God intended it for good. In other words, God was over this. He intended it good for so, so now that there can be the rescuing of many lives, and remember, Joseph was used by God to rescue the known world. There was a great famine, amazing. God prepared him through that brokenness. And so it's a message of great hope that prisoners are people who have made bad decisions.
[01:02:33] Gerard Long: Maybe they're addicts, drug addicts, alcohol, could be pornography, all sorts of addiction that people are locked into and they're, they're slaves to that, whatever that thing is. And then of course, people who are incarcerated, they've made bad decisions.
[01:02:48] Gerard Long: Whatever group those people fall into, Jesus said, I've come to help them. I've come to rescue them. I've come to declare to them the year of the Lord's favor. That's the year of Jubilee. That's the year when everything is canceled out, and you can start afresh. What a great message of hope that is in a world when there's no no hope. And you know, one of the things that we see is that God is wanting to speak to the younger generation today, people who are leaving the church in the West anyway, in, in millions.
[01:03:20] Gerard Long: And one of the questions they're asking is, what difference are you making in the world? Well, we're he, we're hoping and praying through awaiting to God ministries that they can see very, very clearly that God's love is a practical love. And that's the love that happened in the early church. Boy did they leave us a legacy.
[01:03:37] Gerard Long: The early church who, when the plagues came to a city, everybody ran away except for the Christians. They stayed and they cared for the sick and the dying. And so much so their lives were so an example of God's love and God's power that Constantine later said, these Christians have got a power that we don't understand.
[01:03:56] Gerard Long: We gotta all become Christians. And he, he declared that they were Christianity, we would be the religion of the Roman Empire. But what were they doing? They were letting their light shine before men, that men, they could see their good deeds and glorify their father in heaven. And we see it all through scripture that God takes the broken, he takes the untouchables, he takes the ones that the world said, they can never be any good.
[01:04:20] Gerard Long: They can't do anything, and he turns them around. That was David's mighty men. You may know the story in the Old Testament. And they, they were the ones who came to David. He, he was broken in the wilderness., Saul was trying to kill him, and, uh, 400 then eventually 600 people came out to, to him in the wilderness.
[01:04:36] Gerard Long: People who were in debt, people who were broken, people who, who had had no hope for the future. What happened to them? They became David's mighty men, and you can read about them. Did incredible feats. What does that show us today? It says that God's grace is here for us. God's grace that can turn, um, lambs into lions God, God's grace that says, Hey, by the spirit of God inside you, you can become far greater than you ever thought possible.
[01:05:05] Gerard Long: He's able to do immeasurably more than all that we ask or imagine, and however broken people may be, we hope our legacy, I hope my legacy, will be one that sends a message, yes, of comfort, that God cares about you. He wants to redeem you from whatever pain you are in. He wants to restore you. And the third thing He wants to do, he wants to cause you to triumph.
[01:05:27] Gerard Long: He wants you to be a person that diffuses the fragrance of Jesus. That's His body, that's his grace through your brokenness into a world that's so dark and so broken. This is the great message, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, it takes great courage. That's what warriors are, and we started this initiative called Warriors for people who will say, yes, I want to allow God to use my brokenness to help others.
[01:05:55] Gerard Long: People who have been in human trafficking, we know of a young girl who was taken in at age 11 into sex trafficking and at 15 she came out and the first thing she said was, I want to now spend the rest of our life to help other girls get out of what, what I've just been through.
[01:06:12] Gerard Long: People who were in a terrible atrocities. We know a young man who was in in Rwanda and he was a refugee. Terrible atrocity had been going on there and he was very broken on the street. He was a street kid. We met him in Chicago and he said, you know what? I want to now help people who are refugees because I know what it's like and I want to help them and love them.
[01:06:33] Gerard Long: You see, this is what God wants to do in these days, I believe. He's making a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. At the end of Isaiah 61, um, verse four, uh, Jesus spoke the words in Isaiah 61:1 when he started His ministry. Well, verse four says, says this, they, well, who are they? It's the poor, the broken, the captives and the prisoners.
[01:06:59] Gerard Long: They will be the ones who restore the ancient cities and, and the areas of desolation. 1 Corinthians 1, it says, not many of you when you were called were of noble birth. Not many of you were, were famous. I'm paraphrasing a little bit. Not many of you had many letters after your name. Not many of you were your brilliant No, but God takes the broken of this world. He takes those who are not to nullify the ones who are.
[01:07:24] Gerard Long: So our, one of our legacy we want to be is a legacy to the suffering because we've been through suffering. We are suffering. We miss desperately every day, our precious, Rebecca and Alex, every day we suffer. We, we miss seeing them grow up. We miss desperately seeing them be all that God had, had, had planned for them to be, so to speak.
[01:07:44] Gerard Long: Uh, taking it, Rebecca down the aisle, seeing her get, seeing them get married, seeing our grandchildren, yes, we miss that so much. And our youngest son, Ben, misses it as well. Uh, he's, he's, he's broken like we are in a, in a sense, but by God's grace, we wanna say, Lord, now use it. Turn this around. What Satan intended for evil, turn it around to kick him in the teeth, so to speak, and to see your glory.
[01:08:08] Gerard Long: Come to see a whole army of people who are broken, who are suffering, become great champions and warriors for your kingdom and for your glory. That's what we hope our, our legacy, my legacy will be when it's all said and done.
[01:08:27] Steve Gatena: Throughout our lives, sometimes we endure terrible hardships and tragedies that leave us completely broken. In these moments, it can feel hopeless. Yet there is a path to salvation, to peace, to healing, and that path is through Jesus to God and God's grace.
[01:08:49] Steve Gatena: By God's grace, he can rescue anyone from their suffering and by God's grace, he may use our brokenness to break through so that we may understand that God has a grand plan far beyond anything we can imagine, and if we can trust in God and allow him to pierce the veil of brokenness upon our heart. We may come to note God's calling for us, for each of us is called to serve God in our own unique way.
[01:09:24] Steve Gatena: To abide by thy will not our will.
[01:09:30] Steve Gatena: In part one of this three part series. These are the lessons that Gerard Long shares with us on this episode of Pray.com's, Relentless Hope. After the sudden deaths of two of Gerard's children, he was left absolutely broken.
[01:09:50] Steve Gatena: But by the grace of God, Gerard found salvation from his suffering. And by God's grace, Gerard heard God's calling for both Gerard and his wife to start a new ministry focused on helping heal the broken.
[01:10:08] Steve Gatena: As Gerard teaches us, that while he and his wife can't heal the broken directly, only God does that, they can deliver God's messages of love, faith, salvation, hope, redemption, and grace to anyone in suffering.
[01:10:28] Steve Gatena: In part two of this three part series, Gerard encourages us to be true servants of God living his calling for us just like Jesus did. Gerard reminds us that Jesus didn't deserve his suffering, but he was called to the cross for a higher purpose like Jesus. Sometimes we too are called to suffering for a higher purpose.
[01:10:57] Steve Gatena: Not that we deserve to suffer, but that there is an eternal plan beyond our comprehension, so we must trust in God, and seek to serve His will.
[01:11:11] Steve Gatena: Part three of this three part series. Gerard reminds us that leaving a legacy is about how we'll be remembered after we're gone, and that for those who honor God's calling to lay down our wants and desires to do God's will, through God's grace, he will give us what we need to see it done.
[01:11:35] Steve Gatena: Through God's grace, we are given God's strength, God's mercy, and God's joy no matter where we find ourselves in this moment, Gerard reminds us that by God's grace he will restore our hearts. He will change our thoughts, and he will reveal the extraordinary calling that he has placed inside each of us.
[01:12:06] Steve Gatena: I hope you've enjoyed this week's episode of Relentless Hope, and if you have enjoyed it, I encourage you to share it with someone you love. You never know the impact that one inspiring story can have on someone's life. Until next time, remember to give hope a voice.
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