I want to thank all of y’all for coming today. We all loved my dad. He asked me a while ago to say something at this service. It’s something I really didn’t think about again until this week. When I thought about it I thought I might come up here and tell some funny stories about Dad, or maybe I’d tell about things I learned from him or things he taught me or things I leaned from him by what he did.

But I decided instead to talk about a time he was feeling sorry for himself. Everybody here knew Dad. He didn’t usually feel sorry for himself. He was a man that had a heart of hope. It was almost an assurance that things were going to be okay, that everything was going to turn out alright. But we’ve all sinned and come short of the glory of God and every man, even my dad, is made imperfect by sin. Sometimes we don’t feel right about ourselves. Things aren’t going the way we want them to go. We’re not letting Jesus lead our lives at that moment. And we don’t stop for a moment and remember, what God wants for us is so much better than what we want for ourselves, and we spend all our lives getting in the way. If we would just get out of the way things would be much better. I think that my dad spent most of his life trying to get out of the way. I think from an early age, from the time he accepted Jesus into his heart, he knew that his life was Christ’s. When you have a heart of hope like that, when you have a heart for Jesus like that, a funny thing happens.

I’ve talked to a lot of people this week, people I’ve known all my life and some I’ve just met this week. And most of them, if not all of them, wanted to tell me about something Dad helped them to do. How Dad helped them with this or that, or that they knew someone Dad helped. That’s what Dad did, he wanted to help you – his family, his friends, people he didn’t even know. He helped me understand that when you accept Jesus into your life, starting that very day, you should try to be more like Jesus than you were yesterday. And tomorrow you should try to be a little more like Jesus than you were the day before. But even a man like that is just a man and sometimes they feel sorry for themselves, and Dad was feeling sorry for himself. When that happens, sometimes you just keep feeling sorry for yourself and it can become a habit. Not Dad. You know what he did? He prayed about it.

He went straight to the person with the answers and he prayed, “God, what am I going to do? What am I going to do?”

Dad said he heard a voice in his head. He heard God’s voice in his head, and God was laughing at him.

And God said, “Troy, what are you so worried about?”

And Dad said, “Well God, you know what I’m worried about. You know why I’m so upset.”

And God said, “Troy, haven’t I always taken care of you?”

Dad didn’t even have to think about it. He knew God had always taken care of him. From his earliest memories of his mother and father, of his sisters he loved so much, of his sister’s children that he considered his own children. To his family in Houston, to his wife, to his sons that he loved beyond measure. Even at his work, even at HBU (Houston Baptist University), a place he helped to found and that will leave a legacy of helping others for many years after all of us are gone. And finally here, where he came for the last years of his life. Where he found another family. Where he found y’all. And where he found two more boys to take care of. Yes, God had always taken care of him. And I believe, on the morning he had his accident, God took care of him one more time. This is not a time to be sad, because Dad’s okay. And what we need to do is be a little bit more like Christ today than we were yesterday. Because that’s what Dad wanted. That’s what Jesus wants. And as it turns out, a lot of times what they wanted were the same things.

I appreciate y’all being here. We loved our dad. Y’all loved our dad. In fact, we love him still.