A heartfelt tale of inspiration, hope and redemption, Letters to God is the story of what happens when one boy’s walk of faith crosses paths with one man’s search for meaning—the resulting transformational journey touches the lives of everyone around them.
Tyler Doherty (TANNER MAGUIRE) is an extraordinary eight-year-old boy. Surrounded by a loving family and community, and armed with the courage of his faith, he faces his daily battle against cancer with bravery and grace. To Tyler, God is a friend, a teacher and the ultimate pen pal—Tyler’s prayers take the form of letters, which he composes and mails on a daily basis.
The letters find their way into the hands of Brady McDaniels (JEFFREY S.S. JOHNSON), a beleaguered postman standing at a crossroads in his life. At first, he is confused and conflicted over what to do with the letters. Overtime he begins to form a friendship with the Doherty family – getting to know not just Tyler but his tough, tender yet overwhelmed mom (ROBYN LIVELY), stalwart grandmother (MAREE CHEATHAM) and teen brother Ben (MICHAEL CHRISTOPHER BOLTEN) — who are each trying to stand strong against the doubts that come with the chaotic turn their lives have taken.
Moved by Tyler’s courage, Brady realizes what he must do with the letters, a surprise decision that will transform his heart and uplift his new found friends and community –in an exhilarating act of testament to the contagious effect of one boy’s unwavering faith against the odds.
Inspired by a true story, Letters to God is an intimate, moving and often funny story about the galvanizing effect one child’s belief can have on his family, friends and community.
Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn’t slept in 36 hours and she won’t for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she’ll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn’t ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.
She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of “friends” offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write “FUCK UP” large across her left forearm.
The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.
She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I’ve known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theatre star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she’s beautiful. I think it’s God reminding her.
I’ve never walked this road, but I decide that if we’re going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes
more Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando’s finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.
She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott’s) Travelling Mercies.
On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I’m not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.
Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We’re talking to God but I think as much, we’re talking to her, telling her she’s loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she’s inspired.
After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.
She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She’s had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn’t have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.
As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: “The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope.”
I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we’re called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.
We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she’s known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.
We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.
I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.
Have you ever been in a situation and thought there’s just no way this can happen but I’m going to give it everything I have? Ever faced an insurmountable wall that you didn’t think in a million years you could topple? A guy by the name of Henry Blackaby did!
When the World’s Fair came to Canada back in 1986. Blackaby saw an opportunity to reach more than 22 million people with the message of the gospel. You know that sounds great but ya see there was just a few problems though: The association of churches that Blackaby served in Vancouver had just about 2,000 members and a budget of less than $9,000 a year. Still convinced of God’s leading, Blackaby set a budget of $202,000, prayed and trusted God to do the rest. God didn’t disappoint!! By the end of the year more than $264,000 had come in from all over the world and some 20,000 people began personal relationships with Christ through the efforts of a small but faithful band of believers.
The Israelites had their own wall to topple before they could enter the promised land. The wall they faced surrounded Jericho, a forfeited city with “walls up to the sky” (Deuteronomy 9:1). When the Israelites arrived, Jericho’s residents had just completed the spring harvest and the city’s wells were brimming with spring rain. Archaeological experts estimate that the inhabitants probably could have held out for several years. Defeating the city was one of the history’s most unlikely and humanly impossible victories. Yet the people of God accomplished it–not with trumpets and shouting but with obedience to God’s directives.
Perhaps you find yourself staring up at an insurmountable wall that God is calling you to conquer–a wall that seems as frightening as it is large. Maybe your wall is a task that seems impossible or a goal too incredible to imagine. I’m sure the Church Planters who are still in the beginning stages can definitely relate. Or Maybe your wall is a repeating pattern of sin you haven’t been able to overcome on your own (Lust, lying, unforgiveness, masturbation etc).
Many things in life look like Jericho’s wall–obstacles that stand in the way of what God wants us to accomplish for him. But guys in the hard times we have to trust our God and claim his promises! When we realize the power we have IN CHRIST we will be able to move forward with faith, topple our walls and walk victoriously over the rubble!
“The future belongs to those who set their sights on what is humanly unattainable”
Wilbur Howard
Some more info on Henry Blackaby
http://www.blackaby.org/
The secret disease that’s way bigger than you think.
When Christie Pettit received a scholarship to play tennis at the University of Virginia, she left everything she knew: her friends, her family, her church, her hometown in Texas and her mother’s home cooking. It was to be a journey halfway across the country to start a new, exciting life as a university-level tennis player. But her adventure into college life quickly turned into a devastating emotional and physical battle—a battle for and against her own body. Like many incoming freshmen, Pettit feared leaving her family, finding new friends and, of course, gaining the dreaded “Freshman 15.” Despite her place on the tennis team, Pettit felt like she had lost the sense of security she’d felt around her friends back home. In her hometown, she had been a star athlete, a top-notch student and part of a large social circle; but in college, she was just another tennis player. Soon it became all she could do to handle her sadness and loneliness and her desire to be the best.
As time passed, she realized she couldn’t control her social life or her place on the team. So she focused on something she could control—her weight. “As long as I was focusing on my weight, I didn’t think about my loneliness,” Pettit says. “I felt good about myself when I stepped on the scale and saw that I had lost weight. It helped distract me from other negative emotions that I was trying to suppress.”Despite getting plenty of exercise playing tennis, Pettit gained a few pounds thanks to the tempting, fattening foods served in the dining hall. Subtle changes seemed easy, so she began restricting certain foods and eating more fruits and vegetables. But it wasn’t long before she began obsessing over the number of calories and the amount of fat in food products. To control her weight and to gain the attention of her new friends, she ate the fewest calories she could each day while still maintaining a certain level of energy. In her book Empty: A Story of Anoxeria (Revell), Pettit admits she looked for value in physical form and defined her self-worth entirely in terms of weight. Because she was so focused on what had become a physical battle with her body, Pettit no longer felt the inner anguish she’d worked so hard to suppress. And because she was ignoring her emotions, she denied the possibility that her diet could be an eating disorder. Only depressed people get eating disorders, she thought.
Though she ignored the emotional, Pettit did not ignore the spiritual. Even as her diet became her priority, she maintained a personal relationship with God by taking time for devotions each morning. She also remained active within her local church by leading a fellowship group. “I would say it was like God stuck with me,” she says. “My life kept me involved with God on a regular basis, so I kept going through my routine even when things were the worst.”
But as the number of diet restrictions grew, Pettit became irritable. Friends and family noticed her dramatic change in personality and weight. To avoid their comments, she often ate alone, isolating herself from those who tried to reach out. Within months, her weight dropped from 145 to 114 pounds. Pettit was beginning to feel weak.
“I was such a perfectionist that I didn’t want to believe that there could be anything like that wrong with me,” she says. “I also thought I could handle it on my own. The truth was that I was actually too weak at that point to even be able to ask for help. I thought I should be strong enough in my faith to pray the problem away,” she says. “I was afraid [people at church] would judge me.”
It wasn’t until she returned to college in the fall of her sophomore year that Pettit faced her problem. Her coach worried about her physical condition and arranged for her to meet with a doctor, a nutritionist and a psychologist. The physician told her that her heart rate was so low that she was at risk for having a heart attack, and the psychologist diagnosed her as having anorexia nervosa. Family and friends became aware of her disorder and encouraged her to seek help. As she opened up about her diet and feelings to a nutritionist and a psychologist, Pettit realized she needed to make another appointment … with God.
Pettit calls her eating disorder a “sin.” For her, putting her diet and exercise program above God was a form of idolatry. As part of her recovery, she said a prayer of surrender and asked God to forgive her.
But her problems weren’t over yet. As Pettit learned how to put weight back on, she started overeating. This is common among recovering anorexics, Pettit says.
In February 2007, Harvard researchers published a study showing that binge eating is the No. 1 eating disorder in the United States. According to the report, as many as 4 million Americans have the disorder, and it is more common among women. Those who binge tend to eat more quickly during episodes, eat until they’re uncomfortably full (even when they’re not hungry), eat alone and often feel guilty and depressed.
Christie continued to fear the judgment of other Christians and wrestled with the thought that they might also think badly of God for allowing her to have a disease.
Dr. L. Shannon Jung, author of Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating, believes that, though concern must be placed on changing personal beliefs about other Christians so that those in need feel comfortable individually asking for help, emphasis must also be placed on the Church’s outreach. In this way, Christians have a responsibility to seek out those in need and let them know they are loved. “God often comes to us through other human beings, and this puts a bit of a burden on the local Church to represent God and to hold each other genuinely as brothers and sisters,” he says.
Eventually, through the recovery process, Pettit learned to open up to her friends at church and discovered that they were willing to help her without judging her. By leaning on them, she found that the words of Proverbs 27:17 are true: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (TNIV).
Pettit suggests several ways to change the way one views food and eating.
“I think the most important thing to do is first be honest and reflective about how we really feel about food, weight and body image,” she says. “Many of us are so programmed to think this way that it is hard to even identify the unhealthy thoughts. Then, I think it is important to identify the underlying beliefs that are the root of those thought patterns. Finally, you have to challenge those thought patterns and replace them with new truth.”
This is a scene from the movie “Coach Carter” and in my opinion it’s one of the best scenes in a movie period.
A hard nosed coach (played by Samuel Jackson) comes into a rough situation of coaching inner city kids who are all headed down the wrong path in life.
Most of the students in the school end up dead, in jail or pregnant instead of high school graduates.
Coach Carter challenges the athletes to be great in every aspect of their life not just on the Basketball court.
He shows the students that they are more powerful than they could ever imagine.
That they have the ability to bring change in a positive way to an entire school and community!
I believe that a lot of times in life we as Christ followers are a lot like the students! Not in the fact that we’re heading down a bad path but in the sense of we’re playing ourselves too small!
If we could really grasp the power that we have in Christ, I truly believe our lives would look a lot different.
I believe we would love more, dream bigger and think more out of the box in a lot of situations.
I just want to challenge you today to dream bigger!
Ask yourself some questions…
What am I doing that’s so big that I NEED God to come through because if he doesn’t it won’t happen?
What are you doing in your life that requires Radical Faith?
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light , not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make and manifest the glory of god that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson
Clayton Stanton McDonald went home to be with the Lord March 16, 2009 at 8:33 am just 40 days shy of his 19th birthday. He impacted more people in his short time on earth than many do in 75 or more years. He loved people and spent his days investing in people’s lives, always thinking of others before himself. Everyone who came in contact with him always considered him a close friend even if they only knew him for a brief period. Clayton was diagnosed with leukemia at 7 and under went 2.5 years of chemotherapy, had two plus years of good health and then relapsed in 2003 and underwent a bone marrow transplant. He again experienced a 2+ year period of health and fell out of remission September 2006 and then underwent a second bone marrow transplant in January 2007, and was able to enjoy his senior year in high school with his classmates, even participation on the diving team and qualifying for the CIF championships. After a productive summer working with junior high youth ministry at Atascadero Bible Church and participation in a mission trip to Costa Rica, he began to feel anemic. A trip to Stanford in October 2008 indicated that the leukemia had returned for a fourth time. At this point it was clear that a cure was not possible. Clayton chose to forgo treatment and live out his final days without chemotherapy. He then took the opportunity to tell his story to all who would listen, speaking at Atascadero Bible Church, Cornerstone Church of Simi Valley and multiple schools and youth groups throughout the county. Finally on Wednesday March 11, 200 he spoke to over 900 of his peers at Call Poly. Clayton is survived by his mom and dad Wendy and Stan McDonald and his brother and sister Zack and Samantha, his grandparents and two great grandmothers and extended family.
Clayton is a man who “got it”!
Who truly got what it means to live out the tough verse in James 1:2!
You see this man of God defines what my definition of a stud is!
A stud isn’t the person with the most money, the most “things”, most followers on twitter, having the coolest blog, or driving the coolest car.
To me a stud is the person who has the least because they realize that it’s not about things! A stud realizes that the most important thing this life is about is dying to ones self so that Christ is gain! And a person that carries out Matthew 28:19!
You see Clayton wasn’t focused on the things that the world tells us we should be focused on. Clayton was focused on spreading the Gospel to the world!
What energy wasn’t spent on weekly blood draws and platelet transfusions, was spent reaching out to church youth groups and speaking about his faith.
So I just want to ask you guys today, What is living a life that truly matters all about to you?
Are you living the life that you feel that God is calling you to live?
What’s keeping you from living that life?
What if we all sold out and lived each day as if it were last?
Guys lets catch on to what it means to truly live a life that matters and flip this world upside right for Jesus Christ!
