After Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, the Bible says that “the people were astonished at His doctrine because he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” 

More than anything, that seems to sum up how I’ve known Bill Jackson to live his life. As long as I’ve known him he has taught the Bible with the authority that comes from knowing that it truly is God’s message to us. More than anything, I thank God that I was able to learn that from him. 

A few years back my brothers, sister, and I were able to help send my father and mother to Israel. When they got back, he talked a lot about what he bad seen and learned there. He also shared some things he had been studying about the importance of the nation of Israel and its place in things that will happen in the future. (Ask him about it sometime—if you have a few hours.) 

Yet, what stayed with me and challenged me the most was this: while they were on the trip, he and my mother took every chance they had to speak to the tour guides and the people they were with about their need of a relationship with Jesus. 

It was never about taking a holiday to see where Jesus once walked or where he carried the cross. It was always about knowing Jesus now, the Person he met when he was 17, and has gotten to know very well in the 49 years since then. 

Today it is an approved Christian practice to talk about how a person’s father has hurt or wounded him. I have not experienced such a wounding in my life. The difference Jesus makes causes a person to see other people’s needs first. My dad loved me enough to give me what I needed most. I could not ask for more. 

        If  I can, through God’s grace, give to my children anything close to the kind of heritage he and my mother gave me, my children will rise up and call me blessed, too. 

Randy Jackson