Jim Rannells - A Peace That Passes All Understanding: One ManS Journey After the Suicide of His Son

A Peace That Passes All
UNDERSTANDING

One Mans Journey
after the Suicide of his Son

JIM RANNELLS

Copyright 2017 Jim Rannells.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-0725-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-0724-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017917301

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/10/2017

Contents

The realization that God is in control is how I would sum up this peace I have found. Really, its a recognition of the fact that we can align ourselves with this control of God or go our own way in disobedience, just like we did before we accepted Christ as our Savior. When we turn our lives over to Christ, nothing happens that God doesnt pre-ordain. He sees the bigger picture and uses our trials in life for us to gain even more faith in Him through Christ. This ultimately transforms into a trust in God. I would say gaining a trust in God and receiving the peace of God are synonymous, or the two facets work hand in hand.

As a Christian believer, when I look back at my life, I can see the sovereignty of God working though my past and present trials in order to bring me to this trust in Him. Ultimately, He wanted me to write about this peace that I have found. I realize that He brings me though lessons in life that ultimately make my faith more solid. I can honestly agree with the notion the Paul writes about in Romans: All things work together for the good of those who love God.

Yes, I have denied God a lot and gone my own way in my free will. But even then, Christ has brought me to a place where I trust His provisions of my faith more fully.

It is my prayer that readers of this book can find the trust in God as I have found, along with that blessed peace that passes all understanding. Readers can also learn how to preserve that peace, because the world we live in has many ways in which it can rob us of that peace. We should at least recognize those things that may rob us of our peace, and we should know where to go to find answers.

In my testimony, which is this book, I try to point out the many ways I have found to preserve that peace now that Ive found it. The world (through Satan) has many ways in which we can be robbed of that peace. I attempt to show how we can preserve the peace that passes all understanding.

I felt the need to put in a background of sorts as to the event that totally changed my life and brought me on the pathway where I was to become a new creation in Christ. I also want to show how utterly selfish I was for the first forty-five years of my life. Then Christ rescued me through His peace that passes all understanding, and He guarded my heart and mind, as listed in Philippians 4:7.

At the onset of this book, I want to point to Christ from the very first, because it is about Him and what He accomplished in my life. I am simply the recipient of His grace.

I could sum up those first forty-five years of my life as a selfish, rebelling jerk. I was selfish because mostly I thought only of myself and less on the feelings of others. Certainly, I thought less on the consequences of my own actions. I simply did not care most of the time. I also had a rebelling nature, because I rebelled from my own father and the false church in which I was brought up. The only problem is that I took that rebelling nature to the extreme.

Calling myself a jerk is somewhat self-explanatory, and when I reflect on what motivated me in the past, with all the selfishness and all the rebelling against God, jerk describes me well.

This is not to say that now in Christ, my flesh does not get the better of me at times. But a faith in Christ is what I and all who claim a belief in Christ have, and we strive to live in the Spirit more fully.

I spent all of my childhood and high school years as an obedient son to a dad who deeply desired for me to eventually take over our familys cattle ranch in Wyoming, which had been in our family for five generations. My great, great grandfather cleared the sagebrush from the land and bought it from the Indians in the mid-1800s. I was the only son in my generation, but I knew early on that this ranching life was not for me. I did my best to somewhat try to please my father until I met the goal of getting out on my own by going to college.

This brought on many conflicts with my dad, as well as with my mother, who brought up my four sisters and me up following the Mormon religion. I think early on, when I was in my teen years, I knew something was wrong with that religion, even if I could not quite put my finger on why I had problems with it. It would take many years to discover why it was wrong and why I would eventually deny that religion, which on my mothers side went back five generations to the times of Brigham Young.

When I left for college in 1969, I started a life rebellion against my father and the Mormon Church. I learned to drink and party, and I started many years of womanizing. As I said, the drinking was my way of proving I was a Jack Mormon, and I think I formally drank to that aspect many times. Occasionally at college, I even managed the time to study, and I chose a major in music because I liked to sing in high school and could actually sing on key.

After a couple of years of college with a lot of drinking, I met a woman and got her pregnant. We married a few months before my daughter, Amber, was born. My new wife, Kim, and I both left college, and I perused a job in restaurant management to support my new family. The problem was I was not mature enough to stop my rebelling, and I was soon back to my drinking and womanizing outside our marriage. Kim and I divorced after about three years, and I drifted from job to job for a while. I did not take full responsibility for my young daughter until the courts caught up with me a few years later due to all the back child support I had accumulated. I was still a selfish, rebelling jerkwith the addition of a lack of responsibility for my young daughter.