{"id":3940,"date":"2021-04-09T02:01:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-09T02:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3940"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:02","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:02","slug":"god-forbid-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3940","title":{"rendered":"GOD FORBID!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I found out years after the fact that &#8220;God forbid!&#8221; was my father&#8217;s reaction when I first announced (during my senior year in college) that I was going to pursue a career in youth ministry.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">His objection &#8211; which he kept to himself &#8211; wasn&#8217;t about anything like low pay, lack of status, or limited career options.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">No, the gut-level &#8220;God forbid!&#8221; came out of his years of attending local churches and especially the experience of serving on various church committees.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here was dad&#8217;s fear: I was a na\u00efve\u00a0idealist who was about to walk into the reality of the inner workings of a church. He figured that I might witness &#8220;how the sausage is made&#8221; and get so discouraged that I would walk away not only from the local church but from my Christian faith altogether.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thus &#8230; God forbid!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He didn&#8217;t seek to discourage my plans, but he sure prayed for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found out years after the fact that &#8220;God forbid!&#8221; was my father&#8217;s reaction when I first announced (during my senior year in college) that I was going to pursue a career in youth ministry.\u00a0 His objection &#8211; which he kept to himself &#8211; wasn&#8217;t about anything like low pay, lack of status, or limited [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3941,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3940\/revisions\/3941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}