Thread by @JMHendersonSr

Seven years ago today, I was unceremoniously fired by the @ACLJ.

I had just argued, successfully as it turned out, in defense of the First Amendment rights of pregnancy resource centers challenging NYC's "compelled abortion promotion" ordinance.

For a quarter-century, I had done nothing other than work for nonprofit, public interest, pro-life, pro-liberty, legal services organizations.

You can get the flavor of that work by reviewing a list of the cases on which I worked: jimsjustsayin.blogspot.com/2018/11/cases-…

Those organizations -- Free Speech Advocates, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, and the @ACLJ -- represented sidewalk counselors, picketers, street preachers, student-led Bible clubs and prayer groups in public schools.

During those 25 years, my family often lived at/below subsistence levels.

We never accumulated wealth, a vacation home, or even a new car. We started out in a three-bedroom mobile home and ended up in a four-bedroom home in the poorest section of Northern Virginia, Springfield.

My family also put up with my long work hours, distant travel, and demands on my time even when I was at home.

Mind you, I am not saying I should have become a millionaire, gotten a vacation home, or been able to afford a new car.

Why?

Because I thought of what I was doing as public service, and I thought of those that I worked with as friends, even as brothers and sisters in Christ.

That all ended in a moment.

It's now been seven years.

We survived the brutal assault of life.

We survived because God is good all the time. We survived because Terri Lawson Henderson extended a seemingly boundless well of grace to me.

We survived because Lou Sharp, a former engineer who designed payloads for NASA in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who preferred to live in a Christian country although he said he was not one, came alongside and demonstrated his friendship and Christlike kindness.

We didn't survive because of the care and concern of men that had the benefit of my legal skills, devotion, and self-sacrifice.

Those "brothers" in Christ?

@JaySekulow, Stuart Roth, Colby May, Pat Monaghan?

Seven years. Not a call. Not a letter.

Not even an intermediary inquiring about the state of my spiritual or mental health.

Not an expression of concern for my family or their survival.

We continue to survive, and God continues to be good, all the time.

Me? I am wiser now than during those twenty-five years.

I know now that no matter how "worthy" the cause someone claims to be fighting for, if they are less kind, less decent, less caring, than a nonbeliever, then they are not doing "God's work. "

And, as revelations continue to flow about the fund-raising and family fortune building activities of @JaySekulow, the @ACLJ and Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism, I continue to be convinced that it is better to struggle in life than to be in the company of wolves.