Happiness or holiness?: One path

HAPPINESS or holiness? Only one path leads to ultimate satisfaction

By Bethany Riehl

What is the point of it all anyway?

It’s the question we face at my church every Sunday, more or less, as our pastor walks us through the book of Ecclesiastes.

“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher. “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” (Ecc. 1:2)

Thankfully, we started this book by looking ahead to the end. Spoiler alert, it’s not life that’s vanity; it’s the life lived for our own pleasure or gain that has no purpose. But a life lived in pursuit of holiness? That’s lasting, eternal, abundant.

And that’s easy to talk about here, with you. Me, behind this computer and you, sitting there with a moment to yourself for whatever reason. But when I close this computer and you set down this magazine and we walk through our daily lives, what does this look like in practice?

Recently, I realized that I have…how you say…a touch of road crankiness. I refuse to say road rage because I don’t curse or yell or gesture. I just…grumble. Or make sarcastic suggestions to other drivers. You know how it goes: “Oh, sure, come on over. I don’t need my front fender. Oh, and by all means, go slower…”

You get the idea.

Anyway. It could be seen as harmless, this habit of mine. After all, they can’t hear me. But my passengers sure do. They hear my heart and it’s not pretty.

In an effort to change the behavior, I gave my kids a code phrase to use to get my attention if they hear me being snotty to other drivers. When they say, “Citizen’s Arrest!” (we’ll be besties forever if you know why we chose that phrase), it’s my reminder to repent of my bad attitude.

I’m not going to lie – it grates on the ol’ nerves most of the time to hear that phrase from a child, and I often have to fight a new set of temptations in my heart when I do. But my holiness, by God’s power and for His glory, is what I’m after, so we continue on with it.

This is a small and insignificant example compared to many other hard and heavy ways that the Lord shapes us to be holy more than happy. What about laying down our life – our wants, opinions, tastes, etc. – for someone else?

When we really live out the verse, “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Philippians 2:3) it grates.

It can be treating a stranger with respect, even when they’re rude, or it can be actively loving and serving someone that you know might not appreciate it – or worse, look on your sacrifice with contempt.

It can be as simple as finishing a task you’ve lost interest in or as difficult as staying committed in a lonely marriage. It’s doing all for the glory of God regardless of the reward or lack thereof on earth. And, friends, it.is.tough. Our goal is in every way to be more like Christ. Christ, who when faced with the goal that He’d come to earth to accomplish – the salvation of all who would put their faith in Him – asked the Father to let the cup pass from Him if possible. While I am certain that Jesus was dreading the crucifixion, I believe it was the wrath of God He was going to endure that had Him literally sweating blood. Bethany Riehl “…My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39b) Where would we be if, “yet not as I will, but as You will,” had not been Jesus’ ultimate aim? I’ll tell you. Doomed. Hopeless. Helpless. But praise be to God, Jesus chose holiness over happiness. Obedience over His own desire in that moment. He walked forward on the path He’d laid out and rescued us – His eyes on pleasing the Father, no matter the cost. If we claim to be His, we can do no less. “Then Jesus said, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me’.” (Matthew 16:24) If we live life with the goal of happiness, we’ll always find ourselves on a path that ends in dissatisfaction and emptiness. No matter how many new paths we carve out, if this is our aim, they all end up in the same way: a dead end. No house, no job, no relationship, no degree, no toy, no political figure, no (insert greatest desire here) will satisfy. Only a life lived for God and striving after holiness can. Take it from the wisest man in all history, who followed every path his heart desired and this is where it led: “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgement, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13,14) n Bethany Riehl lives in the Treasure Valley with her husband, three kids, and one super chill dog. She writes articles and fictional novels when she can, and her one desire is to point others to the love and sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Her books can be found on Amazon or at your local library… after you request them to be in stock, of course.

If you are in youth ministry you will defi nitely want to connect with RandyB Funk! This Spring and Summer local Christian hip-hop artist RandyB Funk is headlining 12 concerts which are FREE with donation to the Boise Rescue Mission at the door. Six of these concerts will be held here in the Treasure Valley.

FIRED UP Friday Night Concert Series’ goal is to give youth and young adults (all ages are welcome) a safe place to go on Friday nights that’s encouraging and Christ-centered. RandyB is currently scouting for additional concert venues, with several local sponsors secured for the upcoming concerts. If you or your company would like to get involved, slots for additional sponsors and volunteers are still available.

RandyB will also be touring in Montana, Wyoming, Florida, and Southern California continuing his New Day Tour thru August 17th, 2022.

He’s been blessed to open for, or perform with, some of the most popular names in Christian hip-hop music including KB, Wande, Zauntee, Steven Malcom, 1K-Phew, Christafari, R-Swift, PEABOD and more! RandyB has released over 17 songs, one of which debuted in April 2022 as #2 on BlessedBeatz the number one syndicated Christian hip-hop show in the world! Treasure Valley residents may recall that RandyB opened for KB at Project 88.7’s Summer Splash in 2021.

At just 19 RandyB Funk’s music is featured on over 150 Christian radio stations nationwide. A psychology major at Liberty University, he is a community organizer, a philanthropist, public speaker and a business owner, and has produced more Christian hip-hop concerts than anyone else in the state of Idaho!

You may know RandyB Funk from local networking groups or news stories. His 2021 SOS Service Drives generated 10,000 items this year for the Boise Rescue Mission, and the Idaho Humane Society! He has been conducting service drives in the Treasure Valley since he was 11 years old, originally working with the homeless in Maui, Hawaii, where he lived until he was seven years old.

A natural entrepreneur, RandyB started FIRED UP PROMOTIONS with his Mom. Together they produce Christian hip-hop benefi t events and concerts that also generate donations for the Boise Rescue Mission.

“Please connect with me. We’ve got some exciting concerts planned for this year. Help provide a safe, encouraging space where youth and young adults (all ages are welcome) can enjoy Christian hip-hop, dance, make new friends and learn that they are valuable to God. We are getting less connected as a society and it’s damaging our youth and young adults. I want to be part of the solution by bringing new friends together in a venue where it’s okay to love Jesus, encourage others and see yourself as valuable.” RandyB Funk

Reach Team RandyB Funk at: (208)-914-3793 Email: mcfunk48@gmail.com Find him at randybfunk.com and on social media @randybfunkmusic; RandyB Funk’s music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, and more.

COVER STORY

Blessed

with an almost lifelong partnership

By Gaye Bunderson

Rick and Sue Ellen Montgomery have enjoyed an almost lifelong partnership. Their paths crossed in childhood when Rick’s family attended a church pastored by Sue Ellen’s father, Tom Blackburn. The Community Christian Center was located in Garden City and Rick was only 10 when he walked through the church door for the first time with his siblings, his mom, and his stepfather.

“His big sister became my best friend,” Sue Ellen said. That’s how it began – a partnership that would ultimately entail a marriage and a business. The story involves not only a big sister but several grownups as well. Sue Ellen’s mother started a school at Community Christian Center and Rick attended. Also, Rick’s stepdad became an assistant at the church, working for Pastor Blackburn by running the church soup kitchen and food bank.

One of the most amusing parts of the story is how Rick earned the record for most detentions in school, while Sue Ellen had the fewest. Part of Rick’s punishment was writing essays each time he was detained after class. As the teacher, Sue Ellen’s mother read everything he wrote. It could have been a disaster – but it wasn’t.

“Mom had to read his essays, and she really liked him,” Sue Ellen said. “Both my parents loved Rick, and Dad was his football coach.”

Rick and Sue Ellen started dating during her senior year. Even back then, Rick was a go-getter. “He was always a hard worker, and he got involved in heating and cooling at age 16,” Sue Ellen explained.

It started when Rick played chauffeur to a construction worker he knew who’d lost his right to drive because of a DUI. “Rick picked up what he could [about the construction business] – he’s always loved working with this hands. During the summer when he was 16, and even throughout the school year, he’d run flexible duct work under houses under construction.”

“He even took me on a date one time, and he had to go into a crawl space while I was holding a flashlight,” said Sue Ellen.

Ah yes, flexible duct work. That’ll tug at a girl’s heart. Fortunately by then, Sue Ellen’s heart was committed to the hard-working teenager with a record for school detentions. Even though she went away to college at Seattle Pacific University to major in music for a year, she returned and attended ITT Technical Institute in Boise in pursuit of becoming a legal secretary.

During that time, Rick proposed and asked her father for Sue Ellen’s hand in marriage, and the couple became man and wife when she was 19 and he was 18. They will mark 30 years of marriage this coming November. Sue Ellen is now 49 and Rick is 48. They have two daughters and five grandchildren. www.christianlivingmag.com

With marriage and parenthood comes responsibility, and Rick did not shy away from working and providing for his family. But all lives encounter hurdles, and in March of 1999, Rick was laid off from a job; he had been employed in the heating and cooling industry for 10 years, working for other companies. The layoff turned out to be pivotal as he decided to start his own business. Sue Ellen’s parents helped by getting a loan for $1,000 to fund a startup. Rick started out on his own in new construction and launched Diamond Heating & Cooling in the Treasure Valley. Sue Ellen helped run the business and is now vice president of the company.

For the first 9 years, Rick worked at installing heating and cooling systems in new homes. In 2006, he provided heating and cooling systems for an entire subdivision at Tamarack Resort in Donnelly.

Then another hurdle popped up: the 2008 Great Recession. “New construction came to a halt,” Sue Ellen said. Housing construction had been booming, and in a very short time, it just stopped. “We were praying about what we were going to do next. In 2009, the Lord brought into our life a company called Success Group International, a business management consulting firm based in Addison, Texas. In one year, we went from doing 90% new construction to 98% residential services, including maintenance and repair of furnaces and air conditioning in existing homes. Rick and I struggled for years. In 2012, we started growing, and we now have 54 employees.”

Those employees are like family to the Montgomerys. “In 2017, we challenged them that if we hit all our goals, we’d take them on a cruise.”

Goals were met and the cruise was undertaken to the tune of $50,000. At this point, Rick felt a “burden on his heart”: If he was willing to spend $50,000 on his team, he wanted to give that same amount to people in need. Both he and Sue Ellen were influenced by their parents to give back and to always think of others and respond to needs with generosity. “It was through their influence and example that we wanted to give back – they had a big impact on us.”

The couple heard a presentation in church from a missionary who served in Africa. Rick got fired up. He wanted to help build a medical clinic in South Africa, and his enthusiasm spread to both his employees and customers at Diamond Heating & Cooling. A large sum of money was raised, as the Diamond team and its customers all pitched in what they could. Along with the medical clinic, money was raised for The Shoe That Grows, a program that provides expandable, long-lasting footwear for kids enduring poverty.

The medical clinic was built in a small village called Shabalala in South Africa in September of 2018. In 2019, Rick and Sue Ellen went to the dedication of the building there. “The medical clinic is for the village,” Sue Ellen said. “They serve the children of the village lunch after school every day. Many of the children are orphaned because of AIDS and other reasons. There is not an actual ‘orphanage’ in the village. The children are either cared for by others in the community or they live on their own. So, for many of them, the meal they receive at the medical facility once a day is their only meal. “The local church is also very involved in ministering to the children there at the medical facility, where they have an area to do Bible lessons with the kids as well. We got to spend a day and meet all the kids. There is such a need there.”

While that was one of the Montgomerys’ biggest projects, it hasn’t been their only one. “Our parents taught us to ‘give what you have’,” said Sue Ellen. And what they had was a furnace that, in conjunction with Christian radio station KTSY, they gave to a family at Christmastime in 2011.

The Montgomerys also started Diamond Hugs, which is an internal program at their company that is also a pay-itforward program and involves Diamond employees. “We do multiple Hugs a year as the Diamond family,” said Sue Ellen. The Montgomerys and their staff have taken on assistance programs and have packed diaper bags for needy parents, held golf tournaments to raise money for charity, and many other projects.

Again working with KTSY and other community-minded businesses in the area, Diamond and the other enterprises remodeled an entire home in a week for a local family.

The Montgomerys attend River City Church, where they’ve been members for 17 years. Sue Ellen serves on the church board and is the first woman to do so. Rick runs the men’s ministry.

Sue Ellen conceded that heating and cooling is a competitive business and she and Rick stay ahead by treating their customers well and their work team with respect. “We wouldn’t be here without any of them.”

The Montgomerys seem to live in accordance with Matthew 5:14-17: Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

They don’t bury their light of faith under a bowl but display it brightly for everyone, including their customers, employees, and people in the valley. “We don’t hide our faith from anyone, whether or not they are Christian. We give credit to God.” That includes credit for everything, including success. n

Photo credits: Page 24: Rick and Sue Ellen Montgomery, owners of Diamond Heating & Cooling in the Treasure Valley, live a philosophy of giving back. Here, they are shown with The Shoe That Grows, expandable, long-lasting footwear for kids enduring poverty. The Montgomerys donated the shoes to children in South Africa. (Courtesy photo) Page 25: Rick Montgomery is shown with a group of South African youngsters. Rick and his wife Sue Ellen traveled to a village called Shabalala in 2018 after providing funding for a medical clinic there. The orphaned children in the village are provided with a daily meal at the clinic. (Courtesy photo)

REAL Man’s Toolbox God is speaking – make sure you listen

By Leo Hellyer

Men, as we live our lives, there can be many distractions that can send our minds off track very easily. It is very difficult to always keep our priorities as they should be. We have many facets of our lives to try to keep in order. Every day we attempt to keep Family, Work, God, Sleep, Recreation, Education, Service, Nourishment, Mentoring, Being Mentored, etc., in balance. As we judge ourselves in how well we are doing, we can hear many voices in our heads concerning our progress and staying on course.

There is a great book available that I highly recommend for your Real Man’s Toolbox. This book does a great job of addressing the negative chattering that we may hear from ourselves and possibly from others. Steven Furtick, the founder and lead pastor of Elevation Church in Charlotte, N.C., addressed this specific challenge in his book, “Crashing the Chatterbox.”

He addresses the constant battle that we have between what we are led to do by God and all of the other things, people, and distractions that attempt to take us off course. Furtick presents the truth that even when we are distracted, God is with us and is waiting for us to call upon Him to get us back on course.

The challenges we are facing are nothing new. Furtick delves into the real life experiences of many of the heroes of the Bible and the struggles they had in staying on course. He is also transparent in discussing his own challenges with the ‘Chatterbox’ that he experiences in his own life.

What is your Chatterbox telling you? How difficult is it for you to stay the course? How often do you let the breezes, winds, gales, or hurricanes of life take you off course? As Christians, we are infinitely blessed. Anytime we find ourselves off course, we can call upon God Almighty, and He is always there and will lead us back to the correct course.

Furtick brings many words of vision and clarity to his book. He mentions that, “My joy is not determined by what happens to me but by what Christ is doing in me and through me.”

It is mind-boggling to attempt to understand God’s love for us. God’s unconditional love is something that is very difficult for us to wrap our minds around. He doesn’t love us for what we do or accomplish; He loves us for who we are and who He is. We are His adopted children, and he is our loving Heavenly Father who loves us unconditionally. No matter how many times we go off course, He is always right there, ready to pick us up, dust us off, wrap His arms around us, and put us back on course.

Furtick brings us to the understanding that we need to have a huge amount of gratitude toward our Loving Heavenly Father because “we don’t deserve any of what we’ve been given – it is all a product of God’s grace.” He also points out, “I will not let discouragement of what I’m

going through make me forget the benefits of belonging to the God who has been so good to me. He has saved me, blessed me, forgiven me, restored me, satisfied me, healed me, crowned me, and renewed me.” God loves us so much that He does not make us puppets; He has given us our own minds, and He allows us to make our own decisions. He allows us to learn from our mistakes. He waits patiently for us to learn our lessons, and when we have realized that we have once again gone off course, He opens our eyes so we can clearly see through God’s ‘compass’ and get back on the correct course. How often is your life controlled by your Chatterbox? How often do you feel defeated by your Chatterbox? Do you want to turn down the volume? Leo Hellyer Our Chatterbox is part of the spiritual warfare that we face on a daily basis. When you are in any battle, it is usually not resolved in a short moment. It is a long, trying, exhausting experience. The secret to eventually being victorious in the spiritual battle that we are all in is to keep in the battle. We need to battle and press on. We need to be sure that we are wearing all of our armor, and we need to make sure that we are going into battle in God’s strength, not just our own. Furtick explains that although the Chatterbox takes no breaks, we need to constantly be ready to show up for the fight, and we need to keep pounding away. In closing, I would like to ask each you to honestly and fervently show God, in your way, your gratitude for Him allowing you to live in this nation, where we all have so much to be thankful for. There are many of our brothers and sisters who are in other places on this planet where they are in very perilous situations. Many of us wish we could be “boots on the ground” with them, and some of us are. For those of us who cannot be “boots on the ground,” let’s call upon God Almighty to be with them, love them, protect them, bless them, and reward them for their faith, dedication, persistence and obedience. In all things, remember we are not the judge, God is. May you be successful in taming your Chatterbox to the point where you can hear God’s Voice above all others. n Leo Hellyer is a non-staff pastor with a local church and has been married to his wife Norma for more than 45 years. The couple volunteered with the Boise FamilyLife Ministry Team for 20 years. Leo has also been serving with Boise Rescue Mission Ministries for 20 years and is currently serving at the River of Life Rescue Mission. He is president and chief firearms instructor with Helping Hands Firearms Training LLC. If you have questions about Real Man’s Toolbox, or need other assistance, Leo may be reached at silverplate426@msn.com or 208-340-5544.

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