Injured for His Glory: An Autobiography of God's Sovereign Love

By Brad Reiches

Dive into the compelling narrative of "Injured for His Glory," a poignant autobiography that illuminates the depth of God's sovereign love. Through the lens of personal experience and divine revelation, this book chronicles the author's journey of faith, marked by trials, triumphs, and unwavering trust in God's providence.

From the depths

• Language: English
• Publisher: BRAD REICHES
• Release date: Apr 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869302717

Book preview

Injured

for

His Glory

An Autobiography of

God’s Sovereign Love

Volume 1:

From Pride to Parkinson’s

__________

Brad Reiches

Injured for His Glory

Copyright © 2017 by Brad Reiches

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author.

Printed in USA by 48HrBooks (www.48HrBooks.com)

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the Author of the life which this book espouses. It is a testimony of the goodness of God. It is a love letter to the God of love. It is a sacrifice of loyalty. It is a tribute and an acknowledgment that God is light and in Him there is no darkness. It is an affirmation that, like Abraham, if I were to die today, I would do so well satisfied with life.

Acknowledgments

Jerry Long was the founder of Kingdom Come Training, an organization devoted to equipping missionaries with the necessary tools to build prayer and financial partnerships that would get them into the field as quickly as possible.  For two years I had the privilege to work with Jerry and it forever changed my approach to life and ministry.

Jerry perceived the primary teaching method of Jesus to be parables.  Short, relevant stories that, to the frustration of many, often left the listeners to draw their own conclusions.  He believed that the greatest power in learning was not in being told what to do, but in providing an environment in which the student can learn through personal discovery.  Jerry provided such an environment for me and I have embraced it as my own. While Jerry is no longer with us physically, his legacy lives on through the multitudes of missionaries he trained, along with the many of us he mentored.

Thus, the foundation of this book is built upon the approach that Jerry so ably practiced and taught: present tense, live action, fully transparent stories giving the readers an opportunity to draw their own conclusions. 

Tracey Bartlett is the Tracey in this book, which does not exist without her.  For months, nearly every Monday and Thursday morning, we spent time editing, formatting, reading, writing, listening, challenging, questioning and examining the pages of this book in the hope of fulfilling its one purpose: bringing glory to God.

While I am grateful to be Tracey’s pastor, I am even more thankful to consider her my big sister and friend.  The laughter we shared and the tears we shed in the writing of this volume are now treasured memories for which I will always be grateful.

I walked a mile with Pleasure,

She chattered all the way,

But left me none the wiser

For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,

And ne’er a word said she;

But, oh, the things I learned from her

When Sorrow walked with me.

Robert Browning Hamilton

Contents

Foreword       8

Preface      11

Conclusions      12

Introduction: Perspective is Everything      17

    Chapter 1      The Baseball Cards       27

Chapter 2      The Miracle PP&K Year       37

Chapter 3      The One-Inch Putt       50

Chapter 4      The Sun Game       60

Chapter 5      The ESPN Game       67

Chapter 6      The Ankle       73

Chapter 7      The Fall       79

Chapter 8      Major Surgery       84

Chapter 9      Resignation #1:  My Bad       89

Chapter 10      Resignation #2: My Good       99

Chapter 11      Meet My New Friend Parky       108

Epilogue      124

About The Author      127

Foreword

It’s early Thursday morning, September 28, 2017. My mind travels to the manuscript that needs to be given its final tweaking, and the Foreword that must be written!  I reflect on the length of my association with Pastor Brad Reiches, the author of Injured for his Glory. I first met Brad on December 31, 2006; the last Sunday of that year. Now, here we are, in 2017, and in just a few months it will be a full decade that I have known and been discipled by Brad. In those ten years, I have come to consider the Reiches family as my own. Depending on the subject at hand, Brad and I put on our different hats: big sister – little brother, or pastor – church member.  I have been privileged to assist him with a variety of projects but none more undeniably anointed than this book.  No striving was necessary at any point, and God’s sustaining presence accompanied us from beginning to end.

The phone rings.  Brad is calling me from somewhere on the road between Temecula and Palm Springs, California; on the road for his pre-banquet tour as the Southwest Area Director for Wycliffe Associates, accelerating Bible translation around the world. The tour is nearing its end, when he will return to Northern California for two short weeks before taking off once again for the actual banquet tour.

The first few minutes of the call are dedicated to big sister-little brother business. Then, Brad tells me that he just gave a talk at a men’s breakfast gathering. The theme of his talk was the theme of this book: the two kinds of suffering, and the perspective that God has crafted in him over a lifetime as he has experienced the suffering that is a consequence of sin, as well as the suffering that God causes because, not in spite of, His immeasurable love. We are both excited and gratified that so many attendees at the breakfast approached him afterwards to share how uniquely meaningful his words were to them.  Amazingly, the theme and testimonies of this book have already begun to be used by God to reach into other lives before we have even finished the editing of the manuscript. It seems that, sometimes, when we do what is clearly His will, the fruit of that doing ripens and drops into our hands almost as soon as the seeds of the action are planted!

This is not a book of theology. These are unadorned true stories of one man’s walk with God; in willingness, but not in perfection as Pastor Brad so frequently says. Each story is followed by questions and reflections on the unique role that suffering plays in each of these life episodes.

It is my fervent hope that these stories, as well as the conversations that follow, will inspire you to reflect on how God may be accomplishing His purposes in your own life.

Tracey Bartlett

Preface