John Carroll Moffett—Butch 2011
Did you know that God has seen everyone of your days before you ever came into existence. God knows exactly the number of days you have used up, and the number of days you have left. God is not bound by time, and today is as close to God as a thousand years ago was. One of the smartest thing that we can do is to remember, we all have a certain number of days to do the will of God for our lives. Nobody will be able to stand before God and truthfully say, “I didn’t have enough time.” John Carrol Moffett, better known as Butch, had enough time.
It all began on a honeymoon between John Moffett Jr. and Aileen Jones. Now many people go to places like Niagaga Falls for their honeymoon or to Hawaii, but not John and Aileen. They went to visit relatives. I think it had more to do with being poor than being in love with their relatives, but Aileen testified it was the best honeymoon they could have had. When they woke up in the morning, their family members had breakfast right outside the door waiting for them. They prepared their meals for them. They left them alone to just enjoy each other.
Enjoy each other they did, because while all this fun was going on, God had decided to turn them from being a newlywed couple of two, to a pregnant family of three. Little did they know than when their honeymoon came to end and they were saying goodbye to their family, they were taking home with them little John Carrol Moffett III inside the womb of Aileen Moffett. Little John was conceived on the honeymoon.
He made his arrival on a hot day in Knoxville, Tenn. on the 28th of in August in the year 1946. Since he had been conceived among family, he decided he may as well be born among family, and so he was born at home. I’m sure his father John was glad to have saved the extra money from the bill. Moffetts were not known for wasting money.
God puts different qualities in all of us and God uses the things in our lives to shape and mold us into the people that we become. There are some things about us, that when you look at us you can see our parents. One of the things that struck me about Butch is that, I never have seen Butch move very quickly in my 22 years of knowing. But I never saw his father John, ever move very quickly either in all the years I knew him.
Butch had a personaility that was sort of even keel, and he would smile quite often. But if you got Butch upset, he would take you to the side in a nice kind of way and let you know he didn’t like what you were doing. Butch had a mother who was very even keel, who will smile at you, but if you get Aileen Moffet upset, she too would take you to the side in nice kind of a way and let you know she didn’t like what you were doing.
So not only did Butch look like a Moffett, he truly acted like a Moffett. They knew what it was like as family to have a good time, even though they did not have a lot of money. They would get all dressed up to go the opera, downtown at the Forum and sit in the balcony of the balcony section. It may have been up, up and way back, but the Moffett’s were there looking as good as anybody else.
God gives some of us gifts so that we do not even have to study to get good grades. God gave Butch the gift of good study habits. Butch would study on his own. He was a perfectionist and wanted to offer nothing but his best throughout his life. It earned him the position of being #10 in his class, and a four year scholarship off to college. Butch never minded doing hard work and paying the price necessary to obtain the things God had put in his heart.
Sometimes God uses the pains of others to develop compassion in our lives. When Butch was nine years old, God sent him a little brother by the name of Jeffrey. Jeffrey was prematurely born, and had a number of health issues. Butch did his best to be the loving and compassionate big brother that he could be. His brother Jeffrey thought the world of him. As Jeffrey grew older and started asking questions, he would go to John and Aileen with his questions. After they responded to him with an answer, Jeffrey would say, “oh that’s okay, I’ll just go and ask Butch what it really means.”
Jeffrey just thought Butch knew everything and he went to his big brother time and time again for assistance. Their grandmother Mrs. Jones, said that if Butch died an early death, it would be because Jeffrey drove him crazy.
Butch had the privilege of growing up in a home with parents who loved him very much. His father John, had such a compassion for his son, that he was sometimes over protective of him. His Mom on the other hand didn’t mind her son taking some risks to do things he might like to do. Had it not been for his Mother, Butch never would have gotten a bicycle, because his father John was afraid he might get hurt on a bike. Butch was so excited when his mother gave him that bicycle. But shortly thereafter, when he came inside the house, someone came along and stole his bike.
Butch didn’t ask for another one. He was always sensitive to his parent’s income level and what they could and could not afford. He had taken advancement courses in French, and the class had the opportunity to go to France. Butch knew his family did not have the money, so he simply found comfort in knowing that he had done a job well done in that French class.
Butch had the kind of personality where he did not go out to meet a lot of friends. But if he included you in his friendship circle, you had a friend for life who was willing to stand beside you in the midst of your trials. You had someone who would thoughtfully remember the special days in your life with a card or a call. He was man who demonstrated the meaning of loyalty in a relationship.
Butch was the kind of kid turned into grown man that most parents dream about. Instead of asking you for money and things, he would be sending money and things to you. As has been testified to, Butch kept his mother decked out and dressed to kill. But even more importantly, he was there for his mother in the moments that she needed him, and he was there just for her to have a good time. I admire a man who can visit a woman and go shopping with her all day long, and survive it with a smile. Butch spent many of his hours in Cleveland, visiting his mother and going out shopping.
Now Aileen Moffett has never been one to turn down a gift. She is grateful for what you do for her. However if her sons brought her something, that didn’t look good on her, she was smart enough to wait for them to come home, she’d put it on and parade around in it and so they could see it didn’t look good on her, but would not say a word about it. She knew inside they would break down and take her out and replace that outfit, so that she could look good once again. A mother knows how to get next to her sons.
Now God was at work in Butch as a child, and had him going to church even before his parents were going to church here in Cleveland. Butch made a decision to follow Christ after an evangelist came through Liberty Hill Baptist Church preaching the gospel. He gave his life to Christ and began a life-long walk of faith. When he became a young man, he gave his summers to investing in the lives of the youth as a leader in the Summer Camp Program here at Glenville. He took his faith in Christ with him away to College and brought it back with him when he returned home.
At one time, Butch was sure the Lord was calling him into ministry and so off he went to ITC seminary in Atlanta with the plans to become a pastor. When Butch became an intern at the hospital, he fell in love with working with people in the hospital setting. As a matter of fact, his hospital time was taking away his studying time from school and it seemed as though graduation may not ever be in sight.
In true Moffett form, his mother informed him that he was going to have to make a decision and choose one or the other. Either go into the ministry in the church, or go in the ministry in the hospital, but make up your mind and go in one direction or the other. Moffetts don’t waste money if they do not see an end in sight.
Butch chose to go into the hospital in Atlanta, Ga., and it was a decision he did not regret. That was the gift God had placed inside of him to make a difference in the lives of people who were hurting. Butch didn’t start at the top of the ladder at the hospital. He started at the bottom and allowed God to move him through the system doing jobs that he loved, while gaining the respect, love and admiration of those he served, those he worked with, and those he worked for.
People knew, if you needed a job done quickly and done correctly, John Moffett 111 was the man you needed to see. He did in his ministry in the hospital, and his ministry as a lay leader in his church in Atlanta serving on its highest boards of leadership, breaking bread and serving communion to others. Neither Grady Hospital, Emory Hospital or All Saints Church would be what it is today without the ministry of John Carrol Moffett III.
He made his life count. That is why we can celebrate today. Notice the obituary doesn’t, read he accepted Christ at an early age with nothing else to follow about his work for the Lord. He allowed God to do something in his life after he accepted Jesus Christ as His Lord and Savior.
Butch has been an outstanding role model for those who want to honor their mother and their father. Butch brought them both far more joy and delight in their lives than he did grief. Butch demonstrated for us all, how to love your mother even when you are a long ways away. He has been there with his mother, through the death of her father, her mother, her husband and her son. He has truly given her the best of which he had to offer in terms of love, encouragement and support. She has never doubted the love and the devotion of her son. He likewise never doubted the love and the devotion of his mother. They gave each other a remarkable gift.
God appointed Butch just about 23,620 days to make a difference in the lives of others for him. That’s all the time He needed to do what God wanted him to do. The psalmist has said, in Psalm 90:12, “teach us oh lord to number our days that we might gain a heart of wisdom.”
All of us here today have received an appointment of days that are quickly passing away. Are we using those days in the knowledge that one day we’re going to stand before God and give an account of how we spent each one of them.
When Butch days on earth came to an end, there was an announcement in heaven that a child of God was coming home. The child that came home time and time again to the delight of his mother in Cleveland would now delight the heart of God his Father by coming home to heaven in a special way because the Bible boldly declares in Psalms 116:15” Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”
Today, we often think death is something to be avoided at all cost. We try to resist getting old by having all kinds of beauty treatments, wrinkle removers, and dyes. We do all that we can to stay away from the cemetery. But the world’s view of death is not the same as God’s view of death.
For the believer in Jesus Christ, death is merely the passing from one form of service to God to another. You see John Carroll Moffett III decided to die as a youth known as Butch when he made the decision to follow Jesus Christ. He took Jesus at his word, when Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.
We may be at a funeral, with a corpse in a coffin, but I submit to you, that Butch is more alive today than he has ever been. He is now among that great cloud of witnesses who has gone on before us cheering us on in the faith.
There is a verse in the bible that speaks of time and chance as being a great factor in our lives. It says in Eccles. 9:11 I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Don’t ever think you made yourself in life and you can make yourself in death. You need God whether you are aware of it or not.
Butch has left behind a legacy and has gone to be with Jesus Christ. Where are you going to go when your life comes to an end? You may think, with all the joy, the love, the compassion, and the friendship he brought into the lives of his family and friends, and the love he showed to those in the hospital, Butch certainly deserves to go to heaven.
But if could speak to us today, he would say that’s not quite true. You see, according to the Bible, none of us deserves to go to heaven. Did you know that according to Jesus, most people will not go to heaven?
Jesus said in , Mat 7:13 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Entering into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the only way to enter that narrow gate. All you have to do is to admit, "God, I have done a lot of things I should not have done. I realize I cannot pay for all that I have done. I ask you for forgiveness. I accept that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, He being holy and righteous, paid the penalty for my sin. I invite him to come into my life and take control of it." Butch made that decision and his eternal destiny was forever changed.
You will make numerous decisions in your life between your birth and your death. But the only decision that will still be personally affecting you a 1000 years from today, is what did you do with Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches there will certainly be a resurrection of everybody from the dead, and then comes the judgment of God.
John C. Moffett. III is prepared for that Judgment just as his father was, and just as his brother was, and just as his mother is. Like the Apostle Paul, he can say, “ the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day--and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
We may say of Butch , he was my friend, he was my cousin, or he was my son , but the greatest truth of them all is that John Carrol Moffett III is and forever will be a child of God who has now completely returned to God. For those of us who die without knowing Jesus Christ. John, will only be a memory, a very good and loving memory. But for those of us who do know Jesus Christ, John is simply waiting to meet us on the other side.
For the Bible clearly teaches,
1 Th 4:13 Brothers and sisters , we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men and women, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
