Chapter 18 
Chapter 18 Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
—PHILIPPIANS 3:13–14 (NIV 2011)
AL: One way Lisa and I have always been able to cope with some of the difficult times in our life and marriage is to see the potential end to those trying days. We also have the same approach to the enjoyable times, as well, knowing they will not always last. We call them seasons. There was the season of being newly married, the season of having and raising our children, the season of discontent in our marriage, the season of teenage daughters, the seasons of career and job changes, the wedding seasons, grandchildren seasons, and on and on. Solomon thought of this well before we did, when he wrote Ecclesiastes 3, and a band called the Byrds sang about it with a smash hit the year I was born in 1965: to everything, there is a season to either endure or enjoy.
The season Lisa and I find ourselves in now is an exciting one. We are praying and planning on our marriage being strong, being healthy, and growing until one of us goes home to be with the Lord. We are experiencing tremendous thrills with the coming of our grandchildren, and that season seems to be far too short. We are launching into a new season professionally as well.
After twenty-two years in full-time ministry at our home church, White’s Ferry Road Church, Lisa and I left our jobs at the church in 2012 to rejoin Duck Commander, and particularly the Robertson family’s hit television show, Duck Dynasty. We have also helped with book deals and compiled The Duck Commander Devotional, and Lisa coauthored The Women of Duck Commander.
The time Lisa and I have been able to spend with my family has been a tremendous blessing to us. We travel a lot with Mom and Dad and thoroughly enjoy getting to spend so much time with them. We bought a house on the same street as Willie and Jase, and then Jep followed suit and bought one on that street as well. For the first time since Lisa and I and my baby daughters left our house on the river in 1989 halfway through preaching school, the four brothers are living together in the same neighborhood.
We enter one another’s houses as if they were our own, and my brothers’ children play together with my grandchildren most days. We eat a lot of meals together, work together filming the show, appear together at events around the country, and attend church together when we are home. We also fuss sometimes, get on each other’s nerves, and have to apologize and forgive each other. We live in both an ideal and real world with our family. We are not perfect, but we all have given our lives to a perfect Savior, which makes things work very well for us.
My brothers and I enter one another’s houses as if they were our own, and their children play with my grandchildren most days.
Lisa and I first came to Duck Dynasty as fans of the show, like everyone else. We sat on the sidelines for the first year watching the show and enjoying it like so many others. We loved the show for the same reasons others did; it was funny and folksy and ultimately had a message that was positive and a spiritual component that was subtle but definitely recognizable, especially when compared to other reality-type shows. The show was marketed the first season with the tagline “Money, Family, and Ducks.” We changed that tagline to “Faith, Family, and Ducks,” and that has been our creed ever since.
We don’t believe it was an accident that our show became a big hit and that our family has been so well recognized around the world. The team at A&E network did a masterful job at getting the beards and their wives out there in the public eye, but once they were known, would there be anything of substance to make people want to know them better? I was present when the first family dinner scene was filmed for the pilot episode, and I remember clearly Dad’s saying that we always pray before we eat a meal together. Because that was a regular and very important part of our family tradition, it became a part of the show and, ultimately, the reason that so many have connected to the show and to our family.
My grandparents on my father’s side were wonderful Christians who raised their seven children to follow their example of faith. All of my uncles and aunts from the Robertson family have a special place in my heart. They are people of tremendous strength and faith. Two have gone home to be with the Lord, but I am so grateful for their example. Six out of seven of the Robertson children became strong Christians; only one—my dad—strayed from the path and became a prodigal son for ten years.
My mom became a Christian at the age of twenty-six, because the hard life she was living with my wayward dad offered daily misery and little hope. A year later, my dad followed my mom in faith and submitted his will to Christ. At twenty-eight years old, the prodigal son returned to the fold in a dramatic and powerful way. Mom and Dad caught fire for the Lord, and that flame still burns bright after forty years of service! As we have written earlier in this book, Lisa and I eventually made that same decision to follow Christ after a lot of hardheaded, hard-hearted living and wrong choices. My children have made the same decision, and all of my brothers and their wives and now some of their older children are followers of Christ too.
Our faith in Christ is not only the bond that holds our family together, but we believe it is the reason we have been raised up, recognized, and given the opportunity to appear on television, write books, and speak to hundreds of thousands of people. We have a story to tell that can transform individuals, families, cultures, and eternal destinies. The story comes from the Holy Bible, and it has been rescuing people for thousands of years.
When the very first wife and the very first husband, Adam and Eve, broke the one command that God had given them, sin was unleashed into the human race (Genesis 3). Their relationship with God would never be the same, nor would their relationship with each other. More bad choices were made, and more sin was committed, and from the first couple right up until today, sin has been present, and it continues to destroy relationships. God told Adam and Eve that they would die because of sin and they did, both spiritually, in terms of their relationship to God, and physically, when they were cast out of the garden and forbidden to eat of the tree of life.
When you and I first had an awareness of our sin, by choosing to break a command of God, we suffered the same fate as the original couple and every person who has ever lived since. The Bible tells us in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Because of that sin, we lose forever a permanent relationship with God. And since we will die physically one day, because of sin, we lose the hope of ever living beyond the years we have here on earth. Another problem with sin is that it provides a miserable existence for the years we do have here on earth. Lisa and I have described many of the miseries from our past life, and there aren’t enough trees on earth to provide paper to write all of the terrible things that people do to themselves and to others because of sinful choices and behaviors. Sin is devastating, destructive, and damning.
God knew we would choose to disobey and suffer the consequences, so He had a plan to save us from ourselves and our sins.
Thankfully, the Creator of the cosmos said in John 3:16–17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (NIV 2011).
God knew we would choose to disobey and suffer the consequences, so He had a plan to save us from ourselves and our sins. His plan was that God would become a man, not by natural ways, but in a supernatural way, to offer Himself as a sacrifice large enough for all of human sin.
A virgin girl named Mary conceived a child, not with a man, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Her son, Jesus of Nazareth, grew into a man and proclaimed Himself the Son of God who had come to give His life for the sins of all mankind. He claimed that His death on a Roman cross of execution would allow all sinners the choice to call on Him, instead of their own merit, to repair their damaged relationship with God. His death would provide anyone the opportunity to choose something larger than their own weaknesses and sinful choices.
After Jesus’ death, He was buried in a tomb. But after three days, He arose from the dead and appeared to hundreds of people before levitating out of sight, into the heavens, proclaiming that He would return one day to gather all of those who call on Him (John 20–21; Acts 1:1–11). Jesus’ resurrection and ascension give hope beyond the grave and beyond sin’s ability to continually weaken all humanity. Because He rose, there is hope that we can live beyond our deaths, which were caused by sin. Because He lives, there is hope for a more abundant life while here on earth. Sin is still present, but it does not have to control our lives or our eternal destiny.
Peter, one of Jesus’ close friends and disciples during His life on earth, wrote these words of encouragement in 1 Peter 1:3–5: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (NIV 2011). That same Peter taught the first-ever gospel message of salvation in Acts 2. He told some of the very ones who had nailed Jesus to a cross that redemption and forgiveness for sin were available by embracing and submitting to Jesus Christ. About three thousand people were cut to the heart by that message and believed in Jesus’ sacrifice. They confessed their allegiance and were baptized in water to show their submission to Him, and they received a wonderful gift of the Holy Spirit to help guide them as they lived out their years helping others, pointing people to eternal life, and raising the quality of their own lives and the lives of their families.