In honor of Juli’s birthday this week, she & I wanted to post this letter that I wrote on our behalf back in June to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of her dad’s pastoral ministry. Here’s the 2-hour video of the celebration event:

Jim & Olsie, Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Juli & I want to express our love and appreciation for you on this very special day commemorating your 60th Anniversary in the Pastoral Ministry. We wish that we were well enough now, as we were in the mid-to-late 1990’s, to be there in person and enjoy this moment with you. As you know, you both mean the world to us, and we’d like to reflect upon some of the ways.

First, we have been praying so hard for decades that the Lord would sustain you in the ministry to this milestone year and beyond, just like your former pastor during seminary, W.A. Criswell. Thus, it has also been our ambition to further your ministry in its breadth as well, to reach as many people as possible, so we have invested our lives in The Final Word and the books ministry.

Also, you have made such an impact on our lives personally, and that is even more powerful. So we’d like to list some of the specifics that have meant the most. (BTW: Since Juli is still having a relapse due to a medication change, she has asked me to write out her ideas here:)

Dad & Mom,
You both have been such godly examples for me for my whole life. I think specifically of Dad teaching Kristi & me doctrine in the car while we were on the way home from church in Denver on Sundays and Wednesday nights. This makes me think of Deuteronomy 6:6-7: 6“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7“You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.”

While biblical instruction is always good regardless of when and where it happens, this was a very natural way for us to learn from you in the course of everyday life. I still remember what you taught us then, and it laid the foundation for all of my other learning in the future.
Mom, you have always been a model of what kind of Christian wife I wanted to be. Your devotion to God’s Word and to Dad’s teaching have impressed upon me how much you love Christ. You have also made so many sacrifices to take care of Paul & me, all the while you have been supporting Dad in the ministry. The Lord is going to bless you for that.

Love, Juli

Jim,
You have been my father-in-law, professor, mentor and pastor for the past 36 years. And even before that, back in 1984, when Juli & I had only known each other for 7 or 8 months, she loaned me a cassette tape of your “Polishing God’s Monuments” sermon. I was very impressed by your speaking ability, but I wasn’t spiritually attuned to the subject matter at that time yet, so I couldn’t fully resonate with the message. Though I had suffered many trials already by that point, I was unprepared for the massive onslaught of suffering up ahead.

Then Juli & I began dating soon thereafter. And it was only through Juli’s patient tutoring me in your teaching, beginning with the correct interpretation of Romans 7:14-25, that I had enough of a theological foundation to endure our trials when they began in 1987. And, of course, the theme of that 1984 sermon has become the theme of our lives and the book by the same name.

Olsie,
You have suffered so many personal limitations and heartbreaks as a result of taking care of us for decades now. I think specifically of how you couldn’t finish all of your course work for the CPA program at Warner Pacific in the late 1980’s because we needed your physical help just to survive. And yet the Lord still enabled you to complete sufficient training for your decades of service at LBC.

And the Lord enabled us to find out the name of the post-viral disease we had recently contracted on that day in the summer of 1988 when you were watching that Phil Donahue TV program, of all things! Without that critical information, we could have spent many months or even years longer in suffering. But you “just happened” to be watching that show that particular day.

So, in closing, Juli & I want to remind you of what we’ve said many times before:
You are both the godliest people we’ve ever known. Thus, Juli became who she was because of the way you both raised her. And when I met her and fell in love with her, both she and the two of you have made me into the man I needed to be in order to be her husband and spiritual leader. We are so grateful to the Lord for you.

Love, Paul & Juli Grose