Messages given at various Camps Farthest Out by Dick French
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Dick French teaches again and again that “it’s not so much what happens to us as how we respond.” He traces that teaching back to his own baptism in the Holy Spirit at his first CFO camp, and to a year-long sabbatical he took after burnout nearly ended his ministry. He shares the story with campers at the 1990 Iowa CFO.
At the Iowa CFO in 1990, Dick French and his wife Judy teach that campers are “privileged to pray” for healing but are not responsible for the results. They illustrate it with the story of a five-year-old named Angie Gray, who once asked whether her dead pet duck would be in heaven with her.
Dick French describes choosing to forgive rather than resent, a discipline he says has carried his marriage and ministry. At the Iowa CFO in 1990 he shares it through stories. He apologized to his sons for yelling at them, and his three-year-old son delivered a plate of cookies to a neighbor his mother had chosen to forgive.
Dick French recalls hearing Jesus ask, “do you like it?” just before a California family sold him a van worth far more for a fraction of its price. At the Iowa CFO in 1990 he carries that surprise into a teaching on releasing the “yokes of expectation” that spouses, parents, and grandparents place on each other.