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Technorati“I want to assure you that I am deeply sorry for the sin that arrived in my life,” Haggard said. “To all of you at Open Bible Fellowship, because of my name’s relationship to you. I’m confident that I embarrassed you and shamed you and I’m sorry that I did that. And I will not do that again.”
He also apologized to his former church in Colorado, New Life Church, to the National Association of Evangelicals, to the body of Christ, and to his wife and family.
“My wife - all my sin and shame fell on her. People treated her as if she had fallen. And my children - they all went through carrying my shame," Haggard said.
There was a time after the scandal that he was suicidal and would lay in bed “paralyzed with shame” about what had happened. During that period, he could not pray or read the Bible and was figuring out “how I was going to kill myself and rid the world of the horrible curse of Ted Haggard.”
Nearly no one wanted to associate themselves with the Haggards and many would say or do things to hurt the family but would say “I love you” when they met face to face, he recalled.
Through the painful experience he learned that love is action.
He shared that one of his children is handicapped and is very expensive to care for. Haggard remembered a friend had offered to cover all of his son’s expenses for awhile when they did not have money.
“There was no way we could have taken care for Jonathan because he was handicapped in the midst of our handicap,” Haggard said. “So that was Jesus’ hand extended in a practical way.”
“The mark isn’t the emotion of fuzzy love,” he said. “The mark is courage. To love the unlovable. The courage to heal the guy with leprosy,” the former megachurch pastor said.
“I got leprosy, now we are starting to come out of it,” he said noting that he is starting to make a living selling life insurance.
Jesus wasn’t just sympathetic to “lousy people,” or kind to awful people, but he became one of them and took on their identity, Haggard preached.
In contrast, some Christians say, “Let’s help the poor and needy, we need to help those little people” when Jesus taught that Christian should think, “I am poor and needy and I’m going to help every poor and needy person I know of. I am depraved, Jesus has done a miracle in me, I’m going to help the depraved.”
He ended his first public message since his scandal by stating that in all aspects, ranging from his spiritual life to his family life, he has become stronger as a result of the incident.
“I thank God that He completes the work that He began in us,” Haggard said.
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