The Centennial Celebration
As we rack up what in the game of cricket is called a "century" (100 runs hit by a single batsman), we wax a little nostalgic, taking a look back and gazing hopefully ahead.
The Kentucky Fried Christian Substack turns a hundred!
That’s correct. Just over two-years of thought-shaking socio-cultural commentary from a Christian perspective, born 100 articles ago.
When I embarked on this journey, it was with no idea of where it was headed or what it would become; except being of the firmly confident conviction that I was obeying God’s will for me and trusting implicitly that even though I didn’t have a clue, God does.
He always does.
He’s got all of them.
That’s why he’s God.
And why nobody and nothing else can ever be.
And when we trust in him and have unshakable confidence in his power to not only guide us but to provide us with all the gifts of his Holy Spirit that we need to get the work done he has for us to do while remaining faithful to his word and obedient to his will, we always arrive where he has in mind for us to go.
Maybe not directly. Maybe not right away. But eventually…
Always.
When this effort began, I was just freshly born-again in the Spirit and my proficiency in God’s word and relationship with God’s will was still at an infantile level. The subject matter at the start of this Substack was heavy on the socio-cultural commentary (because that kind of thinking was where I personally and professionally came from in my unbelieving incarnation), and a little short on the Christian perspective.
However, as a new creation in the Messiah, with the old gone and the new here (just like the apostle Paul teaches us in 2 Corinthians 5:16-17), I gradually learned to stop regarding the Lord and interpreting the world from a worldly point of view. Diligent and consistent study of God’s word took me deeper into it; and my understanding of it also astonishingly quickly grew both wider and deeper, and—guided by the direction of the presence of the Lord Jesus, Yeshua the Messiah and the power of God’s Holy Spirit—so did its influence over my life, my thought, feeling, speech and action.
So that as the Substack progressed over time, there was a demonstrable thematic drift: slowly away from a preponderance of purely socio-cultural commentary, towards a more defined and prominent emphasis on the role of God’s word in our lives, our culture and in our society, appearing in the thought being communicated weekly here; combined with more and more of how a faithful reading and understanding of that word should manifest in the way we relate to the world in which we live.
Until we’ve arrived at the point at which we find the Kentucky Fried Christian Substack today: a more mature and vastly more profound expression of the application of the Lord’s faith to our personal lives, as well as to the ways in which we have to interact with the usually hostile unbelieving world in whose culture and society we as believers have an important role to play.
This is by no means to say we’ve reached the pinnacle here at Kentucky Fried Christian, because as Isaiah 14:13-14 shows us, with that kind of proud thinking, there’s nowhere to go but down. Gene Kaye and Kentucky Fried Christian have come a long way since we toddled onto the scene two years ago; but there’s still a long way to go, a lot of mistakes to make, a lot of lessons to learn and a lot of growing to do, both in this work here as well as elsewhere, and (especially) in the Spirit.
We can never rest on our spiritual laurels and we always have to keep striving to grow in spirit, learn more, be better, do better, say better, think and feel better in line with God’s word and his will; because as the flawed and sinful creatures we are by our worldly nature, none of us can ever reach a point where we can say, “I made it! I’m a perfect example of God’s holy image!”
So I'll just take a moment here to thank the Lord for allowing me the privilege to do this work in his name; and to watch over the last two years as his Holy Spirit has led me away from the edge of the cliff over which my ignorant, disobedient, unfaithful rear-end was hanging when he found me and reeled me in out of the darkness and into his light: the light into which he’s been steadily drawing me ever more deeply; into the kind of spirit and kind of person and kind of life that’s more worthy of being dedicated to and lived in his holy name.
All of which is simply a reflection of the more mature and vastly more profound understanding of the application of the Lord’s faith to my own personal life that’s developed mostly because of the guidance and direction of the Lord’s Holy Spirit, who’s led me to a deeper and more informed understanding of the role of the Lord’s faith in my life; but also through his encouragement to keep studying his word and applying it to my daily life in which faithful applications of it—like through this Substack—aren’t just products of that process of learning, understanding and growing, but also contribute to its unfolding through the evolution of my spirit according to God’s will and with the gifts of his grace.
All of which, again, is just my usual, long-winded way of saying, “You’ve come a long way, baby!”
With the value-added bonus attached to that, of God’s trustworthy and persistent promise that, “You ain’t seen nuthin’, yet!”
So I hope that in dedication to God the Father, the Lord Yeshua and the person of the Holy Spirit, the work on this Substack has managed to accomplish what my desire expresses every time I fold my hands, close my eyes and pray to God before I sit down to write one of these things: that the words his Holy Spirit gives me to say, in the way he gives them to me to say them through these articles, will succeed in being a worthy testimony of God’s power and glory; that glorify his holy name, that of his living Word, the Lord Yeshua, and of his Holy Spirit; and that bring God’s blessings, gifts, knowledge, understanding and wisdom to you, dear readers, in the hope that they’ll manage to edify your spirit, help increase your faith, and encourage you to let yourself be drawn nearer to the God we all love and whom we all serve as his faithful.
After our faithfulness and obedience to God, as brothers and sisters in the Messiah, one of our most important and most rewarding obligations—which we accept cheerfully and willingly as part of the faith with which he blesses us, not so much as a compulsion, but more as a heartfelt and binding, motivating desire—is to each other: to help one another in our individual and collective walk with and work for the Lord. It’s my prayer that this Substack is in some small way—in the only way for the time being with which God has authorized me to do so—doing its part in that obligation and desire to serve my fellow believers, as well as anybody else willing to wade their way through the often tall grass of a Kentucky Fried Christian article.
Something tells me God’s just getting started with me, and we’re just getting started with all this. And my sincere desire and hope is to keep delivering the kind of engaging and compelling content you’ve come to know from Kentucky Fried Christian with Gene Kaye; and improving and growing it in scope and quality as my own improvement and growth occur under the patient and loving tutelage of God’s Holy Spirit.
Because like Romans 10:17 teaches us, faith comes from hearing and hearing comes from the word of God.
Before we wrap up this trip down memory lane, let me take the opportunity to encourage all of you—and especially newer subscribers—to browse through the archived articles and revisit something you may have already read but forgotten; or maybe discover something you may have missed the first time around. I can assure you that whatever your own personal areas of interest may be, there’s no shortage of gold “in dem dar hills.”
The last thing I wanted to say while wishing Kentucky Fried Christian a “Happy 100th Article!” is to express my gratitude to every one of you for your presence and support in this effort, and your continued interest in this Substack. Without anybody to hear, none of this would make much sense, would it?
Thank you.
Here’s to the next 100.
(Photo Credits: GotchaCoveredFranchisisng.com; Grace of Jesus Ministry via Blogspot.com; Bruce via Pinterest.)
Kentucky Fried Christian encourages and welcomes your feedback and input. Something you like? Something you don’t like? Something of which you’d like to read more? Or less? Some topics you’d like to see discussed? Submit a comment or participate in the subscriber chat. You can follow Gene Kaye and Kentucky Fried Christian on Twitter, Gettr and Truth Social. Check out the Videograms of Verse video series on the KFCh channel on Rumble. Listen to the podcast now right here on this Substack, or on Spotify or Podbean. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help support Gene Kaye’s work; and now, get free access to the serialization of Living With Caligula, an anthology of short-fiction tales of the earliest Christian believers, available only on this Substack.