Author: Tim

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Why Would God Create People if He Knew They’d Let Him Down?

Photo courtesy of eBaum’s World

Kids are nuts.

If you don’t have kids, having one (or several) changes just about every aspect of your life. When you don’t have kids, you might not even think about it, but life can be amazingly simple. I’m not taking a shot at people without kids; I’m saying that if you don’t have kids and you want to walk out of the house and go somewhere, all you need to do is put on your shoes and leave. Doing the same thing with young kids can turn into a wrestling match, a drawn-out battle of wills, or a frustrating game of hide-and-seek that results in one of you (parents included) wearing mismatched shoes and only one sock as you walk out the door.

Kids can simultaneously be the sweetest and most frustrating people in the world. When my son was 3, he had a bad habit of coming downstairs after we had laid him down. Most of the time it would happen before my wife and I went to bed; we’d hear something that didn’t quite sound right. We’d mute the TV or stop whatever we were doing and say “What is it?” Almost always, our little guy would sheepishly stand up from sitting on the bottom step and come walking toward us, trying to see what was on the TV. It wasn’t always at night though; sometimes it was in the early morning. I usually get up long before everyone else in the house so I can beat a lot of the traffic on my way to work. One morning I heard him coming down the stairs when he was still expected to have a few more hours of sleep to go. Exasperated because I didn’t want my sleep-deprived wife to hear him and wake up, I walked over to the stairs and asked him in a sharp tone “what are you doing?” At that age he had trouble pronouncing his “L” sounds and would have lots of pauses in his sentences. My little guy looked anxiously at me with a furrowed brow and nervously said “Umm, I just…wanted to tew you…to have a good…day…at work.”

Imagine how badly I wanted to melt right into the floor.

You can often tell what kind of environment kids spend their time in by listening to the things they say. We’ve told our kids many times that we love them no matter what. When they’re still a little too young to make total sense of everything, they start to say it back to you in their own little way: “Mom? Dad? Did you know that I love you even when you’re bad?”

Kids bring so many crazy moments to your life. I’ve received bloody noses from little elbows. They break stuff that you really didn’t want broken. They seem to know the difference between when you’re prepared and when you don’t have an extra diaper or outfit for them. They’re sick and have stuff oozing out of every hole in their heads for the first two years of their lives. Their “help” with something you’re doing actually makes it more difficult. I’ve been in a totally dark house after everyone’s bedtime, then went to open my bedroom door only to jump out of my skin when I saw a toddler standing on the other side of the door, holding a stuffed animal and staring up at me with big eyes.

They’re messy, expensive, and suck the energy out of your body. They make your hair gray (or thin). Why in the world would anyone ever CHOOSE to have children?

You can’t explain why, but after you’ve had them, you know you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

It’s the time they spend with you and the love they have for you. It’s the times you get down on the floor and they use you as a jungle gym. It’s the way they shriek “Daddyyyyyyyyy!” and come running to hug you when you come home from work. It’s the way they cling tightly to you when you wade into water that’s deeper than what they’re used to. After you’ve disciplined them and they come and just want you to hold them as they sit crying, broken, and sorry, you want to squeeze them back and wipe their tears away, sometimes blinking back tears of your own in the process.

When I hear people ask “Why would God create humans if He knew they would let Him down?”, these are the things that come to mind. Like children, we are deeply flawed and are prone to do things our Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to do. Again and again, we fail to meet the standards set before us. We are stubborn and take forever to learn the lesson that’s being taught to us, sometimes even intentionally.

At the same time though, we are the source of tremendous joy to Him. When His children want to spend time with Him and seek a deeper relationship with Him, it brings Him colossal happiness. We all mess up again and again, but when we come to Him, broken and sorry, He holds us gladly while blinking back tears of His own. He doesn’t need anything from us, but He’s thrilled when we pursue Him.

This is a difficult time of year for many people, and maybe that includes you. You’ve almost certainly heard this before, but God loves you. Just in case those words have lost their meaning, I’ll say it another way: God really likes you. You’re loved, and you’re loved hard.

There’s a battle going on out there. You may not think of it in those terms, but that’s what it is. Christ came to offer salvation to everyone. The enemy didn’t like that, so he’s doing everything he can to prevent people from hearing about or accepting that gift. God created you to be a part of that fight, but the enemy’s going to try everything he can to demoralize, distract, discourage, and deceive you.

You have it within you to do amazing things for God’s glory that you dare not even think possible. Let me tell you…it can be done. There’s going to come a time where He calls on you to do something you’re not comfortable doing. He can and will empower you to do things you can’t do on your own, and it will surprise you what He can do through you.

For now, just know that like a child who knows Mom or Dad truly has their best interests at heart, it all starts with being confident and secure in your Heavenly Father’s love for you.

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Sometimes the Failures Come Before the Successes

Were you ever successful on your first attempt to do something tricky? If you’re fortunate enough to say ‘yes,’ I wouldn’t get used to that being the norm.

After college I worked for a construction company for about a year and a half before leaving for the Air Force. During the summers we started at 6:30 or 7 in the morning so we could escape some of the heat of the late afternoon. Getting off work at 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon meant there was still plenty of time to get to the pool before it closed.

This was the same pool where I had spent a few summers lifeguarding. When I worked at the pools, I got the chance to watch people do some pretty cool things off the diving boards. I never really had the chance to try it out though, because I was either working or hurrying to get something done so I could move on to the next thing.

I’m not really sure what triggered it, but one day after work when I was at the pool, I decided that I wanted to try a “one and a half” off the diving board. I’m not sure if there’s a better name than that for it, but if you do a flip off the diving board and land in the water feet first, that’s “one.” A one and a half is when you do a flip, but keep rotating another half revolution and enter the water hands/headfirst in a dive.

You have to understand that back then I had a higher tolerance for pain. Working in construction means you’re constantly dealing with bruises, knicks, bumps, drops, even a few slams here and there. For whatever reason, on that day, I was willing to accept some pain in order to perform a one and a half.

Failure after failure ensued. I’m on the tall side, so it took me a bit to figure out how to deal with under-rotation. Rotating 360 degrees is good, and rotating the desired 540 degrees is good, but when you’re somewhere in between those two, it’s ugly and painful (especially when you’re spinning fast and your face is the first thing to hit the water). Some of the flops forced my eyes open underwater, some of them wrenched my neck back, and some of them just stung when I hit the water the wrong way.

I was finally able to do it. The secret was twofold: you had to tuck in your legs almost like you’re doing a cannonball, and you had to spin full speed in order to get the full rotation. It was the most bizarre feeling to be spinning so fast that your face starts warping and you had to use your arms to pull your knees close to your chest or they’d fly away from it. Weird as it was, it was the only way to make it work.

I don’t think I’ve ever done another one and a half since that day. I just wanted to figure it out for myself and be able to say that I had done it. Here’s the important takeaway from this little story: in order to reach my goal, I had to be willing to fail. Boy, did I fail. And I didn’t just fail once, I failed MANY times (sometimes in an epic way). In the end, I failed more times than I was successful, but the eventual success somehow made the failures seem less important.

Some of you are afraid of failure. Why? Maybe you’re afraid of someone seeing you miss the mark. Maybe you think that it will result in people labeling you as someone with poor judgment. It might be because you’re afraid of what will happen if you succeed. Whether it’s ego, fear, embarrassment, whatever it is, ask yourself if the reason you don’t try is because of something that’s only in your head.

I think this is a recurring theme in this blog: in your Christian life, God will challenge you to do things that you think you’re going to fail at. That’s fine. It’s okay to fear failure. Don’t miss the next part, though. Fearing the possibility of failure is not a valid excuse for not trying. If God hands you an assignment that takes the wind out of your sails, I can guarantee the little voice that starts whispering to you “there’s just no way” is not a part of God’s team. If someone who’s not on God’s team starts trying to put ideas in your head, do you think you should put any stock in them?

Today I heard someone say “People don’t want to be preached to; they want to be summoned.” They want to be called, invited, to be a part of something. God will summon you to do something big, and He will pick YOU for a specific reason. You may not know why, but it’s part of His master plan. Nobody else on the entire planet has the exact combination of experiences, gifts, talents, and resources that you do. If God’s calling you to be a part of something, don’t let the possibility of failure stop you from getting started. Your obedience can unleash something you never saw coming, and open the door for others to be a part of something bigger than you could have expected.

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Punch Above Your Weight

After I started going to Paddle Sports pool sessions in college, I got hooked. (See this post for a refresher.) It’s a little tricky to learn how to kayak in college, though. Unless you’re in summer school, you miss out on some of the year’s best kayaking weather. You start a new academic year at the end of summer, so even if you start playing around with kayaks in the pool right at the beginning of the school year, you’re going to have to work very hard at it to get out in the whitewater before winter.

Fortunately there was a happy medium near where I went to school in western New York state. There was a canal that flowed along (I think it was the city of) Rochester; parallel to the canal some group had built a kayak course. A kayak course is a series of 25 gates that paddlers are supposed to go through in sequence without touching any of the poles with any part of your boat, paddle, or you. You’re supposed to go through green gates while moving downstream, and red ones while coming back upstream. The water wasn’t flowing fast, but it was moving enough to make a difference between paddling in a pool and paddling in real water. It was a good way to work on technique, control, and gain a better understanding of how kayaks handle in moving water.

Since this was my first time in a kayak outside of a pool, I wasn’t very fast. On my first run I moved through the course slowly, trying to figure out how a kayak behaves in a current, seeing where I was going to need to make turns, cut across areas of hardest flow, and spot the more difficult places in the course. In a rookie moment, I even flipped over and couldn’t right myself. Embarrassingly, I had to slip out of my capsized kayak in a shallow little pool of water as these much better paddlers zoomed through the course. Even that was important though, as it was my first bailout in moving water (I’ll have a future post about a much more dramatic bailout later).

It’s kind of a strange tie-in, but in your service to Christ even your perceived failures are important. If you find yourself needing to bail out of a kayak, it’s probably because you’ve failed at righting yourself. Once you get used to bailing out of a kayak in a swimming pool, it becomes very easy, because there’s no current, there’s no major danger, and there’s probably someone standing by, ready to jump in and help you if you really need it. Bailing out in moving water, even on a little course like this, is different. The water’s cold, you’re wearing a life jacket, helmet, and other gear you don’t normally wear in the pool, and if you open your eyes underwater, you’re not going to see much. Whether it’s kayaking or some other aspect of life, failing during difficult circumstances increases your confidence and abilities during easier circumstances. Failures can make you better.

There’s an expression for attempting something that you’re probably not qualified or equipped to try. It’s called “punching above your weight.” In boxing, the two fighters in a given bout are generally very close in weight. That’s to make sure that the fight is fair. If two boxers are both in great shape, with little or no fat on either one of them, yet one is 60 pounds heavier than the other, it’s probably not going to be a fair fight. When fighters are very close to being the same weight, they might have different body types, but they’re close to being evenly matched. If you’re punching above your weight, it means you’re taking on someone that has an advantage in defeating you. In the Bible story of David and Goliath, David was definitely punching above his weight according to men’s standards. By taking on an obstacle or challenge that’s “beyond your weight class,” it makes the challenges that are in your weight class seem easy. Over time it also brings once-feared challenges within your class, and prepares you to take on something bigger and more formidable.

To continue with the kayaking course…as I spent time trying to figure out the best way to approach certain portions of the course, I started paying attention to how other kayakers were doing it. It was fun to see them shoot through the course and try different approaches to the various gates. “That was a cool move…oh, okay, and that set him up for the next gate.” I learned by watching others, and by listening to conversations that more experienced paddlers were having.

You might see where I’m going with this. The people you surround yourself with are the people whose attitudes, habits, and characteristics you adopt. You become more like them. Hanging out with people that are better or more experienced at something than you are will make you better at it. It’s tough to maintain a strong drive to improve if you’re already the most capable one in a group. Similarly, if you hang out with people with negative attitudes, poor character, or bad habits, it’s a fair bet that you’ll soon find yourself with the same outlook as them or doing the same things they are.

God’s going to give you challenges in life. Some you’ll feel confident about handling and some you’ll be more doubtful about. You might even fail at some of them, but it will be for a reason/purpose that you might not see right away. Some people get discouraged by failure and stop attempting the grand things, opting instead to take on things they believe they have a more reasonable chance of accomplishing.

It’s good to share your wisdom and experience with people less skilled than you, but also understand that this practice won’t help you grow your skills, it will only slow their atrophy. By all means mentor or teach those folks, but remember to spend time punching above your weight, too. It will make your current weight class seem easy, and that overwhelming challenge seem a bit less scary.

Time to open the floor for discussion. Has God ever placed a seemingly impossible obstacle in your path, only for Him to walk you through it successfully?

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You Have Influence

Think you don’t have the power to influence others? Think again.

I entered the Air Force at a time when the nation was trying to strengthen its military capabilities. At SEREIIC (see the previous post for context) in San Antonio, we stayed in a dorm that had been condemned, and then re-opened because they needed extra space for trainees during the Iraq/Afghanistan military campaigns (at least, that was the rumor). Part of our responsibilities included keeping our barracks in sparkling condition. You can imagine how successful that was.

I don’t remember what we did wrong, but one time we collectively screwed up big time. I mean, our instructors were MAD. These were our SERE instructors, but they didn’t just get mad at the SERE trainees, they were upset at pretty much everyone on the whole floor, including trainees from other career fields. Part of the reason for their wrath was because it was a Saturday morning. Nobody wants to come in to work on a day they would ordinarily have off, especially because someone else screwed up. Everyone had to head outside in their sweats and an instructor told them to “beat your boots” while waiting for the other instructors to finish inspecting every room inside the building. Beating your boots was a type of exercise that burned out your legs. From a standing position, you bend at the knees low enough so you can slap the side of your shoes, and then you stand straight up again. You continue this over and over until told to stop. It gets old fast…

The dorm’s courtyard began filling up with young Airmen dressed in identical “Air Force” sweatpants and sweatshirts. It was noisy chaos as everyone beat their boots at their own pace and cadence. More and more people came out of the building and found a spot to start exercising, until there was almost no room to hold any more. None of us were allowed to talk. By the time everyone was outside, we probably had between 100 and 150 men outside, and all you could hear was the sound of squatting, slapping, and standing up again all at a different pace.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Our head instructor was pacing back and forth in front of us, chewing us out for whatever our egregious infraction was, but to tell the truth, I don’t even remember what we were in trouble for. The memorable thing was what happened next.

There was a guy right in front of me, Jon, who had someone on either side of him. Without speaking, Jon looked at the guy on his right, and stared him in the eyes. The guy on the right got the message, and slowly they began squatting and standing in rhythm with Jon. Once they were synchronized, Jon turned and looked to the guy on his left and did the same thing, until all three in a row were in synch.

I was right behind them, so I started doing it too. Over time the size of the group beating their boots in unison grew. We squatted and then stood up again hundreds of times that morning, and our quads burned like crazy…but we started to draw strength from our unity and the mood began to change from one of despair to one of hope.

It didn’t take long before everyone in the courtyard moved in unison. The sound of the chaos changed; instead of a constant drizzle of individual slaps, it was a rhythmic thunder of over a hundred pairs of slaps.

Our instructor stopped pacing, and he stopped yelling. He looked around and thought about what he had witnessed take place right in front of him. Those in the SERE occupation are taught to adapt and overcome adversity. They’re taught that if you are a military prisoner of another nation, you draw strength from your fellow prisoners and from whatever other means is necessary. Although he didn’t anticipate providing that type of lesson that day, he couldn’t help but be pleased with what he just saw.

“I like it.”

He mellowed out and quickly wrapped up what he was talking about, cautioning us to straighten up. We were dismissed and allowed to return to our rooms and have the rest of the day off.

Even though it was bad, our situation could have been much worse, and it all started with one guy that influenced others without even saying a word.

Who do you have the power to influence?

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Adapt and Overcome

After I finished Air Force Basic Training, I moved to a different part of Lackland Air Force Base (AFB) near San Antonio, TX. Here I began trying out to become a survival school instructor, officially called a SERE Specialist (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape). At the time, this two-week course was called SEREIIC – SERE Instructor Indoctrination Course. If you passed this course, you moved up to Fairchild AFB near Spokane, Washington to take part in a longer, 6-month training course.

Just because this course was only two weeks long didn’t mean we only spent two weeks there. Having just arrived from Basic Training, all new SEREIIC trainees were skinny, had no muscle, still called everyone “Sir” or “Ma’am,” and generally were not suited for the physical rigors of the upcoming training. Two weeks is simply not enough time to transform skinny “Basic” bodies into something strong enough to withstand the requirements of the course. Even though the course was only two weeks, some students spent months there developing muscle mass and required skills. A few months after I first showed up at SEREIIC, I was 30-40 pounds heavier, mostly from all the workouts we did.

The training could be incredibly stressful, both physically and mentally. It’s not on par with Navy SEAL training, by any stretch, but they use some of the same elements. Room and uniform inspections that require impeccable attention to detail; sleep deprivation; spending hours a day doing physical training; and constant harassment from your instructors and others in charge of you. The whole purpose of this introductory course is to weed out the people that want to be there from the people that are less than fully committed. The instructors are training you to adapt and overcome. In a survival situation, when you are alone, exhausted, and it seems like there’s a never-ending list of hurdles you need to overcome, your life itself can depend on your willingness to overcome doubt, get up off the ground and keep going, no matter how much you just want to lay there a little bit longer.

We didn’t always see it while it was happening, but the misery we endured built fortitude and perseverance in us. The physical training on its own was enough to make some people drop out. Add to that various types of verbal harassment and other pressures, and it became incredibly stressful. I showed up with a group of about 10 or 11 guys, and the guys who had been around for awhile thought it was really fun to haze us. Our first night we were part of the “Newbie 500,” more or less a couple of hours where the students with seniority made us work out in absurd ways until they got tired of messing with us. Pushups, flutter kicks, squats, sprints, bear crawls, crab crawls, and a number of other activities too difficult to describe here, all of them exhausting or painful.

We were only seriously hazed once, but it continued on and off until the guys with seniority either graduated or washed out of the course. The heavy duty physical training came as a part of our normal duty day, under the supervision of instructors. During our duty day (when we were actually at work), any time we entered or left the dorms, the chow hall, or the school, all of us did a synchronized set of about 25 pushups. To be honest, it looked pretty cool when there were 20 of us doing pushups in unison, but we had to do it as a team, or else we’d have to start over and probably pay some kind of physical penalty on top of it for not working together. Between the normal course of traveling between buildings, doing normal PT, missing details during our uniform or room inspections, and after-hours “smoke sessions,” there were days where we did a thousand pushups.

There was plenty of running and rucking, too. We had a couple of tracks, one of them a quarter mile and another one a full mile. To help build our bodies’ tolerance, the new trainees were issued ruck sacks that they were to fill with “only” 45 pounds’ worth of rocks or anything else that could get the scale past the minimum. Over time the load grew. Our instructor cadre would tell us to either run or ruck some seemingly impossible distance in some improbably short amount of time. We had this one guy that, once the instructors were out of earshot, would always start complaining “Dude, there’s no possible way we can make it that far that fast!” It never failed. At first we felt the same way as he did, but over time we learned not to think like him, instead saying “you might be right, but c’mon, let’s argue about it along the way.”

A funny thing happened during our stay there at SEREIIC. We got stronger, and our confidence grew. The ruck sacks got heavier, but we could handle it. We became faster, and could go farther. Pushups weren’t so scary, they just became part of the day’s routine. We were able to smash through the mental barriers we had put up for ourselves and accomplish just about every goal the cadre set before us.

I’ll have more stories to share from this chapter of my life, but for this post I want to convey this main point: if you want to do great things for Christ, you have to be able to look at seemingly insurmountable obstacles, take a deep breath, and start moving. If you are a child of God, there is unimaginable power living within you! Do not be afraid or discouraged!

Break loose from mediocrity, and start climbing the huge wall that stands between where you are and reaching your full potential as an impactful Christ-follower. Want to know a secret that’s kinda scary but also kinda exhilarating? After you make it past that wall, there’s going to be another, bigger one behind it. And there’s another one behind that one. And another one. And on, and on, and on. Each one you overcome, though, will either arm you with new knowledge, or show you that you can do things you once thought impossible. Once you’ve scaled a number of these metaphorical walls, you’ll no longer flinch at doing things you believe to be beyond your capability.

God has a way of putting big challenges in His followers’ lives. It’s important to remember that the things you faced yesterday have prepared you for the challenges you’ll face today and tomorrow. It’s scary sometimes, but if He’s placed an impossible task in front of you, He’s also made a way for you to get past it. Will you start complaining that it looks impossible, or will you pick up your ruck and start moving?

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Playing To Not Lose

Hopefully you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Some movies just go with certain holidays. I’m sure many of you either have a tradition of watching certain movies around Christmas or Thanksgiving. For me, the movie “Rocky” (and by extension, the rest of the Rocky movies) are Thanksgiving movies.

There’s a movie that just came out this past week. Although I haven’t seen it, “Creed 2” is the latest in a line of movies that involve the boxing character Rocky Balboa. I’m a fan of most of the franchise (they could’ve skipped “Rocky V”), so I’ll piggyback off of the latest release to make a spiritual point. 🙂

I didn’t ever really think that I’d have to include a spoiler alert for a movie that’s about 40 years old, but if you don’t want to know how “Rocky” or “Rocky II” end, you may want to watch them before finishing today’s post.

The Rocky movies are American classics. The early portion of the series is about how a down-on-his-luck amateur boxer, Rocky Balboa (played by Sylvester Stallone), gets a dream shot: to take on the world champion, Apollo Creed, for the world heavyweight boxing championship.

Rocky’s not a great fighter, but he can sure take a beating and keep on going. At the end of the fight, Rocky loses, but he’s still standing after 15 rounds of being pummeled by the world champ, blowing away everyone’s expectations. Apollo won the fight according to the judges, but he didn’t actually defeat Rocky in the eyes of many spectators.

In the second movie, the champ receives hate mail from critics that think he’s a fraud. He’s upset at being accused of faking the fight, of carrying this “bum” through an entire bout. To prove to the world that the Balboa fight was just a fluke, he pursues a rematch with Rocky. He intends to destroy Balboa so he can show everyone that Apollo Creed is still worthy of being called a champion. Balboa eventually agrees to a rematch, and the two slug it out once again.

(I’m sorry, I’m a big fan of Rocky, so I’m including a fun clip just to show you what kind of guy he is. In this clip, he’s on his way to his rematch with Apollo Creed, but he wants to make a quick stop and link up with his priest, Father Carmine. He’s already running late, but being the great theologian and philosopher that he is, he has his priorities.)

Of course, the rematch with Creed goes to the fifteenth round again. By this point, Creed is way ahead on points; all he needs to do is stay away from Rocky and he’ll win the fight, but he’ll be no better off than he was after the first fight, so he continues trying to knock out Balboa. Both men are exhausted, have swollen faces, and lack any semblance of footwork at this point. At the end they’re just standing toe to toe, swinging with everything they’ve got left to try to land knockout punches on their opponent. In a true Hollywood moment, they simultaneously land punches on each other, leading to a double knockdown.

The referee began counting. If they both got to their feet before “10,” they’d return to the fight. If only Creed got to his feet, he’d win the fight and retain the title. If Balboa was the only one that made it to his feet, he’d win and be crowned the new heavyweight champ. In this situation, the rules stipulate that if nobody gets up by the time the referee counts to 10, the fight ends in a draw, and whoever holds the title will retain it by default. Dazed and drained, both Creed and Balboa struggle to get oriented and begin trying to stand up. I’ll embed a clip of the end of the fight at the bottom of the post.

Here’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a difference between “playing to win” and “playing to not lose.” As Christians, we’re called to bring Jesus to all that don’t know about Him. Those that accept Christ as Savior cross over from spiritual death to new spiritual life. Our “default setting” when we’re born is a life of sin that we can’t escape on our own; we need to make a transition to escape a fate of eternal separation from God after we die.

If you believe the Bible, you believe that Satan is prowling, looking for souls to divert and devour. He doesn’t need to convert anyone, because they’re already his. All he needs to do is prevent conversions from happening. So in that sense, all he needs to do is play to not lose.

Here’s where we come in. It’s our job to work toward those conversions, offering people the truth and a way out of their default course. It’s not an easy thing. Every person reading this post has a different collection of talents, resources, social circles, and spiritual gifts at their disposal.

Even though they don’t know it, there are people counting on you to carry the truth to them. Some will be open to it, others won’t, but it’s going to take more than a half-hearted effort to make a difference.

For their sake, play to win.

(The part I mentioned starts around 1:30, but I’m including the whole final round.)

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Happy Thanksgiving

Today I’d like to do something a little different.

I’ve been posting to this blog for a little more than a month and a half now. Even though I’m the main author, I don’t think that I should be the only one with some input.

In the coming weeks, I’d like to figure out a way to enable some discussion. It’s fun for me to think back on some of these experiences, but my main goal in sharing these posts is to encourage you to step out in faith to act on the idea(s) God’s been placing in your life. While I believe it’s good for me to start the discussion, I believe the real value is going to be in readers echoing the points I highlight; I think people would benefit from some “testimonials” from other people that they, too, have experienced the things I’m writing about.

For some of you, I’m just a guy that writes stories about the crazy things he’s seen or done. For others though, I’m a portion of the overall way God might be speaking to you about something He’d like you to embark upon. I’ll be honest, I have no clue what God would like for you to do, but with your talents, interests, and resources, you can make a profound difference when you fulfill the role God is offering you.

Remember my challenge from the last post: the idea that you keep coming back to, that thing God’s been whispering in your ear that you can’t get away from…tell someone about it. I’m embedding the same video from last time. If it helps, use it as a way to start the discussion with someone while you’re with them this holiday.

I Have To – Promotional Trailer from Christy Fay on Vimeo.

If, at this point you don’t have any ideas of what you’re supposed to do, you can still put your creativity or other gifts to work. Here are some ideas you can work on:

  • Many people that are open to hearing about Jesus and the Bible feel uncomfortable walking into a church; is there a way you can either make church feel less intimidating for them, or is there a way you can bring church to people on their terms?
  • It’s very rare for people to have a “BANG!” kind of conversion experience. The truth is, many people are searching for the truth, and keep coming back to Christianity for one reason or another, but they often need time to wrestle with the things they’re hearing and learning from church and other Christian leaders. Can you think of a way to reach, assist, and encourage those individuals, either virtually or face-to-face?
  • In just about any aspect of life, there are people with abilities and resources, and there are people with needs. Within your sphere of influence, can you come up with a way to match them to each other?
  • The older people among us have seen and been a part of incredible things, and have a valuable amount of life experience. The younger people among us have energy, enthusiasm, and are fluent in technology. How can we marry experience, enthusiasm, and skillsets to accomplish amazing things for God’s glory? If you’re not up for cracking the code on this one, consider making at least one friend from every decade of life, and challenge others to do the same.
  • Help explain to me how to set up a discussion page on WordPress. 🙂 If that won’t work, will comments be enough for readers to encourage and cheer on other readers? Would it work better on the Dare Greatly Now Facebook page?

There are lots of ways to employ your gifts, these are just a few examples that require constant energy and effort from people. I’m hopeful that having fresh sets of eyes will come up with new, creative solutions. If none of them sound quite right to you, and you see some other problem staring you in the face, maybe that’s your calling. You’re the only one that can do everything you can do. If you don’t do it, you’re leaving some of your potential unfulfilled.

Today I have much to be thankful for. One of the biggest things is that God has equipped us with different talents, resources, interests, and spiritual gifts. Not only does He hand us these things, but He gives us the free will to choose to use (or not use) them for His glory. He won’t make you do it by forcing you to become some grudgingly compliant subordinate. He invites you to come along, making you a willing (and often, excited) volunteer!

Another thing for which I’m thankful is the difference that you can make if you accept the challenge God gives you. As a Christian, there’s a power living inside of you that’s greater than you can imagine. Don’t stifle it. Letting it go unused is like leaving a Lamborghini locked in the garage. Turn it loose and get a taste of what that engine can do.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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Can You Ever “Safely” Jump Off A Cliff?

When I was a kid I loved climbing stuff. That held true as I got older, but I also found out that if you have the right equipment, it could be a lot more fun coming down.

This is how I got interested in rappelling. I don’t remember how I got started with it, probably on a youth group trip to a climbing gym or something. I started thinking it over, and as I got into my teens, I began purchasing bits of gear here and there. That stuff’s not cheap. I was afraid my parents were going to give me a hard time for wasting my money on some bone-headed hobby, so I kept it hidden for awhile.

It’s only by God’s grace that I didn’t break my neck or otherwise seriously hurt myself. I didn’t know what I was doing. At first I was so eager to try the stuff out that I’d climb a tree in my backyard while Mom and Dad were both at work. I’d tie the rope directly around the tree (which is terrible for your rope’s longevity), and then rappel down, climbing up again and again until I got too tired to keep doing it.

Mom and Dad eventually found out. If I wanted to hit bigger heights, I had to let them in on it. From trees I moved on to an old nearby antenna tower that wasn’t used anymore. I’d go through life eyeballing places that were easy to climb up and had a big, clear drop. I eventually rappelled down things like an elevator shaft in a building under construction, out of the ceiling of a gymnasium, my dorm room window at college, a few times over the stage of an auditorium during a performance, and a few nice, big cliffs. One time I even rappelled down a cliff IN a kayak. (That’s a whole separate post! Stay tuned…)

It was awesome. Sometimes it felt like something out of a SWAT Team movie, other times it felt like some kind of military special forces thing, but mostly it was just…fun! I loved going off big cliffs, giving a big kick off the wall, and hearing the rope making that “zzzzzzz” noise as it rushed through the hardware, lowering me safely to the ground as fast as I allowed it to. Other times it was a challenge to have precise control over the descent speed. (I almost smashed through a window once in college, but I was able to control the descent enough to avoid doing that. I’m not sure how I would’ve explained THAT one!)

It’s been forever since I did any rappelling. I still have all the gear in the basement, though. I made ziplines, pulley systems, all kinds of crazy stuff. Now my kids are starting to get interested in it. Anyway, I’ve got two ways to tie this story in to your journey of living a more impactful life for Christ.

The first has to do with fear. The absolute scariest part of a rappel is right at the beginning, the part where you make the transition from standing on your own two feet to placing your full weight and trust in the strength of the rope and harness. Especially if you’re new to rappelling, it’s very scary to stand with your heels hanging off the edge of a cliff and then lean backward. The more you do it though, the easier it becomes. You start out from small heights, you learn to trust the equipment, and you pay less attention to the audacity of what you’re doing. You become more at ease with what’s happening, and you’re able to move on to something bigger, because your capability and capacity to handle bigger situations grows.

The second goes back to when I first started rappelling. I wanted to keep this hobby a secret; I had to be careful who I let in on it. I wanted to do it so badly though, that I was willing to do it in secret and worry about the consequences later. If you’re looking to be used greatly for Christ’s kingdom, and you’ve been moving toward letting Him use you for that purpose, there will come a point at which you simply stop worrying, and decide that you’ll deal with the consequences as you go. When it comes to living for Christ, dream a dream so big that you have to be careful who you allow yourself to tell about it. Not only can He make it happen, but someday down the line, you can look back over your shoulder and see how much farther past your original goal He’s taken you.

What do I mean when I talk about a goal or being used greatly for God’s glory? You may not even have a clear picture, or a fully formed idea…you just know that there’s something you keep coming back to over and over. Watch this video; it’s less than 3 minutes, and it does a better job explaining that phenomenon than I can.

I Have To – Promotional Trailer from Christy Fay on Vimeo.

This week is Thanksgiving. You may be getting ready to see someone you don’t see often. For your version of a “beginner’s cliff” to rappel from, here’s my challenge to you: that little thing God’s been whispering in your ear…your “I have to”…tell someone about it. Whether you want to blurt it out for all to hear when you’re sitting around the table, or tell just one person when you’re alone with them and you have the opportunity, say it out loud to someone when you’re together this week. Use this video as a discussion starter if you think it will help. That’s what I did when I got the idea for this blog, which is the start of my “I have to.” I figured that if I told someone, and they didn’t hear about any progress on it, they might ask me about it later. Telling someone was my way of moving the idea outside my head, almost a way of holding myself accountable and setting things in motion.

A little fear is good. It helps keep you alert, focused, and it helps you learn what’s important and what’s not. Too much of it will hold you back and keep your feet from leaving the ground. Everyone gets scared sometimes, but it’s how to deal with it that makes the difference. Don’t let fear prevent you from taking the leap that God’s been whispering in your ear.

God’s invited you on an adventure. I don’t know how big your particular cliff is. He can bring you to the edge, but it’s up to you to hang your heels off the edge and lean out into the void. Trust the rope. Trust your gear. The first few steps are the scariest, but believe me, if God’s prodding you in a certain direction, it’s an invitation to be a part of something special. Take the first step this week by moving that idea outside of your head.

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Ask Me

It’s funny how much parenthood can teach you about Christ’s relationship with us. I’ve got three kiddos under 10, and it’s been fun to watch them develop and learn as they grow.

Of course, parenthood has its exhausting moments. I have to credit my wife with doing the heavy lifting. Anytime there’s a bad dream or an injury, they don’t come looking for me unless Mommy’s unavailable (and even then, sometimes they’ll just wait for her rather than come to me). I can have one sitting on each of my knees, be hugging the third, and have all of them crying, but all of them will want Mommy.

But anyway…my wife and I found ourselves repeating the same things many times as our kids were very young. “Eat what you have, then ask for more.” “Obey first, then ask questions.” “Slow obeying is disobeying.” Some day, when our kids get old enough to do impressions of us, these are the maxims that I’m sure they’ll use.

It’s funny, though, to watch kids get a little more slick as they grow. Sometimes they wanted something, but they didn’t want to come out and ask for it. Instead, they might just throw out an unprovoked comment. “I wish we could have a snack pretty soon.” “It would sure be fun to watch a show right now.” “If you asked me if I wanted more milk, I would say yes, because my glass is almost empty.” My wife and I thought this was kind of fun to see, but we also wanted them to learn that it was okay to ask questions. One of the common sayings we had was “So…do you have a question?” They caught on pretty quickly that if they wanted something, they couldn’t just “wish out loud” about it; they needed to ask us (and the word “please” had better be a part of that question). Sometimes the answer would be yes, other times it would be no, but their chances of success would be much higher if they actually asked.

Going back to what I said earlier about parenthood teaching you about Christ’s relationship with us…God wants us to ask Him, too. The most blatant example I can think of comes from Luke 18:39-43. A blind beggar heard that Jesus was passing by, so he started yelling to get Jesus’ attention. When bystanders started shushing him, he only got louder. Then Jesus had the blind man brought to Him. What Jesus asked next is a little bit mind-numbing. “What do you want me to do for you?”

What kind of a question is that?! The guy is BLIND! This wasn’t like being blind today, where you can receive an education or get a job despite being visually impaired. Back then it’s not like there were specialized accommodations like Braille signs and traffic signals that made noise when it’s safe to cross the street. Blind people back then couldn’t get work. They had to beg, and they relied on whatever they received. If nobody gave them anything, they didn’t have anything. Christ knew exactly what the guy wanted, but He wanted the beggar to ask for it. He wanted him to articulate it, to express it, to say it out loud. It was perfectly obvious that the beggar had faith in Christ, but without him articulating his request, his chances of getting what he wanted were much lower.

Without ego, without hesitation, without any kind of pretense, he told Christ exactly what he wanted. “I want to see!” Verse 42 makes it clear that this beggar’s faith worked in his favor. Christ healed him; he immediately received his sight, and everyone that witnessed it gave glory to God.

When we pray, we must ask with thankfulness and with faith. Ever since the temple curtain tore in two, we have direct access to God. We no longer have to go through a priest or some other intermediary. You can talk directlyto your savior.

What are you asking for when you pray? Are you asking for mighty and impossible things? I once heard a preacher say something to the effect of “we can boldly approach the creator of the universe, who waits with His hand cupped behind his ear to hear our requests. What do we ask? ‘Dear God, watch over the parakeet and water the grass.'”

I love the mental imagery that this same preacher goes on to convey. When you pray, ask God for things that are so big…so impossible, that when He hears you, God slides forward in his throne, elbows an angel, points at you, and says “did you hear THAT?!”

He’s waiting for you to ask Him. You’re invited to live a life of daring and greatness on His behalf. So…do you have a question?

A little motivation (I’m more interested in the audio than the video)…

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How Fast Can That Skateboard Go?

When I was in early elementary school, the only kids in my neighborhood that were anywhere near my age were girls. I got pretty sick of watching them play Barbies. That’s why it was so exciting when a guy named Mario moved into the neighborhood. He was a few grades ahead of me, but he was my first neighborhood buddy that was a guy. It was great to finally do guy stuff…we would go exploring in the woods, play street hockey, build forts, get muddy, you name it.

One day Mario had an idea. He had a skateboard that he decided to modify. You have to understand that today’s skateboards looked nothing like the popular skateboards of back then. Today’s models are lightweight to make it easier to get them off the ground. Back then, the bigger and sturdier, the better. If a mechanic from that era misplaced the creeper that he or she would use for sliding under a vehicle, they could’ve used a skateboard as a substitute without much of a problem.

Mario’s idea was to take this giant skateboard and nail a big piece of plywood on top. After he did, it was big enough for us both to sit on it at the same time and ride down a hill. I’m not sure how we came up with the name, but we called it “The Beta Mobile.” We didn’t really know why, but it sounded cool, so we went with it. To test it out we took it over to the hill in front of the house where I grew up. The modern-day street in front of that house has speed bumps (probably because of the stuff we did on that hill), but back then there weren’t any. The hill had two parts; the first one was long and had a gentler slope, while the second one was shorter, but dropped pretty quickly.

In classic little-boy fashion, we didn’t look for a smaller hill. We just climbed on and didn’t really give much thought to how to slow down if we needed to. I sat in the front, and he sat behind me, bobsled style. We shoved off, and away we went.

We built up speed down the first hill, and we stopped accelerating as the hill flattened out, but then we hit the second hill. We sped up to where it felt like we were going to lift off the ground. To a kid that was accustomed to getting roped into playing house, this was awesome! I was having fun until Mario had another idea. Off to the side there was a house whose owner had paved a little portion of her yard so she could park another vehicle off the street, but in order to keep rainwater from running into her yard, the part that bordered the lawn formed into a big ridge. To Mario, this ridge looked like a nice big jump to try to hit with the Beta Mobile.

“Hit that jump!” He yelled, leaning toward it.

“Noooooo!” I yelled back, leaning the other way.

The way it worked out, I guess I was sitting in the better spot for steering, because we stayed on the road and flew right past the jump. The Beta Mobile slowed down as the road started sloping upward again, and we came to a stop, satisfied that we would be able to do mega-cool things with the Beta Mobile.

As we walked back up to the top of the hill for another run, I forgot about the jump. We decided we’d try to go a little faster this time, but this time we switched places and I was in the back. Again we shoved off and started picking up speed.

We flew down the first hill, and as we started down the second one, I remembered the jump, remembered that we had switched places, and I had a terrible thought. It was too late, though. As we drew near the jump, I leaned away from it about as hard as I could, but it didn’t matter. Mario had the better leverage for steering, and he pointed us toward the jump. We hit it going nearly full speed.

What happened next was something straight out of a Calvin & Hobbes comic. The bodies of two grade-school boys and a gigantic piece of plywood with wheels went tumbling and flipping through the air, crashing onto the lawn. As we lay motionless, moaning on the grass, the front door to the house across the street opened up, and a man in his 80s stepped outside, applauding and shouting “yaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy!”

That was the last time I got on the Beta Mobile with Mario.

As you look around for ways that you can do more with your time and energy to glorify God, you’re going to have the opportunity to partner with fellow believers. For small endeavors it probably won’t be such a big deal, but as you move on to bigger projects, be sure that you’re on the same page with your co-laborers. Talk about your vision for what you’re working on together. You might both have good intent, but if you’re “leaning in different directions,” it’s probably not going to work out the way you’re all envisioning.

Follow God’s prompting, but game it out ahead of time with your partner(s). If you don’t, you might end up in a spectacular wreck, sprawled out in a daze, but your audience might not be so enthusiastic as the one we had that day.