Category: Aimless College Grad

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Sometimes You Just Need To Get Away From it all

After finishing college I moved back in with Mom and Dad for about a year and a half and worked in construction while I tried to figure out what to do with my life. During that time I helped out with the youth group in the church I’d attended since I was a kid.

One of the big events on the youth group’s calendar was a 4-day/3-night retreat over President’s Day weekend at a Christian conference center very close to the church. This particular retreat, dubbed “Winter Weekend,” was a popular one for the churches in our denomination’s district. Churches from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York sent kids from their youth groups to attend the gathering. I went along to serve as one of the guys’ counselors for our church’s group.

It was a good retreat. There were sports tournaments to compete in, along with a number of Bible sessions featuring praise and worship, and some small group time with just our church’s group. A lot of kids had an emotional encounter with Christ, and a number of them accepted Him as lord and savior of their lives.

About midway through the weekend, the question of weather began to become an issue. All the different churches’ groups were scheduled to depart Monday morning, but a significant snowstorm was on track to hit our area Sunday night and into the wee hours of Monday morning.

It wasn’t quite this bad, thankfully!

Leaders from the various groups collectively conferred with the conference center’s staff to figure out options, and each group decided what was best for their situation. A few of them made the difficult decision to leave early so they could beat the weather. Our group and a few others, on the other hand, decided to stay and ride out the storm, overstaying the scheduled end to the retreat in the process. Since the same storm that was about to hit us would also hit our home school district, we knew the local schools would be shut down for a bit. Our youth leader passed word to all the parents of the retreat’s attendees from our church, and let them know they could pick up their kids directly from the retreat as originally scheduled if they wanted, but otherwise we’d delay our return to the church by about 24 hours.

We went to bed Sunday night, and woke up to some heavy snow the next morning. The staff dug us out with snowblowers and plows, and the township and county began working to clear the local roads. One of my fellow counselors, who had attended Winter Weekend for years as a camper, talked excitedly about how it seemed like a dream come true…having a snowstorm strand us all together a little bit longer during a spiritual high. The cooks managed to cobble together three unplanned meals for us, the conference center managed to scrape up some staff to keep stuff open for a bunch of restless, hungry teens, and the various youth leaders and worship leaders called audibles for some unanticipated programming. It ended up being a very sweet time of togetherness, worship, and focus on the Lord.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but opportunities to extend a shared spiritual high don’t come along very often. It seems much more common to be hanging on for dear life as the world’s troubles relentlessly assail you, leaving you bruised and battered.

That’s what makes it all the more important to get a break in routine. Maybe you can’t manage a week-long, or even a weekend-long retreat, but it might be worth investigating anyway. There’s something about putting the normal distractions of life on hold while someone else pours into you spiritually. Does your church have a men’s or women’s retreat coming up? Maybe there’s an opportunity for you to do something along those lines this summer. Consider taking a closer look at those kinds of opportunities, because getting away from the normal routines and daily responsibilities for awhile can be incredibly revitalizing.

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Is There Really Any Purpose To Being Made To Wait?

Lately there’s been a beautiful stretch of weather where I live, but it’s not always this nice in August. The current low-humidity 70s and 80s are very nice, but once upon a time I worked in the field of residential construction, and I’ve had to deal with some nasty weather conditions.

I don’t even remember this dude’s real name, but everybody called him “Lumpy.” (The origin of the name, I think, had to do with some poorly mixed spackle or grout.) One hot August day Lumpy and I were working in Jersey somewhere, and it was time to call it a day. We jumped in the company truck and got on Interstate 80 to drive back to Pennsylvania. Everything went fine for awhile, but we ended up running into a wall of red brake lights on the highway.

I stopped the truck and we just sat for a bit, waiting for the jam to start breaking loose. Only it didn’t. We just sat there, waiting. The truck idled so long the fuel gauge began dipping. Brake lights turned off as people put their cars in park and killed their engines. Eventually people got out of their vehicles and walked around.

Not knowing how long we’d be there, we shut off our engine, too. The cold air from the A/C stopped blowing, and rather than bake in a hot vehicle, we opened the windows and got hit with hot, humid air. As we sat there sweating, we saw people get out of their cars and go sit in the shade of the trees, either talking on their flip phones or Blackberries, lighting (or bumming) cigarettes, or wandering into the treeline to find an impromptu restroom. People rolled down their windows and began talking with complete strangers. Lumpy wasn’t the most talkative guy, so we just sat there, listening to the radio and waiting for something to happen. What else could we do? We were powerless to get ourselves out of the situation.

I don’t know how people sensed movement, but at some point they started getting back in their cars. The brake lights turned on again as they cranked engines and put cars into gear. I can’t think of many times I was more relieved to see a traffic jam start to move again. I was psyched to hit 30 mph. I have no idea what snarled traffic so badly, but we made it back without further incident.

Sometimes you find yourself in a period of waiting, where all you can do is watch beyond-your-control circumstances play out. They are agonizing at times, often emotionally draining. This example is much more lighthearted than what a lot of other people have to deal with, but it illustrates the concept that sometimes God just wants you to wait. Maybe it’s to teach you to rest in Him, maybe it’s to force you to deal with something you’ve been avoiding. It could be a time where something’s being prepared for later. I know it’s hard. Sometimes it’s really hard. This is one time I can’t provide much insight, as God’s purpose in making you wait could be tied to any number of reasons. Spend time in the Word and in prayer, listen with everything you’ve got to what the Lord may be saying to you, and look for ways to make the most of this unusual season. I don’t know when it will be over, but seasons don’t last forever.

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Living Through a Tangible Example

This coming weekend is a three-day weekend for a lot of people, and it reminds me of an annual retreat our youth group participated in years ago (and probably still does). Every President’s Day weekend our youth group went to a nearby Christian conference center for a mini retreat. Many of the other churches from our denomination’s district brought their youth groups as well. It added some excitement to the mid-winter doldrums for a lot of our high-schoolers. It was always a very uplifting time that saw many kids dedicate or re-dedicate their lives to Christ.

One year during this retreat our youth leader, Allen, took part in an annual tradition for the retreat. He arranged to make pizza available for purchase, and our youth group would then meet together (just us in a smaller setting…no other church’s youth groups) for some deep discussions.

As you may be able to imagine, a large number of teenagers can go through quite a bit of pizza. Everyone was told ahead of time to bring some extra cash specifically for the purpose of buying however many slices of pizza they’d want. Allen announced that he’d get a slice count first, then collect the cash afterward. He went methodically through the roster he brought, keeping a record of how many slices each person wanted. Upon tallying all the orders, he asked “okay, last call, does anybody want to make any changes before we call in the order?” There may have been one or two changes to the orders, but it wasn’t long before he tallied up the final count.

As everybody started pulling out their cash, he announced a surprise. An anonymous member of our church was a big fan of the effect this retreat had on our youth group, and had volunteered to pick up the tab for the entire youth group’s pizza dinner. While buying pizza may not sound like much, it was a very real and practical way to love on the kids from our church attending the retreat that year. As jaws fell open, many of the boys, especially, tried to revise their orders higher, but Allen had seen it coming and purposely double checked before announcing the news.

This was a great way to demonstrate to teenagers the concept of having their debt forgiven. While this was an infinitely smaller debt to overcome than Christ’s redemption of our souls, it was an example that struck a chord and brought a tangible joy with it.

For those who have maybe heard of Jesus but might not be real familiar with Him, He serves as the bridge for us to cross an impossible gap. You’ve probably heard of Adam and Eve. For a time, Adam and Eve walked in sinless fellowship with the Lord. It wasn’t until they sinned (went against what they knew was right in God’s eyes) that death became woven into the human experience. Only someone without sin would be able to escape the lasting consequences of death, and only Jesus Christ has lived a sinless life. Since Christ was fully man, He wasn’t impervious to death, but since He was also fully God, He was impervious to staying dead. Since death has no power over the sinless, Christ was able to stare death in the eye and do as He wished. Although His sacrifice created a way to redeem us if we accept it, all of us are still destined to live with the consequences of our past sins. Everyone reading this will one day pass from this life into the next, but only those that have accepted Christ as their savior will spend the next life with Him in heaven.

I pray you’d experience a similar example of having your debt forgiven, and gain an increased appreciation for the gift Christ offers all of us. For those that have been Christ-followers for awhile now, please pray that those who are seeking truth would find it, and that God would move mightily in their lives, and in the lives of the teens gathering for the winter retreat this weekend.

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I Lifted That Whole House by Myself

I used to work for a small residential construction company. During my time there we built a variety of houses or did renovations, built decks, or completed smaller jobs. Depending on how many projects we had going and what time of year it was, we had a minimal number of guys or a whole bunch of guys working.

While we built one house in particular, most of the time we only had three workers on the crew. I was the youngest and least experienced, so I ended up being the mule…the guy lugging materials everywhere while the other two assembled them and really made the house come together. I carried lumber to the cutting table, while the other guys cut boards to size and put together headers for windows and doors. I handed plywood up to the guys working on the second floor. When the windows showed up, I took them to the right locations so the other guys could install them. When the boxes of siding arrived, I carried their contents where they needed to go. The joke was that I eventually lifted the whole house by myself.

That’s just the rough assembly. Then come the finer points and finishing touches. Holes for wires and pipes still need to be drilled. After the drywall gets hung, it needs to be taped and spackled, then primed and painted. Upon adding trim around windows and doors, it needs to be caulked and painted, too. After you lay and grout tile, you need to wipe it clean. As the house nears completion, appliances need to be installed.

Think about everything that goes into finishing a new house. There are all kinds of materials that get used in the completion of a home. Deliveries to construction sites normally occur in stages; you don’t deliver the dishwasher before the roof is put on, for example. The foundation gets poured, the lumber arrives, then the roofing materials, then the siding. Windows and doors go in. While that stuff is going on, the plumbing and electrical work takes place. Drywall gets hung and finished. While there’s sometimes some flexibility, the overall process has to be scheduled and coordinated so that one area is not interfering with another. (It’s best to install the wires and pipes before hanging drywall, for example.)

Instead of being delivered in stages, imagine if someone delivered all of the materials that would be used to build the house all at once and just set them down somewhere on the property. Given enough time, would those materials eventually assemble themselves into the finished product? For that to happen, things would have to naturally evolve from a state of chaos to a complex state of order.

A lot of scientists, scholars, and others are convinced that this is how we got our planet. Given enough time, if all the atoms and mass were present, they say, it’s obvious that it would shape itself into this world that can sustain life.

There’s a problem with that.

There’s a scientific principle called “Entropy” which states that the universe naturally progresses toward disorder, rather than order. Conditions will generally evolve from more complex conditions to less complex conditions. That is, orderly conditions in an environment will generally devolve into less orderly arrangements. What happens if you stop mowing your perfectly landscaped lawn for five years? Does it become more neat and tidy or more unkempt? Does your vehicle run better if you perform no maintenance on it, or does it require some upkeep?

This is why it’s tough to accept the part of Evolution that mandates rapid change within a single generation of organisms. The theory requires that a given species evolves to overcome some life-threatening obstacle. I’m all for being optimistic and the power of positive thinking and all that, but in must-evolve situations, it’s very simple: if you don’t quickly increase the specialization of a given species, it’s not going to survive. At-risk species that don’t evolve quickly enough to overcome an obstacle don’t survive to pass along modified genes. If they pass along unmodified genes in the same at-risk environment, the new generation has the same problem as the last one.

One of the often-overlooked problems when people are trying to shoot down Creationism is the starting point for life. Sure, things evolve over time, but if evolution is correct and humans and apes came from a common ancestor, which came from a simpler species, which came from single-celled organisms, there’s still a major problem. Somewhere along the line, life sprung from non-life. What did that look like? Where did life originally come from? Such a feat has never been observed to happen in a lab, so what are we missing? I cannot accept the premise that going from “molecules to man” is something that just happened without some kind of intelligent design. (For those that say Earth’s first microbes or bacteria arrived here on asteroids, the same question still applies: how did life start?)

This poses a major problem for those that oppose intelligent design theories. If you hang your entire theory on the notion that life began through some event that is completely unsupported from an empirical perspective, does that not take an amount of faith that is equal to subscribing to some version of the theory of intelligent design? Even if life didn’t originate here on Earth, it came from somewhere. If that life originated after the big bang, how could that possibly have happened? It could only have happened if something gave life to it.

Something to think about. New houses don’t just show up on their own. Beautiful biodiverse habitable planets don’t, either.

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Be Straight With Me. Was it Worth All That?

If you live a righteous life, you’re going to encounter opposition.

It’s a tricky thing, this balance Christians need to maintain. On the one hand, we need to have other Christians we can depend on, go to with our problems, and lean on for support. On the other hand, we can’t immerse ourselves so much in this support system that we never have contact with the people we’re meant to witness to. Our job, after all, is to go forth and make disciples of all nations. It’s tough to do that if we only spend time with other believers.

I’ve got a story to share that’s going to make me sound like I’m touting how perfect I was at a certain time in my life. That’s not my intent, so please hang in there for the point I’m trying to make. I worked construction for a couple of summers in college and then for about a year and a half after graduating. You meet a lot of interesting (translated: rough) characters in that line of work. The crude speech alone was enough to raise some eyebrows.

I stuck out quite a bit in this field. I didn’t swear, I didn’t drink, and I didn’t chase women. That’s pretty unusual for a young man in that line of work. I didn’t act in a morally superior or “holier than thou” way. It wasn’t necessary. People took notice over time. Different guys would leave or join the crew, but it seemed like everyone except me indulged in at least one of those three behaviors. One of the guys even told me “I’ve met dudes that avoid one of those things. I’ve even met a couple of guys that avoid two of those things. But you’re the only guy I’ve met that doesn’t do any of those things.”

A lot of times a few of the guys would try to prod me to let slip a dirty word or two. Occasionally a few of them would conspire to make me have a rough day, just to try to get me to lose my temper. Now why would they do that? They saw somebody more disciplined than them and they tried to get him to stumble so he’d “descend to their level.” I’m not going to sit here and tell you that people who drink or cuss or make mistakes can’t get into Heaven. I will tell you though, that blamelessness bothers sinners. I’m not perfect, but guys on that crew figured I was, and it was an image they wanted to mar for their own satisfaction. If they could make a “perfect” person stumble, it made them feel better about the way they lived their own lives.

That’s one side of the coin. There’s a very important flip side to it. When you stiffen your spine in response to consistent opposition day after day, week after week, month after month, there’s a certain amount of respect that others develop toward you. I wasn’t preachy about my faith to the other guys. In fact, I don’t know that I ever even threw “I’m a Christian” out there. One guy, who had given me a lot of grief, but who was also a very philosophical type of fellow, one day told me he had a lot of respect for my convictions. He seemed to take at least a little bit of joy in finding hypocrisy in people that called themselves religious. After months of working together and trying to get under my skin, he told me “you are who you say you are.” (I never had to say who I was.)

Not only was it a very high compliment coming from him, it was an acknowledgement to me that it had been worth the heat. Soon after that we spent some time talking about the Bible and some of the things it contained. We eventually went our separate ways, but a few years later my wife and I looked him up and visited him and his family. They had us over for dinner, breaking out some big steaks, sharing their table and their home with us. I can’t say I led the guy to Christ, and I haven’t had any contact with him in probably 15 years, but I hope to be one member of the team that takes part in his years-long journey to the Lord.

God will ask you to do things that are hard. He asks you to do it because He knows you’re uniquely suited to get it done. If He asks you to be above reproach in a difficult environment, it might just be because He knows blamelessness bothers sinners, and He’s using you to get somebody’s attention. Hang in there. God uses teams of believers to accomplish His will in any given person’s life, but you may be the one He’s chosen to get the ball rolling.

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What Absurd Things Might You be Called Upon To Do for the Gospel?

Have a unique talent or ability? God can use it for His glory.

When I was in high school I got involved in rappelling, and that interest further developed in college. I was fortunate enough to be able to take college coursework that provided me with instruction on safely using the equipment used in descending down cliff faces. It was a lot of fun; I started doing some outside-the-box stuff with it, and I’ve written about some of those adventures elsewhere in this blog. While I was in college friends and I rappelled off cliffs, out dorm windows, set up ziplines, and made promotional videos. Some of you may remember the post I made a few months back about rappelling down a cliff in a kayak.

After college, I was no longer surrounded by the same kind of people that “encouraged the crazy.” I moved back in with Mom and Dad for awhile and worked construction for a bit. During this time I helped out with our church’s youth group.

Every Presidents Day weekend, our high school youth group took part in “Winter Weekend” at a nearby Christian conference center. All the youth groups from our denomination’s district were invited to take part, and it was generally one of the high points of the year for the high schoolers.

Killing a few hours between daylight filming and nighttime filming. Some of the grease paint rubbed off when I blew my nose.

This particular year, the organizers asked Allen, the leader of our youth group, to film a video about some of the rules that would be in effect during that weekend. It was supposed to cover things like curfew/lights out times, not riding in personal vehicles, etc. To make it more fun to watch, Allen decided to add an entertaining twist. He recruited a couple of guys to be the rule-breakers in the video, and he asked me to more or less be the “bogeyman” that always caught them. I dressed in camo and grease paint for the video, and popped out of ridiculous places to catch the guys doing bad things. Then on opening night after the rules video finished playing, the plan was for the two guys to walk out live on stage, looking like they were going to do something shady. My role at that point would be to rappel down from the ceiling, gently touch down behind the two guys without them noticing, tap them on the shoulders, and then chase them out of the room. Honestly it sounded like a lot of fun, so I agreed to do it.

I had some camo gear from the Salvation Army store, and I had some leftover camo paint from something I did in college. We shot the video one cold February day and Allen spliced it together the way he wanted.

On the first night of the weekend, before they let any of the high schoolers into the auditorium, I dressed and geared up, and some people moved a scissor lift into place for me. While people were putting the finishing touches on the stage decorations, I rode the lift up into the rafters above the stage, set up the anchors and rope I’d need, and climbed off the lift onto a metal beam. They brought the lift back down, rolled it backstage, and then opened the doors for the first session of the weekend. I probably sat up in the rafters for 20-30 minutes, waiting for my next part. While I waited I painted my face up in camo, checked and re-checked my equipment, and tried to avoid having the lower half of my body go numb from sitting on a thin cold metal beam.

Once the session started, they welcomed everybody, then went over some of the things you have to cover right at the beginning. Then it was time for the rules video. It had a pretty positive reaction, and I could hear laughter from the crowd during different parts of it. As it drew to a close I slid off the beam and transferred my weight into my harness. Once I was steady I swung upside-down.

The two guys walked out onto the stage, almost right below me. The crowd started going nuts for them (everybody either missed the point of the video or they thought the two guys were cute, I dunno). I waited just a few beats for the crowd to show their enthusiasm and then started sliding down head-first. The rope I used didn’t hang down to the stage; I wore a backpack that held the rope, and I had pre-measured it so that it was just enough to safely get to the ground, but then the tail end of it was easy to pull right through the rest of the gear so I could chase the guys without having to stop.

It was a little strange. As I came into the audience’s view, the cheers of the crowd went quiet while they tried to understand what they were seeing. I came down right in front of the screen the video had been playing on, so they were probably trying to figure out if I was a real person or if they were watching something that was being projected.

I descended low enough to reach the ground, flipped rightside up, and pulled the rest of the rope through my gear so I was disconnected from it. I stepped up right behind the two and tapped them each on the shoulder. They looked at me, gave each other a funny look, and then sprinted off the stage and up the main aisle of the auditorium with me right behind them. The crowd burst into cheers again.

The photographer was a little late on this one, but it’s the best photo I’ve got. You can see my feet criss-crossed on the rope against the background of the screen. The two “bad guys” are just to the left of the “One Way” sign.

Now…did this stunt lead anyone to Christ? I can’t imagine it did. Sliding down a rope upside down just doesn’t have that kind of effect on people. The important thing to remember, though, is that Christianity is a team sport. The speaker that weekend, the various youth leaders, and the counselors leading small group discussions that weekend all did the heavy lifting in that area. All I did was help break the ice and bring a smile to the face of people who were still deciding whether or not they had made a mistake in coming to this retreat.

One of the neat things about Christianity being a team sport is that even though we don’t actually huddle together to go over the strategy, God knows exactly what His players’ strengths are, when to use them, and how to motivate them. Believers that are complete strangers can unknowingly help each other out if God sets it up that way. When He needs someone to move on His behalf, He starts working on some people three years ahead of time, but only 10 seconds ahead of time for others. In the end, His timing is perfect…you just need to say “I’m in.”

So I urge you: be open to using your unique talents. Even if they don’t directly lead to salvation for someone, you can’t possibly know how your part factors into the furthering of God’s kingdom until after you’ve done it.

The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. -1 Corinthians 12:12

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Need a Boost?

I used to love going kneeboarding. You kneel on a board and get pulled behind a boat, skimming across the top of the water. It’s not as popular as waterskiing or wakeboarding, but I had a lot of fun doing it.

When I was new to it, it was really cool just to get going and go back and forth across the wake. Then you start doing little tricks, like 360s or riding backwards. Then you start hitting the wake a little harder to get some air. Then you start hitting it really hard to see how far you can jump.

After hitting the wake hard and getting a decent amount of air, somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to pull off a barrel roll. Now that I’m older and wiser, I know that we just didn’t have the right setup to make this trick work, but back then I didn’t know it was impossible. I was willing to try it as many times as I could. Each time I wanted to get just a little closer to making it happen, but there was always a point in the rotation past which I couldn’t go.

I tried dozens of times, but always ended up falling into the water without the board rotating around nearly enough. I even bought a video camera (when such things existed) and had someone in the boat film what was going on so I could try to learn from my mistakes. I have film somewhere of me rolling between 180 and 270 degrees over and over again. I’d land on my head or I’d land on my side, the kneeboard would go flying up into the air, and it never once worked out for me.

What none of us knew at the time is that I couldn’t pull off the roll without mounting the rope at a higher point on the boat. The boat’s pylon – the point where the rope I hung onto was connected to the boat – was fine for waterskiing and even basic kneeboarding, but it simply was not going to allow me to achieve what I wanted to do. The professionals that successfully do these tricks use boats with elevated mounts. That way when the kneeboarders hit the wake and make it into the air, the boat is not only pulling them forward, but slightly upward as well. It’s not a lot, but it helps provide just a little bit of extra hang time that makes a huge difference in the person’s overall ability to perform tricks.

People are like that too. Each person is unique in their own story, but there’s usually a ceiling of some kind that everyone hits. It could be trying to find contentment, get past guilt, grant forgiveness, or even trying to establish a ministry. Whatever it is, people need to be connected to something higher than just the basic level. You hit your limit a lot sooner when you’re doing it on your own, and you need that extra boost that only comes from God.

Work diligently and don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, but remember to ask God for help and to guide your steps in any effort that glorifies Him. When you work hard to complete the assignment God’s given you, He provides that little boost that makes all the difference. He may not provide it exactly when you want it or exactly how you anticipate it, but He gives it to you. It’s the thing that makes a huge difference in your overall ability to perform His work.

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Playing Paintball With No Paintballs

Photo courtesy of pballcentral.com

After graduating from college I moved back home and worked construction to help pay off my school loans. During this time I helped out with the youth group at church on Tuesday nights and sometimes for weekend events.

One time that autumn our youth group went paintballing. I had never been paintballing before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and how much ammo I should buy. We played a couple of games, and I ended up not doing a whole lot of shooting, so I was able to make my ammo last most of the day. We played a few types of games on a couple of different courses, and then it was time for our last match of the day.

We had played a few games of capture the flag, but this time was a different variation. There was a really cool stockade fort that looked like something you’d see in the American frontier, and it was surrounded by a number of trenches that more or less served as a moat. Rain from the previous night made the trenches nasty and muddy, and there were still large puddles in many areas of the trenches. The stockade had a large courtyard, and in the courtyard stood a large stake with a flag on it. The only way for the assaulting team to win was to grab the flag off the stake without getting shot. If the flag was still on the stake when time ran out, the defending team won.

Since I was low on ammo, I couldn’t be much help in any kind of assault on the stockade. I noticed that the stake with the flag was near one of the trenches, so I decided I’d try to sneak through the trenches and go for the flag.

It took forever. I stayed low so people in the stockade wouldn’t know I was there. Stealth made for slow going, though. Every now and then I’d be able to take a pot shot at an opponent, or I’d be able to lay down some covering fire while a teammate tried something. I wasn’t able to help for very long though. I ran out of ammo. I was in the middle of a paintball match without having any paintballs.

I focused on the fact that the objective of the game wasn’t to shoot the most paint, but to capture the flag. Although it wasn’t the most natural thing to do, I pressed forward with a paintball gun that was little more than a decoration. I slogged through the mud until I finally arrived as close to the stake as the trench would take me. I waited until I heard a bit of a skirmish nearby, and rolled up out of the trench behind some cover. Now that my secret was out, I had to move fast; I sprinted toward the stake while shooting harmless bursts of CO2 in the general direction of defenders up on the stockade. The flag was just feet away!

I didn’t even get close. I got lit up with paintballs. I was muddy, wet, cold, and suddenly out of the game. Time expired, and the defending team won.

Photo courtesy of hurlburt.af.mil

It was an important lesson, though. As you go through your Christian life, you’re going to encounter situations you didn’t anticipate, and you’re going to feel unprepared for them. During those times it’s important to keep your eye on the goal. In this example, I didn’t need to have paintballs to help our team win a game of capture the flag. Don’t be distracted by things that seem like they should matter, but in the end have little or no bearing on whether or not you obtain your objective.

I’m not sure what your contribution to the Kingdom of God is, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you only have one thing to offer. If your primary means of service is sidelined for some reason, either temporarily or permanently, look around at other ways you can get in the game. This may be your opportunity to try something you wouldn’t have tried otherwise.

If something has recently sidelined your usual means of serving and you find yourself “playing paintball with no paintballs,” keep your eye on the objective. You’re still in the fight.

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That Was Almost Me!

In honor of the real reason behind the upcoming Christmas holiday, I’m going to share a story from my life that illustrates someone else’s sacrifice on my behalf. This particular experience drives home the point of Jesus taking my place like nothing else does.

Before I joined the Air Force I worked in construction, building houses. The Air Force was very particular and thorough about documenting the types of injuries, surgeries, and other aspects of recruits’ medical history. All of a potential recruit’s medical history paperwork needed to be in good order before they could even leave for basic training. I don’t remember how many times I had to fill out specific forms, but I remember that it was a pain to get it all completed.

Everyone at work knew that I was joining the Air Force, but the job I wanted wasn’t scheduled to have room for new Airmen for several months, so while I was waiting, all I had to do was not get hurt. I worked in construction. What could go wrong?

Our crew was framing a house, which was one of my favorite parts of building it, even though it was also one of the most physically strenuous. We had finished the first floor, and we were just about to start work on the second. What we usually did at this point was have a guy start lifting the decking…a beefed-up version of plywood…up to someone on the second floor. Once we got most of the decking installed on the second floor, we could start moving other supplies up there.

This time we did something a little different. I don’t remember exactly why, but we had a backhoe on site. Rather than pass the sheets of decking up one at a time, we threw a chain around a bunch of the sheets and connected it to the backhoe’s arm. We were going to use the machine to lift a bunch of the decking up to the second floor all at once. If this worked out, it was going to save us a lot of work.

The backhoe operator drove around to the part of the house that was closest to being able to reach the second floor. He moved into place and began positioning the arm so that two of us up top could pull the sheets out of the stack. I was one of the guys, and I had gone to high school with the other guy, Jared. Jared was the kind of guy that had been working on job sites and picking up extra cash since he was a kid. He had worked on more roofs, houses, and barns than he could remember. He just had a sixth sense about how building supplies needed to fit together and how the process needed to go.

The two of us stood on top of the second floor, waiting to receive the first sheets. We had no floor to stand on yet; we had to balance on the rafters that were 16 inches apart. We watched as the backhoe operator extended the backhoe’s arm as high as it would go, only to come up a few inches short. We talked it over for a bit, and decided we’d try tipping the bundle just enough that we could pull a sheet up toward us. We didn’t like the idea of dealing with a tipped bundle, but it was better than lifting the sheets up one by one.

This idea might have worked if we used a magical chain that tightened around the bundle a little bit as each sheet came out. Think of a deck of cards that’s held in place not with a rubber band, but with a string that’s tied tightly around the outside. As we tried tipping the bundle just enough to pull a sheet up onto where we stood, the sheets in the middle of the bundle started sliding toward the cab of the backhoe. Out of self-preservation, the operator jerked the arm to stop the decking from smashing into him, but in the process it made the bucket smash into the wall holding up the rafters Jared and I stood on. It broke the wall loose and in about three seconds there would be nothing holding us up anymore.

Jared was quicker to understand everything that was happening, and he started tearing across the rafters with a quickness. He slowed down long enough to grab me and get me moving in the right direction, because I had to spin 180 degrees to be pointed toward safety. He pulled me onto my feet and gave me a big shove, providing the momentum I needed to reach a different section of the building that wasn’t in danger of collapsing. The big shove he gave me killed his momentum toward safety though. It all happened so fast that I don’t remember everything that occurred, but the wall gave way, and so did the rafters holding us up. As I was falling, I was just barely able to reach out and grab a beam that wasn’t affected by the wall’s collapse. I was running across rafters that were on their way down as I reached it. It was just in the nick of time, too; it was a last-ditch leap to grab something sturdy enough to save me from disaster.

Jared, however, did NOT make it to safety. He ended up tumbling from the second floor to the first in the middle of a mass of collapsing lumber. He suffered a fall he could have escaped because he stopped long enough to give me a chance I wouldn’t have had without him. He could have made it without a problem if he only looked after himself, but without even thinking he helped keep me from getting hurt. If I could go back in time and grab a picture of the scene, it would have been a powerful one to see Jared getting buried in an avalanche of two-by-sixes and two-by-eights as I safely swung from a cross beam just feet away, thanks to him.

This event made me understand the word “sacrifice” in a different light. I always knew the Bible stories about God sacrificing His son. After awhile, you forget to appreciate what an awesomely painful thing that was for Him to do. Then something like this happens and you see it in a whole new light.

How do you pay someone back after something like that?

You can’t.

If you haven’t invited Jesus Christ to be the Lord of your life, that doesn’t change the fact that He paid a heavy price to offer you a tremendous gift. To be honest, He knew that many people wouldn’t take Him up on it, and He knew that some people would knowingly reject it. I can’t imagine not being thankful to Jared after what he did. It also helped remind me of how much more thankful I need to be for an even bigger act of selflessness.

This Christmas don’t forget to pause and give thanks to God for the significance of what we’re actually celebrating during this time of year. Christ’s birth marked the start of a plan that would result in a painful and tormenting sacrifice that opened the door for you and for me to gain entry into Heaven. The concept of painful separation from God after death is our default status as humans, but Christ’s sacrifice created the only way for us to avoid that future and instead spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

Just for the sake of closure, Jared was okay, but he was pretty mad and stayed on the floor for awhile. I dropped from the beam and ran toward him, throwing planks every which way to get him uncovered. He scared me when I found him in the fetal position…I kept asking him to say something, but he stayed quiet. I think he was pretty upset at seeing the problem coming and still having to deal with it. We later joked about how tough Jared was. He’s the only guy I know that you can drop a house on and he keeps on going. 🙂

This is my last post of 2018. Enjoy time together with loved ones this season; hold them tighter and don’t take them for granted. Talk about big, impossible ideas of how you can labor for God’s glory. Spur one another on. I’ll resume posting the first or second week of the new year.

In the words of a different, more famous Tim, “God Bless us, every one!”

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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.