One day when my
youngest daughter was four, she asked Mommy if she could have a lollipop. It
was too late in the evening to let her have it though, so my wife told her she
could have one the next day. Sure enough, our little one remembered the next
day:
“Mom? Is it tomorrow?”
“Yes, today’s the
tomorrow we talked about yesterday.”
It’s an off-the-cuff,
but profound saying. “Today’s the tomorrow we talked about yesterday.” When you
think about it, each of us is the product of our past choices and experiences.
You are the person you are today because of the things you’ve gone through.
If you could go back
and change something somewhere along the line…erase a mistake…capitalize on the
knowledge you have now…you’d have a new set of experiences. You’d no longer be
the person you are.
You are the person God knew you’d be at this point. He can, and (if you let Him) He will use you to do great things for His kingdom. All the mistakes, all the missed opportunities, along with all the high points, milestones, and celebrations…they helped shape who you are right now. Because of who you are, with your placement and background, there’s something that only you are equipped to do for God’s glory.
In the same way, the
things you experience today will shape your tomorrow. This includes not only
the things that happen to you, but the situations you place yourself into. The
choices you make hold tremendous bearing over what will happen to your future.
Make sure you’re making good ones.
Tomorrow will soon be
here; will your future self be thankful for what you’re doing today?
After Air Force Basic
Training, I moved on to become a candidate for survival instructor. Since there
was a high wash-out rate for that job field, we first had to complete a physically
demanding screening course.
Before we could even
begin the course, we had to spend a few weeks or even months building up our
physical stamina. After having just graduated Basic, most of the people that
arrived were very skinny and had not had any serious exercise. By the time people
graduated the course, they would need to do hundreds of pushups a day, be able
to run a few miles within a certain time limit, and be able to ruck four miles
with a 65-pound ruck sack on their back in under 60 minutes.
These things were all
possible, but our bodies needed time to build up to those capabilities. Our
instructors designed PT programs meant to work us up to those goals. As a way
of keeping tabs on who was deficient in which areas, we periodically had
performance checks…where we measured and recorded our performance in a task
(whether it be a timed run, number of repetitions done, etc.).
When we first started
timed runs or timed rucks, everybody went at their own speed because nobody
knew how their natural speed would play out over the distance in question. As
time went on though, and we learned a bit more, we started recognizing not only
our own abilities, but those of our teammates. Some people learned “okay,
I’m usually able to make the cutoff with a few minutes to spare, so maybe I don’t
need to push it quite so hard.” Others learned “that guy usually sets
a pretty good pace…if I can just keep up with him for most of the distance, I
can fall off near the end and still make it.”
The result was that
trainees would usually pair off or group up according to their ability. During
a run they would set the pace for each other, or during a ruck they’d be able
to talk and keep each other’s spirits up. Being together helped them draw
strength from one another and made them stronger than they would be on their
own.
It seemed, though, that
in every class you had someone who struggled very hard with certain things. Some
people were naturally good at running, others were good at push-ups. Some were
gifted at rucking long distances quickly, others were just born leaders. We had
a guy in our class, Bob, who wasn’t really good at any of those things.
During runs Bob would
always be last. He’d be near the end during ruck marches. His pushups were
okay, but his pull-ups were terrible. He was not a leader. He was a goofball
that would drag down the team’s average performance, and he didn’t seem too
bothered by it.
One day we did a timed
run. We had a one-mile dirt track, which made it nice because then we only had
to do a quarter of the laps that we’d normally do on a regulation track. I
don’t remember how many laps we had to do that day, but it was at least two or
three.
The results were
predictable. The regulars were first across the finish line, and the next few
guys finished in what was a pretty normal order. By the time everyone else had
finished and were all doubled over with our hands on our knees in the grass
near the finish line, Bob was still on the track, way behind everyone else.
Sometimes on runs, the
people who finished early would jog back to meet up with guys still trying to
cross the finish line, and go at their speed to encourage them along until the
end. I don’t remember everyone’s first names anymore; I’ll just call this guy
Jack. Jack looked down the track and asked “who’s going back for
Bob?” This was much further back than any time we’d gone back for someone
before.
Jack looked around at
everyone, and nobody seemed willing to go that far back to meet up with Bob.
Without another word, he took off running across the field to meet up with Bob.
After he took off he didn’t look back.
You can imagine the mood
among those still left at the finish line. A little bit of guilt, a little bit
of “but…it’s Bob.” It
didn’t take long though, before everyone else started running across the field,
too.
Now imagine you’re Bob.
You’re plodding along at your best pace, which never seems to be good enough.
Everyone else has left you in the dust, and you’re on your own. Even though
this is one of your personal best distances and times, you can’t even see
anybody anymore. But then here comes Jack, running over the hill and meeting up
with you to match your pace and maybe urge you on a bit. As soon as he comes
alongside you, a group of more than a half dozen other guys appears over the
same hill, coming back for you.
Sometimes you just need
to be willing to be the first one to step out. Jack didn’t know what would
happen, but he decided that he was going, with or without anyone else. His
resolve set everyone else in motion.
If you’re a
Christ-follower, there are going to be things in your life that you are not
going to want to do. There will be other times where you know there’s something
that you ought to do, but you really don’t want to. It could be something like
starting a new ministry from scratch because you’re the only one in a position
to do it. It might be visiting a shut-in to see how you can help them. Whatever
it is, nobody’s doing it, and you have the ability to do it.
After you step out, you
just might find that others follow your lead.
After graduating Air
Force Basic Training, I began my tryout to become a survival instructor. The
Indoctrination course after Basic Training is just a screening course; if you
pass it, then you get to move on to take another one. While at “Indoc,” it’s
your job to demonstrate that you can handle mental and physical challenges and
that you’re determined to make it.
Life at Indoc was
physically demanding. Our instructors needed to build our skinny bodies into
something that could physically withstand punishment and grueling conditions. Physical
Training was a large part of every work day. Pushups became second nature to us
all. Calisthenics, weights, running, ruck marches…all intended to build us into
something stronger. At that time most members of the Air Force were required to
take a PT test once a year. Physical fitness was so important to our training
that we did a PT test once a week.
We had some strange
workouts. Sometimes we’d be in the woods cutting down trees and setting up
shelters. Once every few weeks we’d have a Combat Controller (one type of Air
Force special forces) come by and lead us on a run that took us through the
woods and the mud, over fences, through base housing, and anywhere else he felt
like going.
In order to reduce the
risk of injuries and to help prepare ourselves for physical activity, we spent
between 20 and 30 minutes at the start of each day stretching. Stretching warms
up your muscles and helps enable them to cope with strains, exertion, and
overextensions.
There were times when
we had a good idea of the upcoming workout. Sometimes we knew we had a run
coming up, so we’d perform stretches with a focus on that activity. Other times
we knew we’d be in for a long session of calisthenics, so we stretched nearly
every muscle we had. When you know the nature of the goal, in this case a
particular type of workout, it’s easier to take steps to prepare for meeting
that challenge.
The tricky part is when
you don’t know what the goal is. On occasion, our instructors didn’t tell us
what we were in for. They made sure we performed certain types of stretches,
but didn’t give us any clues other than that. We had to trust that the
instructors’ preparatory guidance would help set us up for whatever we had to
face next.
The workouts were often
grueling, but the part that took awhile to see was that successfully making it
through a difficult workout was part of the solution to overcoming subsequent
challenges we didn’t even know about at the time. At first all we knew was that
we were exhausted at the end of a workout session. The following day we’d show
up again, then leave exhausted after another workout. Each day we’d show up and
go through another session and leave exhausted, but over time we discovered we
could withstand more stress, we became stronger and more capable; we were able
to tolerate conditions we previously didn’t think we could withstand.
It’s exactly the same
thing when living a life for Christ. When we think of “living a life for
Christ,” we think of going out and doing amazing or improbable things, but the
truth is that some days we’re just trying to survive. We know people who have
either made it through intolerable conditions or are currently enduring miserable
circumstances. For them, each day is a fight just to make it through. At the
end of each day all they know is that they are completely exhausted and worn
out, and they don’t know how they’ll ever make it through another day, let
alone months (or possibly years) of the same conditions.
The things I learned at
Indoc have parallels in life. God is the only one that knows ahead of time what
the goal is and how He intends to use individuals to achieve it. If those
people knew at the start what they’d have to face, many of them would never believe
they could do it. At Indoc we stretched to prevent injuries; going on a run
through the woods without stretching is dangerous. It’s easy to twist an ankle.
If you stretch your ankle ahead of time, you might still twist it and it will
still hurt, but you’ll be able to continue the run without actually sustaining
an injury. God’s version of stretching a person sometimes means putting them in
experiences that prepare them for follow-on experiences. They hurt, but it
allows those people to make it through a subsequent challenge without breaking.
Since God is the only one who knows what your upcoming “workout” entails, He’s
the one that best knows how to “stretch” you ahead of time.
“But what about when
the stretching never seems to end?” Sounds like you’ve moved past the
stretching and into the actual workout. It’s important to remember that a muscle
doesn’t become stronger by doing a workout a single time. It takes repetition.
When you do the same workout repetitively, your muscles adapt. They grow; they
meet the challenge. Over weeks, over months, or even years, they prove they can
handle it, and so you have to “add more weight” to the workout in order to keep
growing. The hard workouts are exhausting and draining, and they make you ask “why?”
Looking back at what you were before it all started, aren’t you now stronger
and more capable? Are you now in a better position to face the next challenge?
Have you ever been
stretched spiritually, physically, mentally, and/or emotionally? Maybe it was
to increase your “range of motion,” capacity, or willingness. The
stretching and workouts cumulatively built you into someone that can handle
something more…something more difficult.
The next challenge is
on the way. Whatever it is, it’s going to look intimidating. Remember that God’s
been working you up to it, though, and that it’s not too much for you. Your
past experiences have prepared you to take it on and succeed; don’t be afraid
to accept the challenge.
Ready to drive across the country to watch the Winter Olympics
This entry took place almost exactly 17 years ago (just two days off).
It had finally arrived.
February of 2002 was here, and the Winter Olympics had finally begun. My
college roommate and I had been working on a plot to head out to see some of
the Olympics in Utah for about a year and a half, and now everyone in our house
was watching the opening ceremonies on TV.
All the gear was bought
and (mostly) tested. We had our tickets in hand. The numerous little pieces
were all falling into place, and in a week or so we would embark on a great
adventure.
We made final
preparations for the trip and filled our professors in on what we were about to
do. We checked and re-checked details about the trip. In those last days before
heading out, we watched all kinds of Olympic coverage; it didn’t matter what
was on. The guys in our house, getting into the spirit of things, would even
watch Curling, which none of us understood. (“YES! Wait…so was that good
or bad?”)
As our departure date
drew near, we assembled all our gear, packing and re-packing it to see how to
maximize use of the space we had. Some of our stuff would be nice to have, but
if we couldn’t fit it, it wasn’t going with us.
The day finally
arrived. We loaded up my little car with all of the supplies we were bringing.
There was barely room for the two of us to fit. We left before dawn.
The initial drive took
us from Western New York State to Pittsburgh, where we switched to a larger
rental car. From there it was pretty much a straight shot out West along Route
80 to Salt Lake City. We were excited. This was really happening; we were
really doing this!
Twelve hours later, we
were bored out of our minds.
It was over 2,000 miles
and more than 30 hours of driving to our destination. America is a beautiful
place, but it’s kinda drab in February. Ohio wasn’t much to look at. Indiana wasn’t
much different. It got dark when we were somewhere in Illinois, and we weren’t
going to stop for another few hours. We kept going until we hit Iowa after 16
hours of driving on day one, where we eventually found a rest stop and slept in
the car overnight.
It seemed like the most beautiful part of some states was a higher speed limit
The excitement had worn
off. A day that began with such immense promise and electricity became dull and
mundane. All the different radio stations seemed to play the same songs. There
wasn’t much scenery to enjoy as we drove. You didn’t need to eat much if all
you did was sit in a car all day. We snacked on stuff, but it was as much for having
something to do as it was for being hungry. The highlight of the drive that
first day was stopping at a Wendy’s for dinner. “Will that be for the
dining room, or would you like it to go?”
“NO! The dining
room, please!“
The Christian life can
be exciting. When you see yourself being used to fulfill God’s purposes,
there’s nothing quite like it. It’s thrilling to go on missions trips, start learning
about a Bible study topic that hits close to home, read a book about a subject
you’ve been wanting to learn more about, or go so far as to start a new project
or effort that’s been tugging at your heart. There are going to be times in those
journeys, though, where it gets dull, boring, or even becomes downright
drudgery.
In a previous post I includede the phrase “go until you get a no.” The drudgery isn’t a “no,” it’s just a way for you to get worn down and an excuse for you to give up. If you give up on a herculean effort because you lose interest or get discouraged, you’re not giving God the opportunity to move mountains. God’s sense of timing tends to be different from our own. If you felt sure that He called you to take on a task, and you went so far as to get started on it, shouldn’t you see it through? Shouldn’t you go until you get a “no?”
Hang in there at least a little longer. God has a way of showing up at just the right time.
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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?
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?
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.
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.
