Category: Step Into the Line of Fire

Posted on

Fatherhood Fun

I don’t know what it is about Dads, but we love to get our kids riled up. We know we shouldn’t  do it as much as we do, but we can’t help it sometimes. Daddies are the loud ones, the human jungle gyms, and the ones that tend to ratchet things up rather than down. Mommies are the soothers, the comforters, the ones the kids go to when something hurts (probably because of something Daddy did while roughhousing).

Since my kids were little, the basement has been the place where they could be loud. If they had too much sugar or they were just a little extra wound up, we’d banish them to the basement for awhile. When my two oldest kids were pretty young, one time I took them in the basement to work off some energy while Mommy got a little peace and quiet upstairs. My oldest daughter and my son loved when Daddy went a little crazy with them.

Around that time we came up with a game that was kind of like dodgeball. Back then our basement was set up so that as you came down the stairs, you pulled a U-turn and walked down a hallway to another room. Right across from the bottom of the stairs was another room. I’d go to the room at the far end of the hall and throw a ball at the wall near the bottom of the stairs while my kiddos ran back and forth between the two safe zones (the blind spot at the bottom of the stairs and the room across from it). It sounds kind of sadistic, but they loved it and they weren’t going to get hurt. I had a ball that was kind of scary because it was very loud when it hit the wall, so any time it “just missed” them, it was a big thrill for them because they had snuck past Daddy’s throw without getting hit. I pegged them plenty of times too, but it usually ended with lots of giggles. J

My kids weren’t very old at this point, probably about 5 and 3. They loved playing this game though, because this is where they learned to use teamwork to “distract” Daddy. One would feint, act like they were going to dash across the line of fire, but it was really just a trick to get Daddy to throw the ball while they were still safe, and then the other one would make a break for it before the ball bounced back to Daddy.

I’d try bouncing the ball off the hallway’s walls, or putting spin on the ball so that it still bounced after them even if they were in the safe zones. Naturally, the ball would get stuck on their side every now and then, but they’d peek out from behind their cover, pick it up, and throw it to me and dive back for cover before I could pick it up and throw it again.

Little dodgeball champions

One time my little guy picked it up and threw it to me, but then forgot to get back behind some cover. I gave him some warning and made a big show of winding up for a big throw, but he still wasn’t catching on that he was exposed. With all the gravity of a life-and-death situation, big sis dashed across the line of fire, knowing full well that Daddy was about to unleash a fastball. My little medal-of-honor-winner-in-training jumped behind him and grabbed him under his armpits, and then yanked him back to safety. He fell down on top of her in the process, with the ball narrowly missing both of them.

There are some things in the Bible that you just don’t fully appreciate unless you deal with young kids a lot. This story about my kids helps me better grasp one story in the book of Mark (10:17-31). A rich young ruler came up to Jesus and asked “what do I need to do to have eternal life?” This guy was probably a young ruler in the local synagogue, steeped in the legalism of the day. With his line of thinking he was essentially looking for some kind of religious deed he could perform that would guarantee his entry into Heaven. Although he was misguided, that didn’t make him insincere.

Jesus more or less told him “you know the deal…follow all the commandments…don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t defraud, and honor your father and mother.”

While most of us at that point probably would have remembered at least one time in our lives where we told a lie or let Mom or Dad down, this guy had a different reaction.

“Yep, I’m good with all that. What else do I need to do?”

If you’re Jesus, and this guy has the nerve to say that to you, even if he believed it was true, what are you gonna be thinking?

Here’s the part that my kids helped me understand. “Jesus looked at him and loved him.”

Some translations might say that Jesus felt great compassion for him. I was truly moved to see my daughter sacrifice her safety for the sake of her little brother. The guy in the story was earnestly seeking the truth from Christ, but he didn’t know he was now playing in a different league. Like seeing my little guy standing in the line of fire without knowing he was in danger, Christ probably looked at this young man and thought to himself “Bless your little heart. You’re so clueless and you don’t even know it.”

There are lots of other fatherhood experiences where those words came to mind: “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Christ had compassion both for people that were His followers and for people that were not. We’re called to do the same.

Who can you show compassion for today?

Posted on

You Probably Can’t Even Get Through the Front Doors of That Church

Photo courtesy of GOD TV.

In this blog I like to talk about coming up with new ways to employ the gifts God’s given you for the purpose of reaching people in ways that aren’t already been done. Here’s an example.

These days it’s becoming more common to open satellite churches. Usually what that means is that there’s a main campus where the preacher physically delivers a sermon, and it’s broadcast live (or on a delay) to other satellite churches in the network. Those remote churches normally have an on-site staff, including a pastor (who is not delivering a sermon, but is there to support the members of the congregation), worship leaders, and all the volunteers that are needed to pull off a functioning church service.

Gateway Church in Texas recently announced that it was opening a new satellite campus. On the surface, this isn’t anything unusual, but this particular venue is more difficult for average folks to get to.

Gateway Church’s new remote site is in the state’s largest maximum security prison.

They’ve hired someone to be the campus pastor for this particular location, and there are others who help every week, but just about everyone else who works to ensure the services function is an inmate. Ushers, greeters, guys setting up, guys tearing down, worship leaders, audio/video staff…all inmates.

Here’s a video for more info.

The ways people are currently reaching the lost are not the only ways to do it. There are tons of other ways to do it that haven’t been started, but either nobody’s thought of it yet, or nobody’s willing to do it. When it comes to reaching people for Christ, you might be the only person on this entire planet that has the ideas you do. Don’t let those ideas die on the vine.

You have talent; you have ideas; you have value. For the sake of Christ’s kingdom and the people who aren’t yet in it, please share those things with others.

Posted on

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!”

Posted on

When Whiplash is a Good Thing

This post is a follow-on to my previous one, which had to do with people that are barely hanging in there, just trying to survive. (https://daregreatlynow.com/2018/11/05/helps-coming/)

Disclaimer: I have to warn you that I like military movies. Sometimes when I’m watching them, I get pretty excited about them and go back and watch the action-packed scenes a few times because I want to get a good handle on what I’m seeing. By their nature, though, they’re violent and often come with some salty language. I’m including a couple of clips below to go along with the post; if you’re not up for all the craziness right now, you’ll probably want the first clip. If my narrative below is too confusing and you just want to see for yourself (and can live with the cursing and shooting), go with clip number two.

One of my all-time favorite “spiritual metaphor” movie scenes comes from a movie called “Act of Valor.” It didn’t set any box office records or anything, but one of the distinguishing characteristics of the film was that the main characters in the movie were portrayed by active duty Navy SEALs. The plot was fictional, but it was based on real-world missions SEALs have conducted.

I know it wasn’t a real mission, but it was still fun to see SEALs doing some of the stuff they do. During the movie a team of SEALs had been sent into some foreign country to rescue an abducted CIA operative. The SEALs got solid information about her location, and they were tasked with recovering her. Her captors were torturing and interrogating her to find out how much the CIA knew about them. Heavily injured, her body wasn’t able to endure much more, and her health was failing quickly.

We’ve all seen movies or heard stories about Navy SEALs, and sometimes the line between what they can and can’t do gets a little blurred. They’re phenomenal at short-duration engagements, but since they usually work in smaller teams, a sizable enemy force will have a good chance of overwhelming them over time. In the movie, the SEALs rescued the CIA operative from immediate danger, but a sizable enemy force was bearing down on them. The rescue team stole a pickup truck and loaded everyone in, taking off just as a number of pursuit vehicles arrived to chase them during a high-speed shootout.

The SEALs’ planned method of extraction was to link up with a SWCC team…essentially a heavily-armed armored speedboat…whose callsign was Whiplash. But they began the assault earlier than planned (before the boats were in position), they hadn’t counted on this level of opposition on the way out, and there was too much happening for the original plan to function as intended.

The SEALs’ driver took off down the road without having an exact idea where he was going. The guy in the passenger seat was trying to navigate and establish radio contact with the team leader, who, along with another SEAL, was running to meet up with the rest. In addition to the barely conscious CIA operative, a member of the team had been shot in the head during the raid and was alive, but unconscious. Another team member was trying to keep him alive and revive him. All the while there’s a guy or two in the bed of the pickup trying to shield the CIA operative and return enough fire to keep the bad guys from getting too close.

The situation just kept getting worse. First they blew through their primary rendezvous point, and the enemy was too close for them to safely pull over at the backup rendezvous point, so they sped past it, too. They even pulled out a surprise or two to give themselves a better chance, but it just wasn’t enough. With no choice, they sped toward their last option, but by this time they had still created almost no separation from an aggressive enemy.

They ran out of road and at high speed splashed the truck directly into a river. They had gone as far as they could and had held the enemy at bay as long as possible, but despite keeping cool heads and performing at a high level, they could not be expected to do any more without some outside intervention. They had accomplished bold, even extraordinary things, but now it looked hopeless; the team had no reasonable hope of making a coordinated last stand against such devastating odds.

Just as the enemy trucks slid to a stop and armed men took aim, Whiplash came roaring around the river bend with guns blazing. Enemy shooters had no choice but to dive for cover as their vehicles got shot full of holes. After pinning down the enemy, sailors plucked the Americans out of the water and into the safety of the boats. As the scene closed, the vessel carrying the rescued team and CIA operative sped off down the river, having accomplished their objective.

(This is the shorter, less crazy version, but might still have a choice word or two.)

(The clip below includes the full pursuit, and is a little rougher on the eyes and ears.)

Have you ever had a day that felt like that? Things started out according to plan, but once one thing went wrong, it got bad in a hurry. Through grit and perseverance you might have been able to keep things from completely falling to pieces for awhile, but eventually the situation caught up with you and degraded to the point where it just wasn’t going to get better without some outside help.

Maybe you were on the other side of things. Maybe you were Whiplash, an answer to somebody’s prayer. Because of you and the help you were able to provide, you helped somebody stave off complete disaster.

Even better, maybe you have the opportunity to be Whiplash to someone right now. You might know somebody that’s already crashed into the water and is looking down the river in desperate expectation, but they can’t see anyone yet. They may not even know what they’re looking for, but they’re looking for you.

It’s time to armor up. Don the armor of God and grab that sword of truth. You’ve got allies (or potential allies) pinned down deep behind enemy lines, and only bold action will pull them out. If you’ve got the opportunity and can take a few hits for the sake of pulling the heat off someone else, step into the line of fire. Be Whiplash to someone. They’re desperate for you to arrive in time, and you’re the best chance they’ve got.