I was looking through my weekly
journals, all the way back to November 1998, surprised how few times I wrote
about the joys of Thanksgiving. I was certain I’d written more

I’ve always enjoyed Thanksgiving.
Maybe because I don’t personally participate in the two frenzied traditions –
cooking and shopping. I enjoy cooking, but don’t really cook anything myself
unless trapped in a corner. And I enjoy shopping for gifts, but would rather
pay more for something than dive headfirst into Black Friday.

It’s curious that I enjoy
Thanksgiving so much when the traditional Thanksgiving foods I long for are few:
leftover turkey sandwiches and Cyndi’s homemade apple pie. I can eat almost
anything if the social situation demands it, but I’m no longer tempted to eat
green bean casserole, brown-sugared sweet potatoes, Jell-O salad, anything with
cranberries, anything with pumpkin, or even dressing.

On several occasions, usually after
running the Turkey Trot in either Dallas or Ft. Worth, we end up eating
Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel. I order the chicken-fried steak with
corn and (plain) green beans. It is wonderful.

So why do I enjoy Thanksgiving so
much when I don’t enjoy so much of the regular fair? I think because we always
eat with people we love, usually a lot of them, and we take our time and enjoy
the company as much as the food. In our family, we laugh more than anything
else.

But of course, the Thanksgiving meal
isn’t the most important part, is it. As Americans we get plenty of food all
year long, and most of us eat too much of it every time we sit at the table.
The most important aspect of
Thanksgiving is the name itself. Thanksgiving.

Brene Brown, in The Gifts of Imperfection, described our real
hunger like this: “We're a nation hungry for more joy: Because we're starving
from a lack of gratitude.”

Ms. Brown understands practicing gratitude to be fundamental in our
search for wholehearted living. She wrote, “When it comes to gratitude, the
word that jumped out at me throughout the research process is practice. As
someone who thought that knowledge was more important than practice, I found
these words to be a call to action. For years, I subscribed to the notion of an
“attitude of gratitude.” I’ve since learned that an attitude is an orientation
or a way of thinking and that “having an attitude” doesn’t always translate to
a behavior. It seems that gratitude without practice may be a little like faith
without works – it’s not alive.”

I’ve noticed several of my Facebook friends counting down the days of
November by listing something they are thankful for, something different every
day. I’m thankful for their reminder that being grateful takes initiative.

This year I’m grateful for big changes. Cyndi’s sister Tanya
just bought a new house here in Midland, and she and her son Kevin have spent
the past two weeks moving in. It’s a phase change for all of us, and big
changes like that create energy and excitement.

I’m grateful to have Cyndi back all
to myself, but even more happy to witness Tanya and Kevin moving boldly into
the next chapter of their life. Fresh starts should be savored, never wasted.

I’m grateful for all the young couples in the Compass class at First
Baptist Church. You make me happy. I look forward to leading in class every
week, and I hope we have many more years together.

I’m also grateful for the valiant men God as surrounded me with every
Thursday morning. In my old life, I underestimated the value of having good men
around me. Not anymore. The Iron Men make me braver, stronger, and bolder.
Thanks, guys.

I’m grateful that my own children have become fine adults and faithful
parents. Knowing the future is in their hands is comforting.

I’m grateful for the drive God has given me to write and teach. I would
have missed almost every lesson I’ve learned had it not been for my desire to
tell the stories.

I’m grateful that my legs can still move. I am not ready to sit down,
yet. I think God has too much more to teach me, and I need to keep running and
hiking and biking to hear his words in my heart.

I’m grateful to live with a woman that loves me with all her heart, who
works very hard to stay sexy and beautiful, and who listens to all my
ramblings. Without Cyndi, I would be a lonely pathetic shell of a man; I am
grateful for all the ways she has changed me these past 35 years.

And finally, for those of you who read this far, I’m grateful for you.
A writer is not a writer unless he has readers. Thanks.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Running in the mud is something I
wish I got more of. Of course, if I got a lot more of it I wouldn’t enjoy it as
much. As it is, I think it’s fun.

So when we got that big 4” rain a
few weeks ago, the one that dumped more water on Midland than we received in
all of 2011, I couldn’t wait to get out on the dirt roads near my house, even
if I knew there was a risk I would get into a big mess.

This is a booming town and someday
all that open land will be developed into residential neighborhoods and I will
lose the dirt roads, so I run on them as often as possible. I don’t want to
waste my turn.

I went running Saturday afternoon
while Cyndi and Kevin when to the fair. It had stopped raining by then, but the
air was still damp and smelled wet. I hoped it would start again while I was
out so I tied my water-resistant jacket around my waist just in case, but no
joy.

However, my mud run was great,
anyway. It got tricky in a couple of low spots because the boys in their mud
trucks got there first and tore up the road, but I just bushwhacked my way
through the adjoining mesquite and yucca and prairie grass.

Here’s the deal. When running, I
will almost always choose dirt over asphalt.

I started running on dirt years ago
because it was softer and less damaging to knees than asphalt or concrete. Before
it was love, it was therapeutic. It seems ironic, now, that God would put that
love in my heart yet plant my life in West Texas where there are few
opportunities for trail running. My first experiments were down dirt alleys in
the neighborhoods between the gym and the par course. The uneven surface took
getting used to, but it strengthened my feet and ankles. And it made me happy.

What happened once I started running
on dirt is what happens to me often – a simple mundane choice becomes a
spiritual adventure. Each mile on dirt spoke to my heart. It made me softer,
and more alert.

There’s power in being a free range
runner, but before you join me, I should mention the risk. I’ve had some
spectacular falls. Unlike Cyndi, I have never fallen in the street on asphalt,
but I’ve skinned both knees and hands numerous times running on dirt.

One bad fall was on the northwest
edge of Kelly Park before it actually became a park, when my feet tangled with
loose wire from the nearby fence. I went straight down, landing on face and
hands.

Another fall happened near the
Scharbauer Sports Complex. It removed three square inches of skin from my left
knee and led me to discover magic bandages (Johnson-Johnson Advanced Healing Adhesive
Pads). At least I was able to maneuver my landing to a spot between two giant
yucca plants and avoid impaling. I also managed to roll to the left and land on
my shoulder and back, saving both palms.

Another time, I fell in the median
on Esplanade Boulevard in New Orleans, when I jammed my toe on a rogue tree
root. I bloodied both knees and had to limp back to the hotel to clean up and
recover. I was a pathetic image working my way through the hotel lobby, full of
women attending a cake decorating convention.

But it isn’t all about falling. Some
of my most profound spiritual encounters have come while running on dirt
trails. The most memorable was on the Colorado Trail above Buena Vista at about
9,000’. That particular run was a reward, a gift from God, following a difficult
spiritual battle. It was Nov 2003 and it is a great story in itself.

I don’t know why having my feet on
dirt is so important, or how it became a spiritual connection. To help
understand the connection I decided to do a Bible search hoping find the
perfect verse linking mud and dirt with spiritual insight, but all I found was a
story about the time Jesus spit on the ground to make mud so he could heal the
blind man’s eyes (John 9:6). It is a good story, but not what I was looking
for.

So I turned to another deep
resource: Jimmy Buffett’s book, A Pirate
Looks at Fifty. He called his time spent on the water, “hydrotherapy.” He
wrote, “The ocean has always been a salve to my soul … I made the discovery
that salt water was good for the mental abrasions one inevitably acquires on
land.” I wondered how I would phrase this for my life. How can I describe the
healing that comes from running on dirt? Maybe, “terratherapy?”

I once wrote an essay about the five
things I could not live without, and the fifth item on my list was dirt. I need
to get my feet on dirt fairly often. Whether I am running or hiking or
dreaming, I have to have my feet on dirt. Terratherapy is a powerful thing.

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Gary’s opening question on Thursday night was this: What three words describe your story in the last year?

My first word was “movement.” I tell everyone that my wife Cyndi experiences the world through movement, and if you know her, you agree. However, I’ve learned that I’m no different. Just like her, I have to keep moving to stay alive and engaged. I have to keep running, cycling, hiking, reading, learning, writing, teaching, and loving, or else I will go to seed.

My second word was “speaking.” I’m learning how to speak into the hearts of the men and women God has circled around me.

My third word: “retraining.” This past year has felt like a retraining time for me as an engineer, as a runner, and as a cyclist. I suspect there are also other categories where I’ve been retraining, but they aren’t as obvious to me, yet.

Why was I answering Gary’s questions? I spent the weekend high above Colorado Springs at the Bear Trap Ranch, at a men’s retreat with Noble Heart. It was an entire weekend full of questions. Hard questions, to be exact. They were the kind of questions that dig deep into your heart; that demand close listening to insights from God.

The retreat was called a Base Camp Gathering, and it was a great time of deep and serious experiences with God that left me feeling light and free.

I was also reminded that we are all individually important for the work of God. Too often, we look at a ministry or a church and all the spiritual leaders seem to have the same skills, personality and talents. We don’t see a place for us, with our different set of skills, personality, and talents. It can make us feel useless.

But at a weekend like this, surrounded by guys with different personalities and extreme stories, it was clear that God needs all of us to live as he has called us.

It occurred to me that when we talk about our calling from God, maybe we should use the word “obligation” instead. It isn’t enough to be called, we have to step up and live it out. Not merely to feel successful, or useful, or better about ourselves, but because the community around us will suffer if we don’t live our calling.

And that thought leads me to Gary’s second question form Thursday night: What desires are you most aware of (at this moment)?

I wrote, “My desire it to leave a deep wake of changed lives. I intend to spend the rest of my life giving away all that God has given me.”

Gary’s third question was this: Where do you sense God has focused his training of you during this past year?

I answered, “I feel like God has been training me to concentrate on those closest to me. That is where my “giving away” begins.”

Saturday afternoon they asked me lead one of the sessions, and I was so happy. It’s always good news when the cool guys give you a turn.

To settle my mind before teaching, I decided to go for a run. I had prepared enough, didn’t need to go over my notes again, and I knew a run would blow out the cobwebs in my mind and burn off excess adrenaline.

However, the fact was, we were at 9,100’ elevation. Not only that, all the roads and trails out of camp went straight up. So what I did could hardly be called running. I was short of breath even on the downhills. But even a wheezing shuffle calms my brain and my heart and opens them to new ideas.

My session went great. And as usually happens I learned more from the guy’s responses than I did from my own study. That’s the best part about teaching: the teacher always learns the most.

Gary Barkalow reminded us that a base camp is the place where alpine climbers cache supplies and shelter to prepare for the next level of the ascent. And so for this group of men, the purpose of our Base Camp Gathering was to reorient our hearts, recalibrate our efforts, and resupply our courage for the next level of ascent God has for us.

Your personal journey can take you deeper and closer to God, resulting in eternal significance, but you have to live your life on purpose. I am stronger and braver because of my time with these men. I can’t wait for the next opportunity.

QUESTIONS: What three words describe your story in the past year? What desires are you most aware of (at this moment)? Where do you sense God has focused his training during this past year?

“I run in the path of Your commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I almost always have at least two
books going at the same time. One typically stays on my nightstand or in my big
brown chair at home. The other lives in my backpack (my town backpack, or book
bag, that is) which sits in the front floorboard of my pickup when I’m not hauling
it around. I started keeping a second book in my pick-up a long time ago, when
my kids were young and I would sit reading, waiting for the end of soccer
practice or dance class.

I do try to mix up my reading so I
won’t get the two books confused, and also so I won’t get stuck in a rut. I
won’t read too many hard books in a row, or too many spiritual books, or
science books, or humor books. If I read the same category back to back to back
I end up skimming more than reading. I want to give each book a fair reading.

But the strangest thing happened
recently. My system got messed up. Both of my books were about distance and
endurance. My home book was a memoir by Marshall Ulrich titled, “Running on
Empty: An Ultramarathoner’s Story of Love, Loss, and a Record-Setting Run
Across America.” Not only is Ulrich one of the world’s toughest endurance
athletes, he might be near the top of lengthy book title writers.

My backpack book was another memoir,
this one by Paul Stutzman, titled, “Hiking Through: One Man’s Journey to Peace
and Freedom on the Appalachian Trail.” Another long title.

For as long as I remember, I have
enjoyed reading about epic life-changing journeys. I read enough of them that I
feel obligated to tell Cyndi, “Don’t worry; I’m not going to try this myself.”

Not that the idea of running
coast-to-coast or through-hiking the Appalachian Trail doesn’t sound appealing
to me. They both do.

So where does this come from, I
wonder? Why do I like adventure stories? Especially man-against-nature or man-against-distance
stories? Why does the thought of epic journey sound so attractive?

I think it has something to do with
the pursuit of vulnerability.

After all, we can’t test our own
limits without putting ourselves in vulnerable, risky situations. We can’t know
what we’re made of unless we have something to lose.

Maybe we don’t want to know what
we’re made of, afraid to ask the question because we are scared. What if the
answer is – you are weak, and a loser, and a quitter?

But merely being brave enough to ask
the question, take on the risk, makes us stronger. A Through-Hiker who has to
leave the trail due to injury or weather is still stronger than the wannabe
sitting at home waiting for the perfect moment to try. Willingness to show up
makes us a little braver each time.

The greatest adventures are often
the simplest. Maybe even mundane. And they are laced with vulnerability.

Loving someone is uncertain and
risky. Putting our art, our writing, our photography, our ideas, our music out
into the world with no assurance of acceptance or appreciation is extremely vulnerable.

One of my current mundane
adventures: I’m relearning how to run, nowadays. It’s my post-foot-surgery post-arthritis-diagnosis
running phase.

I’ll admit that what I do is more hobble
than elegant gait. And I’m not always comfortable doing it on public streets in
front of friends and neighbors. For someone who writes about the joys of
running as much as I do, for someone who had published a book titled, Running With God, I feel like I should
be better at it.

People have even asked if I’m race
walking now, so I work hard to have both feet off the ground at the same time …
the defining distinction between walking and running.

But moving is important. I’m happy
with small incremental gains, even gains that would have embarrassed me in the
past. I’m pleased when my pace drops into the 14-minute range because I think I
can do 13 next.

 And if I can do 13s, then 10s, and then maybe
even a 50K.

As I push my knees and learn how to
handle the new sensations in my legs, the very activity seems to add value to
life. It makes my heart happy. I end every run thanking God for his
encouragement.

I’m just not ready to sit down yet.
I hope there are lots more epic races in my future. Maybe even a long-distance
trek.

What are your adventures? Is there
something epic you dream of doing?

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

Do you have sacred places, thin
places, where God once spoke to you? Do you ever go back to reconnect?

One day last week I listened to a
Mosaic podcast by Hank Fortner, and he reminded me of one of my favorite Bible
stories – about the time when God stopped the Jordan River so the people could
walk across.

Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet
as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet
touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. (Joshua 3:15-16,
NIV)

Those priests were brave men, walking into a flooded river while
carrying the heavy ark. God didn’t stop the water until they took the
initial risk of stepping in. And if that wasn’t enough, they stayed in the
middle of the river to show the way.

The priests who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord
stopped in the middle of the Jordan and stood on dry ground, while all Israel
passed by until the whole nation had completed the crossing. (Joshua 3:17, NIV)

I’ve read that story, even taught
that story, many times through the years, but this time I couldn’t help but
imagine one of those priests sneaking back down to the same spot on the
riverbank, years later, after the conquest was over, and putting his feet in the
water to see if it would stop again.

Maybe he was a little sad that it
didn’t work a second time, but even happier to know it was God who did the
stopping and not his own magic feet. Wouldn’t you rather have God than magic
feet?

I imagine that priest returning
often to put his feet in the water, to feel the coolness, to remember the time
when the river stopped, to relive the moment of God’s power and authority and grace,
allowing the water to draw him closer to God once again. Spoiled to the
supernatural, he wanted more.

There’s more to the story: the
twelve stones.

 So the
Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the
middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites,
as the Lord
had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they
put them down. Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of
the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant
had stood. And they are there to this day…. Joshua said to the Israelites, “In
the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones
mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ (Joshua 4:8 – 22,
NIV)

And so, I imagine my priest starring
at that pile of rocks, a permanent reminder of God’s power. Maybe, when his
life was especially hard, he put his hands on them just to remind himself of
God’s goodness. Maybe he even sat on the ground with his back leaning against
the pile, letting the heat in the rocks soak into his exhausted body, like the
grace of God soaking onto his heart.

I don’t think I’m off base here. In
his phenomenal book, Wild Goose Chase,
Mark Batterson asked: I wonder if Peter ever rowed out to that spot where he
walked on water? Did Zacchaeus ever take his grandchildren back to climb the
sycamore tree? Did Lazarus ever revisit the tomb where he spent four days? Did
Paul ever ride out to the mile marker on the Damascus Road?

Every once in a while we need to go
back to the sacred places and celebrate what God has done. Reconnect to the
supernatural. I’ve done that a few times in my life. I think of it as anchoring
a memory.

One day in 1999 when I was driving back to Midland from a drilling
rig visit, I stopped in Brownfield and changed clothes in a fast food
restaurant parking lot (in the privacy of my car, that is) to run down Highway 137,
one of my first “adult” routes. It was in September 1980, while running down that
very road, the immense responsibility of being a brand new father washed over
me all at once. At the turnaround, I made a commitment to step into the role,
and I was a different man running back home. I returned to Highway 137 nineteen
years later because I wanted to smell the air and remember the texture of a
road that played an important part in my new life as a husband and father.

Another story: One morning in May
2008, at a Wild at Heart Advanced Camp at Crooked Creek Ranch, Colorado, I
returned to a concrete picnic table where God spoke to me in the deepest
emotional experience of my life. I wanted my friend Eric to take a photo so I
wouldn’t forget, or diminish, what happened there. I still look at that photo
often, to remind myself that I didn’t fanaticize the whole story.

How about you? Have you returned to
a sacred place where God once spoke? Have you leaned against the rocks to feel
the heat of God’s grace?

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I’ll go ahead and say this right up
front: Email makes my life better, richer, and more efficient. It made my dream
of being a widely read writer a reality when I first started publishing weekly
journals back in 1998. But as with all good things, email can also become a
disaster in the wrong hands.

My story begins Monday last week
when I checked email on my phone. Something was amiss. All I saw was a long
string of messages saying, “Mail Delivery Failed.” I had fifty seemingly
identical messages. All day Monday, every time I checked it downloaded a new
set of fifty emails. Message after message, saying, “Mail Delivery Failed.”

It’s true, I’d sent out a group
email the night before, and I often get one or two messages like that because I
type the address wrong or someone changes addresses or whatever, but this was
something else. For one thing, I’ve never sent a group email large enough to
get this many returns. And another thing: when I looked closely at some of the
returns they had addresses I had never heard of. I was under attack.

I also knew it was different from
those email viruses going around that send junk to everyone on your contact
list. None of these returns were from anyone I ever knew. I was getting returns
in Japanese and German and Thai and Arabic. Not my contact list.

When I got home, I went to my laptop,
tagged the returns as junk mail, and deleted the rest of them in my inbox. Then
I went riding, to burn off some of the frustration.

From that point forward, Outlook did
a great job grabbing the incoming returns and stuffing them into junk. By the
time I went to bed Monday night, I had 7,340 messages in my junk folder. It
seemed like a lot. I deleted them all hoping my problems were over.

They weren’t.

For the next couple of days I got
page after page after page of the same “Mail Delivery Failed” messages. They
were all unique, with different bounced email addresses. Outlook sent them all
to my junk folder, but my server cache, wherever that is, filled up so that
friends could no longer send legitimate emails to me since my inbox was too
full.

By Friday morning, the return
message rate had decreased to the point I was once again receiving legitimate
messages from friends. Even my own predictable junk mail from catalogues and
political candidates found a way through. I had stopped deleting the emails in
my junk folder because I wanted to know how many I would receive. Why fight
through an adventure if you can’t quantify the damage, is what I always say.

So here is my diagnosis: Some
scammer, who knows who, who knows where, found my email address and password
and used it to send his spam so that it appeared to originate with me. When the
messages were rejected, either by a canny server or because the address was
stale, they bounced back to me.

My friend and computer go-to guy,
Frank, said it would probably be over in a few days after the spammer moved on
to someone else’s fresh address.

In the meantime, I had been tagged
as a spammer. I was receiving worldwide rejection from people (or, computers) I
would never meet. I only hoped Homeland Security didn’t get one and put me on
their comprehensive
suspicious-character-don’t-let-him-do-anything-especially-fly-on-an-airline
list. I also hoped al-Qaeda didn’t get one, or SPECTRE. Blofeld holds long
grudges.

Well, it’s now over. I didn’t have
to change my email address because of this attack, which made me happy because
I like my address. There are only three people using Stonefoot since we created
it ourselves using the name from one of the giants in The Last Battle from The
Chronicles of Narnia. I would hate to give that up without a fight. Other than
temporarily cluttering my hard drive there was no damage done.

By Friday evening, all I was
receiving was typical standard junk. No new “Mail Delivery Failed” messages.
The final count in my Outlook junk folder was 44,266 emails. Seems like a lot.
It was a reminder there are many things that make my life better that I cannot
control.

Sometimes life throws so much junk
at you, you might as well stop fighting it. Just wait until it tapers off,
delete the records, and start fresh.

QUESTION: What junk are you dealing
with this week? What is filling your inbox?

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

I was considering Sunday’s discussion about a man in the Bible named
Stephen. You can find his story in Acts 6-8.

Stephen’s story took place around A.D. 34-35, shortly after Jesus'
crucifixion. He was a powerful speaker, and go into trouble with the Jewish
authorities because he preached Jesus. He was also exceptionally brave, maybe
audacious.

When he was summoned before
the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish court in the land, they asked him if the
charges against him were true. Stephen didn’t even acknowledge their question,
but launched on a 50-verse history lesson, reciting the long list of Jewish rejection
of God in front of the very men who knew this material best.

It would be like lecturing your physics professor about Isaac Newton,
or an Olympic athlete about training, or a Supreme Court Justice about the Bill
of Rights. How long could you go before they shut you down? “Young man, don’t
you dare lecture us on history.”

I don’t know why the proud men of the Sanhedrin let Stephen keep going,
except for this: “All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at
Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.” (Acts 6:15,
NIV)

There was obviously
something strange and powerful about Stephen, both in his appearance and in the
way he spoke. People were drawn to him, and sensed an internal strength and
power. Even his enemies recognized his spiritual depth. Maybe that’s what kept
the Sanhedrin quiet during Stephen’s sermon.

However, Stephen isn’t
famous for his sermon, but because he was stoned to death after preaching it.
He was the first martyr recorded in the New Testament. And the narrative
implies one of the ringleaders of Stephen’s death was a man named Saul. He
later became a believer, and his name became Paul.

My real interest in Stephen is this: Was it Stephen’s purpose in life
to make one grand sermon and then die violently in front of Saul?

And the follow-up question: Was that enough?

I write and talk a lot about calling and purpose, and about living
intentionally, but I usually think of that as a life-long adventure. I never consider
it to a one-time flash.

I realize that Stephen did more in his short life than preach this one
sermon. The Bible tells us this about him: “Now Stephen, a man full of God’s
grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people.” (Acts
6:8, NIV)

So it isn’t fair to think his speech before the Sanhedrin was his only
shot at life’s purpose.

Still, the question remains: Was dying in front of Saul worth it? Was
it enough to score a life well lived?

You could argue, yes, it was enough, knowing that Saul would become
Paul, write most of the New Testament, and personally spread the gospel and
plant churches all around the Mediterranean. But at the time of Stephen’s
death, he wasn’t Paul. And he was just beginning as Saul, the great persecutor.
He didn’t become Paul until after Stephen died, so Stephen never saw the true
impact of his death.

How about you? What if your grand purpose in life was to make an impact
on one other person? Would that be enough?

We seldom know the true effect of our life. We may get glimpses, an
occasional Thank You, maybe even a story or two. But I believe we never see
most of the effect of our life beyond bits and pieces.

Is that enough? Can you give your life away with such little feedback?

The answer: Yes, it is enough. We are responsible for the depth of our
ministry; God is responsible for the width. We are responsible to bravely live
our calling in front of people, giving our lives away; God is responsible for
the results.

Living for God with little feedback, fulfilling our purpose anyway, is
the heart of faith. Faith that, if God gave it to us and prepared us for it,
God will also protect it and make it have long-lasting impact.

Stephen’s life and death mattered more than he could have known. We
still study him, 2,000 years later.

And so, your life matters more than you will ever know. Live it out,
boldly, audaciously, in faith.

QUESTION: Are you giving yourself away? Is it enough?

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32

What does it take to change the
image you have of yourself? Would you even want to?

My self-image as a cyclist changed
significantly after my foot surgery last spring. I hobbled around on crutches
for seven weeks; when that was over, I was ready to move. Dr. Glass wouldn’t
let me run on my new foot yet, but he did approve cycling. I was so happy to be
doing something, anything, moving, I rode 16 miles every day. Not only was I
regaining fitness, I could feel my pace quickening and my comfort on my bike
improving. I felt like a real cyclist for the first time since I started riding
again.

Then, for some reason, I had an
inspiration to ride 56 miles on my 56^th birthday, which was June
23rd.

Actually, I’ve had a long-standing
dream to run my birthday, but there was no way I could run 56 miles, foot
surgery or not. And even if I could, running that far in Texas in the June heat
would be crazy. I’d have to do it all at night, and where would I go? At the
track – 224 laps?

But biking 56 miles seemed doable. Just
a small stretch.

The previous summer I rode 50 miles with
Todd, Kara, and David, my first big ride after buying my Specialized. But I
didn’t follow it up with any more long rides. Since then, my furthest rides had
all been in the 25-mile range.

So riding 56 miles was a significant
increase (124%), but once the idea rooted in my consciousness, I couldn’t shake
it off. What was the worst thing that could happen? My legs could crater and I’d
have to sit down beside the road and wait for a ride home. But I would have my
phone to call for help and my iPod for entertainment, so the risk seemed
minimal.

Friday morning, birthday-eve, I rode
out-and-back on 191, with one excursion up to Greentree, and another on Billy
Hext. I had to stop and fix one flat at Cornerstone Church, and I took a
well-deserved break at the Stripes Convenient Store. By the time I got home, I
had actually ridden 58 miles. Happy birthday to me.

My average speed for the day was
13.13 mph. Not fast, but not terrible, either.

The thing is, that ride changed me.
I realized the limits I’d set for myself were way too short. I was capable of
much more. I saw myself in an entirely different category. I had changed my
image.

Still full of myself, and confident
in my superhuman strength, I rode 45 miles the next Friday, this time averaging
14.6 mph. I know the average speed thing is not an exact measure of effort or
fitness since it depends on wind and temperature, but it is the only real
indicator I can measure and compare.

Again, the ride felt good, and I
wasn’t especially sore or tired when I got home. I learned I could work very
hard for three hours straight, pushing my legs, lungs, and heart, and still
feel good the rest of the day.

Since then, through the summer, I
rode another five or six rides in the fifty-mile range, some with friends
(Cory, and Todd), but mostly by myself. And my average speeds have crept above
15 mph, which used to be my major goal for much shorter rides. I am looking
forward to more giant leaps forward in the months/years to come. If I can ride
50, I can ride 100. If I can ride 100, I can ride around the world.

So what’s the point in writing about
all this?

Because we all get stuck in our
present selves, afraid to move forward, afraid to take risks, afraid to change.
It happens to me all the time. I only wrote about cycling because that was an easy
change. I’m afraid to write about things that are hard. Things like changing my
image as a husband, a parent, a teacher, a follower of Jesus.

How about you? What image do you
need to change? Maybe all it would take is a 124% step up. It’s risky. You
might fail. But failing isn’t so bad … just keep your phone nearby so you can
call for help

QUESTION: Which image do you need to
change? How can you make a big step forward?

“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32