This month me and the other men of D Squad have been working with a ministry called Outpour Movement, based in Mae Sot, Thailand. It has been an incredible privilege working with this ministry, which has served the people of this community in so many ways. One part of the ministry is a burger restaurant and bike shop called Famous Ray’s, which helps support a children’s home in Mae Sot through it’s proceeds. Like I mentioned, this is just one of the many projects Outpour has used to reach this community, which is made up predominantly by refugees from neighboring Myanmar. I have loved being here this month and working with this ministry, but from the beginning it presented me with one very real challenge I was forced to overcome.
Let me take you back about 6 and a half years. I had just moved away from home for the first time a few months prior, and I was attending church on a fairly regular basis for the first time in my life. I had been a “Christian” for about 7 years by that time, but then I heard a sermon that shook me to the core. The pastor made an analogy I will never forget: Following Jesus is like riding a bike. You have to move forward, there is no sitting still. You can’t follow The Lord if you refuse to move forward, if you refuse to grow. Just like riding a bike, you need to move your legs to peddle and make the bike move forward. If you try to sit still on the bike without peddling to move forward, you can’t follow anyone, and you will fall off.
This hit me hard personally for two reasons. First and foremost, it rocked me because I realized I was not following Jesus. I was not growing. I was sitting still, stagnant. I was not a Christian, I was a self-righteous, judgmental, legalist who thought he was good with God because he was superficially “nice” to people and was really good at not saying swear words. My life was not about Jesus, it was about looking “good.” It was all about me.
The second reason this message hit home was because I literally had never really learned how to ride a bike.
Fast foward to this month. In order to go teach English at one of the children’s homes, in order to go play soccer with the kids, in order to get to our ministry contacts’ homes, and in order to really get anywhere I needed to go this month, I had to do so via bicycle. This obviously posed a problem. As the rest of the guys on my squad checked out their bikes from the shop, I quietly pulled aside one of my team leaders and broke the news. As with every other time I’ve told people this in my life, I sat back and waited to be blasted with “Really?! You don’t know how to ride a bike?! Seriously?!” But this time, it didn’t come. This response is just one of the reasons why I love each of these dudes on my squad so much.
For the first couple days after that, I rode on the back of other guys’ bikes, sitting on a rack intended for cargo, not full grown humans. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. However, as the entire lower half of my body became increasingly sore, my motivation to learn how to ride a bike increased significantly each day. So, I checked out my own bike, and learned via the trial by fire method, as I navigated through the streets of Mae Sot, filled with cars, motorcycles, other bikes, and pedestrians. The first couple days were filled with both terror and focus like I have never had in my life before, but I made it. I got safely to, and home from, where I needed to go, without a scratch on me, or anyone else, or anything else. Praise God.
So today, I have come full circle in regards to the riding the bike analogy. I have been following Jesus now for 6 1/2 years, and I can now ride a bike! Something I’ve realized through this experience is that I am a lot more capable of doing things than I previously believed. This has been something I’ve been told throughout the race by my teammates, but it took this month to believe it for myself.
Something I can encourage others with as a result of all this is that it’s never to late with God. If you don’t know him, God will wait patiently and lovingly for you to follow him, and show you how to do so. Just like he did for me. And if you have given up on ever learning or doing certain things, God can show up there too, because He cares about the small details of your life as well. If you need proof, just ask the people of Mae Sot that watched some full grown white man with a big red beard almost run into their respective cars, houses, selves, three weeks ago, that now smile and wave back at him as he cruises easily past them every day, loving life.
