For most racers, after training camp they will probably blog about how amazing camp was and how much God moved in them, how awesome their team is and about all the things they’re excited for in the month that we are home before we launch and I would agree with them 100%… I just can’t find a way to explain it all.
Someone asked me when I got back home “how was it?” and I couldn’t think of any way to describe it other than “You just had to be there…” But if I was to try to explain how it was, I wouldn’t use stories from camp to show how God moved, but instead the time that I was sitting in the airport waiting for my flight home.
I got to the airport around 12:30, my flight was at 9:45; I thought that we would get out of camp way later, and as I was waiting with fellow racers a man with an amazing beard and a cross in it walked up and handed one of us a small wooden cross with a rope around it. He then went along his way with a smile on his face looking for someone else to give a cross to. He then came back around and had his eyes targeted on me. He proceeded to hand me a cross to wear around my neck and we asked him for his story about how he started handing out crosses…. He said that one day he was riding his motorcycle and his beard had gotten so long that it was flying up and hitting his eyes as he was riding. So he got the idea to make a wooden cross that he could feed his beard through to weigh his beard down. Well obviously if you have a cross hanging from your beard someone is going to ask you about it. He didn’t intend for people to constantly ask questions about it, but they did, and when they did he used it as a gateway to spread the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This unsung hero started to make crosses to wear around your neck and put them in a package with a piece of paper that briefly explains the gospel and every time someone would ask him about his beard he would then explain it and hand them a cross. He realized that by doing that it was spreading the gospel in an epic way. With those crosses that he had made he started to hand them out to everyone. He said that with the ones he had made this week, he had made close to 48,000 crosses to hand out…. That’s 48,000 people that this one man has shared the gospel to.
I want that to be me! I want to be the guy who witnesses to 48,000 people! Not because I want people to know my name but so that people will know the name of Jesus Christ! And the great thing about it is that this man isn’t done making those crosses. In fact, he told the 3 other racers and my self that he would make and send to each of us 100 crosses to take with us on the race to hand out just as he has….
48,000 ministered to by one man… Imagine how many would be reached if we all came together to share the gospel.
How would I describe training camp? I would say that God is not confined by a piece of property in Georgia. He will move through anyone, anywhere, at anytime, and He showed me that through a bearded man and one of his 48,000 crosses.
