Strength.
It’s a word that’s come up far to many times for me since the beginning of the World Race process to be a coincidence.
- The week after training camp I led a devotional at my churches band and songsters practice about strength.
- The day before I left America I wrote a blog asking for prayers of Strength.
- One of the last times I saw my parents they gave me a little notebook and on the inside cover they wrote the lyrics to the song, “I’ll go in the strength of the Lord.”
- The letter I brought from home that I opened for the month of March was from my mom where she referenced part of Judges 6:14, “Go in the strength you have… am I not sending you?”
- God has led me numerous times to verses referencing strength throughout the Bible these past few months.
And lastly.
Each of the racers on P-Squad received a prophecy written by one of the people on the first generation P-Squad. They were given a name and prayed over the name without knowing us or anything about us. They then wrote down what God was telling them. Mine, from previous racer Jeremy Harris, started off simply like this… “Strength. The Lord is revealing to you the true meaning of strength.”
When I first read that I almost started laughing! Not because I was making fun of what Jeremy said, in fact it was the exact opposite. In that moment I was reminded how much God is in control of everything and how he continues to speak to us in different ways each day. This one was just a little more obvious than others and it made my heart leap for joy as it always does when God shows himself and his love to us all.
Fast forward a week or two. It’s June and we are in Thailand for a month of “manistry.” That’s where all the guys separate from whatever previous teams we were on with girls, and form one large team, all 12 of us, to do ministry together, hence “MANistry.”
One morning I woke up earlier than most of the guys to help out getting the groceries for the team. The only problem was I had to ride a motorcycle to do it and the last time I attempted in India didn’t work out so well. However, I was assured by the guys these ones were much simpler and would be easy to learn on. Andy gave me a quick 3 minute crash course with me riding on the back. He then handed over the motorcycle for me to try myself and went inside to take a shower leaving me alone with the motorcycle glaring back at me.
I hopped on and drove down the rode and things started off surprisingly well! Much better than the last time, in fact! It came to the point where I had planned to turn and go around this little lake/pond to head back to where I began. I started to make the turn and quickly realized I hadn’t turned nearly enough to actually make the turn and was headed directly for the lake. I attempted to use the break, but then remembered what Andy had said earlier about the front break not working very well so I went to go and use the back break too since the front break didn’t seem to be any help at all in this situation. My problem? I didn’t know where the back break was.
That all happened in probably about 1.5 seconds. At that point in my head all I could think was, “Oh snap…” as I continued towards the lake with what seemed like my speed increasing as I went. I started down the 15 feet deep ditch toward the water and just braced myself, either for impact or for my head to be chopped off, whichever came first. In the next second my thoughts quickly switched to “Shouldn’t this hurt more?” as I rode down through all kinds of plants, bushes, and what definitely felt like small trees hitting me in the face. And then lastly all I could think was, “How do I get this to stop before I’m completely underwater,” and then it happened. As soon as I thought that everything came to a halt. I pried the motorcycle off my leg, since at this point I was laying on my side with the motorcycle on half of me, and proceeded to look for my missing flip flop which had somehow flung forward into the water.
[Photo Cred to Andy Frasure]
I found my flip flop and tried to push the bike back up with no success. I went back to find someone to help and Josh came with me back down and we were able to move it a few feet but realized we wouldn’t make it up ourselves, so we went back and found Andy and together the three of us finally got it all the way back up the steep ditch onto the road. I thank God that throughout the entire experience I only ended up with a few bruises and scratches!
After it was all over I went back and laid back on my bed thinking I shouldn’t have ever gotten out of bed in the first place. Here I was, in a month of “MANistry” and I couldn’t even handle a little ride down the road on a motorcycle.
As I was laying there I took out my iPad to listen to music. I did something I try and do occasionally where I place all my music on shuffle and click for it to go to the next track and pray that God somehow guides the choice of that song and uses it to speak to me in some way. God’s taught me some pretty amazing things, especially considering the limited selection I gave him to work with, and this time was no exception. The song that came up?
“Strong Enough”
That’s when it hit me. I have all the strength I need and it’s come straight from God. I don’t need to worry about what I can or can’t do, or if I’m being a “real man” this month or not. I just have to be me. There’s a saying which I first heard from my Theory of Wellness professor at Asbury University. She said, “God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called.” Whatever God has called me to in life, even on a day to day basis, he has graciously equipped me for. He has supplied me with all my strength, and I may not be the strongest man in the world, or the best motorcycle rider either, but he has made me “strong enough” for whatever purpose I am to fulfill.
Later that day after the motorcycle incident, I searched the Bible for every mention of the word Strength. In the NIV it’s mentioned 178 times and I’ve now read every single one of those verses.
I’m not sure why it took over 6 months for me to finally understand that aspect of strength and apply it to my life, but I also know now after reading all 178 mentions of the word, that there are several more aspects of strength I have still yet to fully understand. And in this month of manistry I am learning many of them and hope to learn many more.
