My Side Of The Street
We are now in Cambodia and things are starting to get shaken up a little bit. We spent our first week in Siem Reap for a debrief. Our coaches, Chuck and Selana, and our squad mentor, Travis, flew out from America to love on us and walk us through the debrief process. The whole squad stayed together in a hostel and it was time to take a look back at the last couple months and at our successes and our failures as individual teams. It is always nice to get a few days of rest, but sometimes looking back can sting a little.
I will begin by saying that our team has had some rocky times, but I have never lost hope for us. I have seen us grow from month to month. I can truly say that I love every member of this team and that I feel loved by every member of this team. Others have been struggling with our team more than I realized though. Some of the team don't think we have been loving each other well. They don't feel loved by the team and obviously that's not a good thing. Over the first three months of the Race there have been disputes. People have gotten angry. At times we have not held to the things we committed to. The seven of us have obviously dug ourselves into a hole so it is going to take all seven of us to climb back out. We are ready to start climbing. Things might get uncomfortable and we will all have to prayerfully look at ourselves to see how we can better serve each other, but Team Aperture isn't through fighting yet.
Something that I learned when I was going through the twelve steps of AA was the concept of everybody keeping their side of the street clean. This idea seems to apply to all of life and not just sobriety. As individuals we are called to repent when we have sinned against someone else. If we have wronged someone in any way, God calls us to make amends for that wrong. It doesn't matter if the person we wronged has hurt us more than we hurt them. All we are called to do is keep our side of the street clean. Sometimes the other person will apologize and make amends as well. Sometimes they won't. That doesn't matter, though, because all we need to worry about is our side of the street.
Another aspect of keeping our side of the street clean is holding to our commitments. If each of us commits to something, it is our responsibility to follow through with that commitment. If we flake on our commitments, we are just showing our lack of respect for the people we have made committments to. It's a pretty simple concept that can be hard to follow sometimes. It is much easier in life to make excuses when something better comes up or we are just feeling too lazy to follow through with what we say we are going to do. God calls us to stand by our word though. If we don't think we can follow through with something, we should never make the commitment in the first place.
Aperture is a team of seven individuals. We all come from very different backgrounds. We all have different strengths and different weaknesses. That is why God called us together. He loves using our differences it build a team of individuals who come together as one unit (Just look at the twelve apostles). The only way we will ever truly be unified, though, is if we can each put aside our own personal BS and start putting each other before we put ourselves. A big part of that is grabbing a broom and starting to sweep our own side of the street. In our culture we have been taught that we should hold onto our own personal pride at all cost. We go into a fight to win and never back down. Even after we realize that we are in the wrong, we are inclined to keep fighting because that is what is ingrained in us. There is no room for that attitude on the World Race though. That is not how God created us to be and that is certainly not how the culture is in His kingdom.
I know that each member of our team signed up for the Race to help spread the kingdom. We all want to be in the business of saving souls. We want to heal. We want to deliver. We want to evangelize. We want to work miracles. We want to raise people from the dead. All of these are great things and, praise God, we have had the opportunity to see Him work through us in many of these ways. That being said, the best way to spread the gospel is through the way we live our lives. If we aren't putting the needs of others before our own needs, all of the signs and wonders we perform will never actually point anyone to Christ. We just become charlatans. If people can't see the love of Christ in our eyes, all of our sermons are just empty words. I'm definitely not saying that we should stop praying for people or preaching. I'm just saying that our hearts need to be right when we do those things or we are just seven more Christian hypocrites. The world is full of people who are just preaching the gospel and not living the gospel. I know for a fact that no one on this team wants to be a part of that statistic.
It is time for me to clean up my side of the street. It is time to lay down my pride and apologize when I sin against my teammates. It is time to hold to my commitments when I make them. I committed to each member of this team to call them higher when I see a way that they could be more like Christ. I can no longer sit back and be apathetic until the s#*+ hits the fan. A lot of conflict on this team could have been avoided this last few months if we all just stepped up and gave the hard feedback before people got angry. Feedback should never come from a place of anger, but time and time again we let it get to that point. When people call me higher, I am going to choose to believe that it comes from a place of love and not a place of offense. I am going to take the feedback, pray about it and make strides to grow into the man God created me to be.
I never lost hope for Team Aperture, and I'm not going to stop fighting for this family now. God gave us another chance in Cambodia and no matter if this team is only together for the rest of the month or we are together for the rest of the Race, I'm going to make the best of the time we have. I know my teammates are ready to do the same too. We are going to lay our selfish ways at the cross. We are going to learn to love each other better. We are going to fight for each other instead of fighting with each other. We are going to clean our individual sides of the street until we have the most beautiful neighborhood in the kingdom. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. Love Y'all!!!
Aperture Team Mission Statement:
We choose to be a family in daily pursuit of God and God in each other.
"We go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit, confessing our former ill feeling and expressing our regret . Under no condition do we criticize such a person or argue……We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank, and open, we will be gratified with the result."-Bill Wilson Alcoholics Anonymous
