Be A Barnabas Project - Let’s Get It Started (Part 1)
If you’ve been following along for the last few weeks, we are in the middle of a project called Be A Barnabas, where the end goal is to start a movement of encouragers from community to community.
If you’re wondering, “Who is this Barnabas guy,” the answer is that he was one of the great encouragers in all of scripture. So when I ask you to Be A Barnabas, I’m simply asking you to be an encourager in your circle of influence and let’s see if a little spark of encouragement can start a fire that burns in your community.
I starting by asking people: 1) Who was an encourager to you and what impact did they make; 2) In what ways do you try to encourage others?
Now we’re taking that feedback and we’re putting it to action. Over the next 10 blogs, I’m going to do two things: highlight a real-life encourager from my life and give 10 ways you can be an encourager. At the end of those 10 weeks, we will have a list of 100 Ways To Encourage Others, which will be posted permanently on fuel2ignite.
So without further ado…
A Letter That Changed My Life:
There are some teachers you will never forget. Mrs. Sanders was one of the great ones.
She was my English teacher in both my sophomore and senior years in high school. She was a kind and sweet lady who truly loved inspiring others to grasp the wonder and beauty of great literary works. For instance, she inspired my love of the play Our Town. She also happened to be the pianist at our church and every time our choir sang Bless Be The Tie That Binds, Mrs. Sanders and I would share a knowing wink and nod (because of the prominence of the song in the play).
But it was a challenging letter that she wrote me that shaped my life. I remember doing a unit on poetry in her class and we were focusing on some famous poem and, to be honest, I didn’t get it. I remember blurting out in exasperated fashion, “Why don’t they just say what they mean instead of using all of that flowery language!”
She calmly answered my question (even though I had rudely interrupted the class) and deftly got the discussion back on track.
I didn’t think anything else of it, but the next day I came to class she handed me a letter. The letter was basically a challenge to me to go beyond the surface and embrace learning and digging for the deeper meaning in things. I remember her writing, “You have a fine mind and can continue to go through life racking up A’s with slipshod effort or you can dare to dig deeper and embrace the meaning behind those words.”
At first I was like, “All this because I didn’t like a poem.” But then it hit me that she cared enough to challenge me to reach my potential and to learn for the sake of learning, not just for making the grade.
She both communicated her belief in me AND that I could do more with the mind God had given me. It completely altered the way I viewed learning and I was a better student for it.
By the way, I saved that letter for at least 20 years before I sadly lost it in a spring cleaning mishap. I probably pulled that letter out dozens of times through the years.
Ways To Be An Encouragement:
(1-10 of 100)
1. Be a cheerleader for another person’s dreams.
2. Pay for the person’s order behind you in the drive-through.
3. Make it a point to help a shy person feel included in the group.
4. Write a note to a former teacher to let them know what they meant to you and what they did for you.
5. Bring a friend their favorite cup of coffee or snack.
6. Help a worrier or someone who is prone to anxiety see the small victories and accomplishments in their problems.
7. Recognize someone’s recent achievements by calling them or sending a congratulatory text.
8. Be a shoulder of support when a friend is going through a difficult season.
9. When someone has gone through the loss of a loved one, set calendar events in your phone to check in on them every so often.
10. Compliment someone on their outfit or attire (in an appropriate way, of course!)
Be The Spark!
I’ve been doing research on this project I’m calling Be A Barnabas. You’ll hear more about it in the coming weeks.
I’ve reached out to friends and subscribers (who I hope consider me a friend by now!) and asked: 1) who was an encourager to you and what did they do to encourage you? 2) in what ways do you encourage others?
I’ve received story after story and they’re all so touching and heartfelt.
The stories are all different and the encouragers range from family members, childhood Sunday School teachers, a supportive wife or husband, a friend who was a real-life version of Jesus to us in times of struggle and on and on.
The way they encouraged was different in so many ways, but there were some trends as well.
The most obvious theme was that we never forget our encouragers. When people talk about the encouragers in their lives, there is a reverence about the way that they view that person. They will never forget what that person did for them or said to them at a pivotal point in their life.
Some responses I’ve heard from others about the encouragers in our lives (I’ve excluded specific names and tried to sum up their comments):
They made me feel seen and valued.
I’ll never forget them reaching out to me in a time of crisis when so many others turned away.
They invested time in me and mentored me and made themselves available to me.
They were there for me at important events in my life or reached out to congratulate me over an accomplishment when they didn’t need to.
My spouse has always supported and encouraged me, in times where it was deserved and in times where it wasn’t
They included me when others turned away
They challenged me to keep working at my craft and if I did I could be good at it.
They challenged me to find the answers in God’s Word for myself.
They were there for me after the loss of a spouse when I needed a shoulder to cry on and promised me that I would get through it if I didn’t give up.
There are so many other things I could share but the stories go on and on.
Basically, the encouragers in our lives: are our biggest cheerleaders, believe in us when others don’t, invest in us, include us, challenge us to keep working at it, are available to us when others aren’t and are there for us in our most difficult hours.
It’s not easy being an encourager because it takes going the extra mile, but it makes all the difference in the world in that person’s life.
One of the biggest trends I noticed is that when someone was deeply impacted by an encourager, the person who was impacted spent the rest of their lives trying to do the same for others. In other words, they were so moved by what someone had done for them that they wanted to Pay It Forward to others.
So encouragement is contagious. Last week, I asked, “Can we start a movement?”
The answer is 100% absolutely yes. It just starts with each of us deciding in our hearts to be encouragers to the people in our circle of influence.
When I was a kid singing in children’s choir a million years ago, they had these old Celebration song books, and there was one song that sounds a little cheesy now but we loved to sing it back then and it said, “it only takes a spark to get a fire going.”
I’m asking you today. Be the spark!
Can We Start A Movement?
I was watching the finale of American Idol last night and Jelly Roll - the musician and this year’s Artist in Residence on the show- was singing a duet with the eventual winner of the show (no spoilers here).
They were singing a couple of Jelly Roll’s songs and, frankly, the other guy was out-singing him. Was he jealous? Was he insecure? No. Instead, he looked like a proud father, with a beaming smile from ear to ear and an arm on the guy’s shoulder as they sang together.
My wife - who doesn’t nearly get into the show as much as me and who merely watches it with me because she knows how much I love it - looks up from her phone, watches the performance unfolding on the stage and declares, “Jelly Roll is a Barnabas.”
In that moment, I couldn’t have been any more proud - of my wife…or the show for that matter.
I know it’s a silly singing show but there’s nothing I love more than seeing people chase their dreams with reckless abandon. And Jelly Roll - a guy who I admittedly prejudged when I first saw him - is one of the greatest encouragers you will ever see. He literally fans the flames of the contestants’ dreams and champions them every step of the way.
When my wife picked up on the Barnabas nature of Jelly Roll, I thought maybe she picked it up from my message this week titled, “Be A Barnabas.”But it’s been a crazy weekend and, truthfully, she hadn’t listened to it. But she’s been reading through Acts lately and every few chapters Barnabas shows up encouraging everyone in his path. He invests resources in his fellow believers, vouches for Saul after his conversion to Christ, spends a year in Antioch spurring on the Gentiles who had come to Christ and mentoring them in the faith, and stands up for John Mark after he had failed because he recognized the value in him.
If you know me at all and if you’ve followed my story or messages, you know how much I love Barnabas and how I’ve shared about my real-life Barnabas - Homer Greene, who I only knew for 6 months, but changed my life with the way he encouraged me.
I believe with all of my heart that biblical encouragement can change the world. It’s the entire basis for this ministry!
I want to encourage others and inspire them to do the same. I want to start a Barnabas Project where entire communities get intentional about encouraging others.
It’s ambitious, I know, and maybe you think I’m a little nutty about this, or at the very least going a little overboard.
But it’s what God has laid on my heart. I certainly don’t have the power to start a movement like that, but God does. And the entire story of the Bible is God working through unlikely people. So why can’t He work through you and I.
And let me say that if all this ministry does is encourage a few souls in their moment of need then I’m okay with it because I’ve been faithful to do what God has told me to do.
But, man, what if…what if God wants to start a movement in our midst?
One of my favorite movies is “Pay It Forward” where a kid tries to change his world by doing acts of kindness to people who are in need of it and encourages them to do the same to others - or Pay It Forward. He keeps at it but feels frustrated by the fact that the movement isn’t going as he had hoped. But (spoiler alert) the kid ends up dying and then we see scenes of how this movement has been spreading all across the nation unbeknownst to those who loved this boy. I know it’s just a movie, but I believe encouragement is contagious and - if God is at the forefront of it - who’s going to stop it?
Today, where I would love to start is to ask you a few questions. I would love it if you responded in the messages or you can DM me.
Here we go:
Who was an encourager in your life, what did they do and how did it help you?
Will you help me brainstorm some things that you find encouraging? (Example- for me, one thing is notes of affirmation. I’ve held on to encouraging hand-written notes for years)
Would you be willing to pray that God would show you who you need to encourage and how you are to go about it?
I sincerely covet your feedback.
Can we start a movement?
Be Willing to Get Messy
One of my favorite true stories is a video that Focus On The Family put out 30 or more years ago called A Man Called Norman.
It’s about a family that moved into a house across from “old weird Norman” - an elderly man that people in the town made fun of and no one took the time to get to know.
It’s an account of the unlikely friendship that emerged between Mike Adkins, a Christian singer and speaker, and Norman, the town joke.
It started with Mike helping Norman fix his lawnmower. But each time he interacted with Norman, God would prompt his heart to take it a little further. It led to Mike and his family inviting Norman to their house, to professional baseball games, on vacation, and helping Norman clean up both his house and his personal hygiene.
Ultimately, that earned Mike the opportunity to share the gospel with Norman, which led to Norman asking Jesus into his heart.
It’s a touching story that I haven’t properly given justice in such a short summary. I’ve watched it dozens of times and shown it to students and adults at least a dozen more times over the years.
It had a profound impact on my life, and God, in his sovereignty, would eventually bring my own Norman into my life.
My Norman:
Back when I was a youth pastor in Wilkesboro, NC, the church started me out as a part-time youth pastor because it was a new position. That meant I needed to work another job to supplement my income. With my background in journalism, I was hired as the sports editor of the local paper. But the schedules of a youth pastor and a sports editor both demand you to be available nights and weekends, so it wasn’t a good fit. I needed a job where I could have a routine daily schedule so that I could work my ministry schedule around it. So I left the newspaper and took a job at Tyson chicken, one of the big plants in town. It wasn’t a glamorous job, but I would soon discover that God had a divine appointment for me there. I would soon meet my own Norman in my life - and just like the Focus on the Family story - we would develop an unlikely friendship that would drastically affect both of our lives.
My Norman’s real name was Dennis but everyone called him Little Man. He was about 5 feet tall and looked like the old comic book character Snuffy Smith. I noticed that everyone made fun of him and no one sat with him at lunch.
For some reason, the Lord just put an overwhelming burden on my heart for Dennis. I started seeking him out at lunch and began to get to know him. Turns out he was starting over in life and was renting a room within walking distance of the plant because he didn’t have money for a car.
I started giving him rides to and from work and helping him run errands, which eventually led to me asking him to church. He wasn’t too warm on the idea at first and there were a couple of Sundays where he said he would go and I would go to pick him up and he wouldn’t be there.
I had told the leaders in my church that I had invited this guy that might not look or even smell like their normal visitor, but I asked them to love on him and make him feel welcome.
Finally, he came to church and the people in our church welcomed him in with open arms.
One night, when I was packing for a Labor Day Youth Retreat, I got a call from a pay phone from Dennis. He had a family emergency back in Maryland and needed someone to take him that night to a bus stop in Winston-Salem - about an hour away - so he could catch a bus going that way. I was up to my elbows in getting ready for the retreat but I dropped everything and took him to the station. I half wondered if I would ever see him again.
Surprisingly, he came back a week later. From there, things settled into a bit of a groove. We continued to eat together at lunch. He continued coming to church with me. Eventually, he scraped together enough money to buy an old truck and started driving to church on his own.
In February of that year, our second child, Hannah Faith, was born. She was born on a Saturday evening, so we were still in the hospital the following morning instead of being at church. The Pastor announced the news of our baby girl being born at church so we started getting calls and a few visits right after church.
Around lunchtime, we got a knock on the door of our hospital room and to my surprise there was Dennis. He was beaming from ear to ear. I thought, “Wow, he’s excited as we are!”
He said, “I heard the exciting news, so I just wanted to come and say congratulations.” I was truly touched that he would visit us.
But then he said something that I was not expecting at all and explained the reason for his joy. “I also wanted to tell you that when they gave the invitation today, I asked Jesus into my heart! I couldn’t wait to tell you!”
I was floored, elated and overwhelmed all at once. I mean, that’s why we invest in people and invite them to church. But there comes a point when you just don’t think anything like that will happen.
I have shared that story countless times through the years, and I almost never get through that scene in our hospital room without crying.
Through our relationship, God showed me the value of getting messy - stepping out of your comfort zone, responding to the burden He lays on our hearts, being willing to be inconvenienced.
It’s in the messiness that God begins to work. I’ve learned that people don’t care how much you know until they know that you care.
If I had never sat down with a lonely person at the lunch table that day, I would have never met my Norman. I would have never received the blessing of that incredible moment in that hospital room. And perhaps he never would have accepted Christ as His savior.
Is God prompting you to get messy? Has he placed a burden on your heart for someone? Don’t put it off any longer. Who knows what God has in store for you and that person?
More Chase Your Crazy
I was over halfway into writing this week’s blog on a completely different subject when a friend of mine asked me about last week’s “Chase Your Crazy” blog.
He told me of an unusual situation he had encountered during the week and asked my advice. “Was that a chase your crazy moment?” he asked. In the previous blog, I had shared one of the craziest things that happened to me and how God was orchestrating it all.
In regard to my friend’s question, my answer was “could be or could not be, but it’s definitely worth paying attention to see what God does next.” I explained that in all my “chase your crazy” moments God always used some circumstance to confirm that He was indeed at work.
Then God brought to mind one of the biggest “chase your crazy” confirmation moments in my life, which I shared with my friend and I feel obliged to share with you. Little did I know that as I spoke with my friend, God was literally setting me up for my own “chase your crazy”moment. Let me explain because it’s just too crazy not to share.
I was telling my friend about one of the biggest crossroads of my life that happened 20 years ago. About two years prior, I felt very clearly that God was leading me to plant a church in Denver, NC. But two years of planning and preparing had gone by and I was having second (and maybe third) thoughts. I knew the toll it was going to take on our family and that it would likely cost us friendships. It sounds crazy, but if you ever want to upset the community, just start a church.
I had about three other scenarios that I could do that would be a lot more convenient and a lot less costly. And on this particular day, I was seriously considering those other options.
Then something happened to me that had never happened in my life before and hasn’t since.
A man I barely knew (I only knew that he was a follower of Christ) came up to me and said, “God told me to give you a word.” Now, if someone said that to you, what would be your first thought? Probably whatever your first thought would be is exactly what was going through my mind in that moment.
But then he opened his little pocket Bible to Philippians 1:6 and read the following: “Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.” As he read that verse, I knew I was done with second thoughts and trying to run from my calling. And from that moment on, I was confident that planting the church was exactly what I was supposed to do - come what may.
But wait, the updated story gets even weirder. Fast forward 20 plus years to my conversation with my friend last week. After I got off the phone with him, I was driving down the road thinking maybe I should do a follow up to last week’s “Chase Your Crazy” blog when I heard a little “ding” on my phone. It was my daily Bible verse app and I looked down, at my phone, and the hairs on my arms stood up as I looked at the day’s passage. Maybe you’ve already guessed it.
Philippians 1:6: “Being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Now before anyone says that’s just a coincidence, let me remind you that there are 23,145 verses in the Bible and you’re telling me that it’s just happenstance that that verse popped up in that moment?
I immediately called my friend and told him what happened and his response was the same as mine. But then it got a little stranger when, as he was talking to me, he happened to glance at his wife’s screensaver on her phone that she had just updated the night before and there was Philippians 1:6 one more time (just in case we weren’t paying attention).
God is so good! He’s so intentional and so detailed when it comes to speaking to us. We just have to pay attention.
I don’t know if He was just speaking to me or my friend or both of us. But I knew I had to change my blog topic for the week!
What I haven’t shared yet is that, since starting fuel2ignite, I had been having self-doubt. The thoughts had been swirling around my brain, “Is this really helping anyone? Am I wasting my time?” As I received these multiple reminders with the same verse God had used in my life 20-plus years ago, it was just another confirmation to keep moving forward. God reminded me that He planted this dream in my heart and that He is going to “carry it on to completion” if I’ll just trust Him and follow Him.
Same is true for my friend. Same is true for you. Just trust Him and follow Him and chase your crazy.
Chase Your Crazy
Author’s Note: Be sure to read to the end to see one of the craziest, goofiest ways a person was called to a particular ministry!
One of the things I love about scripture is how illogical it can be at times.
Some examples:
When God chose Gideon to lead the Israelites against the powerful army of Midian, God had him reduce his forces from 32,000 men to all the way down to 300 men before going to battle. And when it came time to do battle, God caused a confusion among the Midianites, who wound up attacking and killing each other in the chaos of the night.
God allowed Rahab, a harlot, to be in the lineage of Jesus because she assisted the Israelites who were spying out Jericho. She is listed as the mother of Boaz, who is the father of Jesse, who is the father of King David, who is in the direct line of Jesus.
Then when it came time to storm Jericho, God instructed the Israelites to march around the city for 6 days and then, on the seventh day, march around 7 times and blow their trumpets. That’s how this incredibly fortified and intimidating city fell.
When it came time for Jesus, the Savior of the world, to come into the world as fully God and fully man, God sent an angel to a humble peasant girl named Mary to notify her that she would give birth to the Messiah.
And when it came time for the Messiah to be born, it wasn’t in a palace or a mansion but in a cow stall.
Those are just a few examples of the completely illogical nature of how God uses His people for His purposes.
And it’s not just a collection of interesting stories from people thousands of years ago. In fact, God wishes to do the illogical with you and I every single day.
You know why? Because God wants people to look at what happened and say, “There’s no way they did that in their own strength.” He wants to receive the glory, not because He’s a glory hound, but so that people will take one look at what happened and believe that there is a God and that He cares about the details of my life.
As I look back on my life, in every great move that God did in and through me, there was a time that I told someone - either my wife or a close friend - “this may sound crazy, but I think God wants me to do…”
I’ve had that conversation literally a dozen or more times. And, to be honest, it did sound crazy at first, but the further that I pursued it, the more God began to confirm - to me and to others close to me - that He was at work.
I have so many stories to tell and I trust that we’ll get to them, but let me start with one of the goofiest, craziest ways He ever called me somewhere.
I was a Youth Pastor in North Carolina at the time and our youth group was doing a Mission Boot Camp at Fort Caswell on the NC coast. Most of our group was doing construction or painting and I remember it being about 98 degrees every day. So after a day of working in the scorching heat in the community and then doing worship and group Bible study in the evening, you were ready to go to sleep.
My group was in the barracks with several other groups. Each barracks was divided into four quadrants, with each quadrant holding about 50 people all sleeping in bunk beds in an open area. To say the least, there wasn’t very much privacy.
One other thing: there was a boys’ barracks and a girls’ barracks side by side. They looked exactly the same. That will be relevant in a few moments!
Near where I bunked, there was a very large man (a chaperone from another group) who snored louder than perhaps any person I had ever heard. I couldn’t block him out and therefore I couldn’t get much sleep. This went on for a couple of nights.
By the third day in the heat and no sleep at night, I was exhausted. I tried to nudge the sleeping bear to get him to roll over, but he was so startled that he immediately went into Kung Fu mode. I was like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you were snoring.” Within a couple minutes - after going into fight or flight mode - he was back to snoring the night away. It was like one of those cartoon scenes.
I decided enough was enough and that I had to get some sleep. I went out to the church bus and slept straddled across two seats, setting my alarm so I could go back into the barracks before everyone woke up.
The alarm rang and I stumbled out of the bus. I was a little disoriented but was glad to have finally gotten some rest. I walked into the barracks and was about to climb up to my top bunk when a shadowy figure sat up and said, “Excuse me, may I help you.” But it wasn’t a man’s voice or even a boy’s.
In my disorientation, I had stumbled into the girls’ barracks by mistake! I was mortified! I froze for a second and said the only thing that came to mind, “Oops!” And I turned tail and quickly retreated to the right barracks.
A couple of things happened over the next few days. I told my group the idiotic thing that had happened to me and everyone had a good laugh.
But the lady who spotted me in the barracks was telling everyone she knew to be extra careful because a “heavy-set man with a beard” had tried to sneak into the barracks. Two things: I didn’t have a beard (just hadn’t shaved for 3 days) and I did weigh about 50 pounds more back then, but I’m not sure I qualified as heavy set!
Anyway, as news circulated throughout the camp about this potential intruder and some of my youth were telling of my misadventures, some of the youth from our respective groups who had become friends during the course of the week began to put two and two together.
I was the mysterious intruder. Our youth introduced me to “the shadowy figure” and her to the “mystery intruder.” Case closed. Mystery solved. Again, everyone had a big laugh and we wound up becoming friends as the week went on.
Near the end of the week, she mentioned that her group was currently without a Youth Pastor and handed me a piece of paper with contact info on it if I was interested. I was happy where I was and I didn’t think a lot about it at the time. But I would be lying if I denied at least a little intrigue.
Soon after returning home, something strange happened. Suddenly, a church I had never heard of before that was over an hour away began popping up on my radar in unexpected ways. Multiple times in the next week, God divinely orchestrated it where this church would come front and center in my world. It was definitely more than coincidence. I knew that God was trying to get my attention, so I got out the contact info my new friend from that church had given me and I made the call and God began opening doors.
There were so many reasons not to go. We were in a healthy, growing church. We had good friends there. We were close to family. My wife was running a thriving preschool ministry at another church and they were on the verge of starting a Christian school there, so she absolutely did not want to move at first.
But the more we dug and the more we prayed, we realized that God was calling us to leave our comfort zone and step out into the unknown.
There were more twists and turns to the story, but the moral of the story is that when you see God doing unusual things in your circumstances, pay attention. Chase your crazy! God works in the illogical. Don’t ignore it. Don’t run from it. Move toward the crazy.
Who knew that stumbling into the wrong barracks that fateful week at Caswell would change my family’s life?
We would spend the next 24 years of our lives in that community and would go on to build some of our closest relationships and do our most significant ministry in that community. And we would have missed it all if we hadn’t chased our crazy.
Let Go of The Rope
I’ll never forget my first time water skiing.
I was 22 at the time and really hadn’t grown up with opportunities to be at the lake very much. My soon-to-be wife, had spent many of her teen summers on the lake and was a good skier.
We were out on the lake with some of her lake friends one Saturday afternoon. I was just happy to be along for the ride, enjoying the beautiful day and riding in the safety of the boat watching other people ski. But when her friends discovered that I had never been on water skis before, then instantly everyone tried to get me to try it.
I was fairly athletic, having grown up playing traditional sports, and I thought to myself, “How hard could it be?” I would soon find out.
Actually, it wasn’t that hard to get up on the skis. After one or two tries, I got the hang of it and would pop right up almost every time.
But I found that there’s an art to staying up. There’s this sweet spot where you distribute your weight just so. You have to lean back just a little and find that right balance.
Needless to say, I never found that balance - either I would lean back too far and wipe out on my backside or I would try to over correct and face plant on the water.
Having played sports all through the years, my competitive instincts started kicking in and I was determined to get it right. Over and over I would try and I would stay up maybe a minute or two and then the balance would start to go and then, “Wham!”
I’m pretty sure I drank half of Carters Lake that day but I was not giving up!
Finally, I was like, “Come on, Ryan, you’ve got this!” In my last run of the day, I popped up immediately, found my balance, and then proudly glided across the surface of the water. “Look at me go,” I thought to myself. It was easily my longest run of the day. I thought to myself, “I’ve got this figured out.” And then the wobbles came back. I was leaning back, and forth, trying to regain my balance, but to no avail. I couldn’t get it back, and I crashed face-first into the water. But there was one slight difference this time. I was still holding on to the rope! I could hear the people on the boat yelling but couldn’t quite make it out. LET GO….glug, glug, glug…ROPE…LET…glug, glug…OF THE…glug, glug.
I don’t know what I was thinking, but I was so determined not to fail, I wouldn’t let go of the rope. And there I was, careening face-first across the water.
Finally, I figured out what they were saying. LET GO OF THE ROPE! After swallowing a good portion of the lake, I finally swallowed my pride and let go of the rope.
From time to time, that image comes to mind, because it reminds me of an overarching theme of my life. I can be so determined to do things on my own, so prideful in my own ability, that I would rather be drug across the water than let go of the rope. I’ll expend so much energy white-knuckling it through life, trying to figure it out on my own. Why? Because letting go of the rope is an admission that I need help, that I can’t do it alone.
But the funny thing is that God never set it up for us to do it alone. He created us in His own image but He created us to need Him. Over and over in scripture, He gently reminds us to LET GO OF THE ROPE.
In Matthew 11:28, Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
James 4:10 adds, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
1 Peter 5:6-7 says,”Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because He cares for you.”
It was true over 2,000 years ago when these words were written and it’s still true today.
Human nature has not changed and we still need Him now as much as ever.
I’ve had to learn that lesson the hard way time and time again. God gives us free will to make our own decisions and the consequences can be quite painful. I’ll be sharing some of my story along the way. Hopefully, you can learn from some of my mistakes.
The biggest thing I have learned about God is that He loves you just as you are, but He loves you too much to leave you there. And He will allow painful circumstances to come into your life to get your attention. As C.S. Lewis said, “Pain is God’s megaphone.”
God has a plan and a purpose for you. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” But He doesn’t intend for you to do it alone. We tend to think of ourselves as the star of the show, and one of the reasons we want to do it in our own strength is that we want the glory. But the truth is that God is the star of the show and He wants to use us - our gifts, our strengths, our weaknesses and failures - to work through us in such a way that He will receive the glory and honor. God wants to do exceedingly more in you than you can ever do on your own so that when people look at what He has done, they’ll know two things: 1) there is a God; 2) He is worthy to be followed.
And you and I can be part of that miraculous plan, but there’s one thing that we must first do.
Let go of the rope. Let go and let God.
The Why Behind fuel2ignite…
It all begins with an idea.
Other than coffee, what is it that gets you out of bed in the morning? What is the “Why” behind what you do every day? What I’m asking, in a nutshell, is what is your purpose? Because if you can find your “Why” it’s a game-changer.
As we embark on this journey together, I want to tell you the Why behind this ministry. This is a passion project that has been decades in the making. To make it all make sense, I wanted you to know a little about my journey and what has led to my Why.
I’ll be telling you lots of stories throughout this journey, but as we embark, I just wanted to take you on a brief 30,000-foot view of what led me to this point.
Taking the Way-Back Machine all the way back to 1992, I was a senior in college and God was beginning to do a work in my life. I was in a college class at a Winter Weekend at Ridgecrest Conference Center in Black Mountain, NC. Ironically , I met my future wife in the class that weekend. The teacher led us through a study on a Max Lucado book called Six Hours One Friday. The premise of the book is that because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and in the resurrection, then three things are inherently true:
Our life is not futile
Our failures are not fatal
Our death is not final
That book had a profound effect on me. That book and a verse-by-verse Bible study series on Revelation by David Jeremiah were the two catalysts for my call to ministry.
I had been working in journalism as a sports writer throughout college and a couple of years beyond, but God was calling me into ministry. In 1994, I would become a Youth & Children’s Pastor at my home church in Troy, NC. I had no training, no experience, just a desire to follow God’s call on my life. To be honest, I struggled quite a bit for the first few years in ministry. I used the spaghetti method - just throw something on the wall and see if it sticks. I had no idea what I was doing.
In 1996, I moved on to a similar position in a church in Wilkesboro, NC. I was still struggling to find my stride in ministry, but the Lord, in His providence, brought two men into my life. One was Pastor Rick Speas, who took me under his wing and graciously poured into me and mentored me, teaching me everything I could possibly want to know about ministry. He was the best combination of a pastor and preacher I had ever seen. Still is. Eventually he was called on to another church and the man who would follow him would play an equally important role in my journey. His name was Homer Greene. He was the interim pastor who would follow Pastor Speas. Homer Greene was the greatest encourager I had ever known, a real-life Barnabas if you will. He expressed a belief in me that I cannot put into words. Every time I was around him, he breathed life into me and he made me believe in myself, which changed the trajectory of my ministry. I knew him all of 6 months but he changed my life.
I would go on to a successful ministry in my next church in Maiden, NC and later plant a church in Denver, NC, thanks largely to the lessons I had learned from those two pastors that God placed in my life.
But by 2010, the wheels began coming off in my life. Somewhere along the way I started reading my own press clippings and started doing ministry in my own strength. We had started a church in 2005, and for the first four years we depended on God for everything, but something had changed in me. I’m ashamed to say that in my arrogance, I began to think I was the reason for the success. I began to operate and try to do ministry in my own strength and for my own glory. I was in need of humbling and the Lord would soon provide it. For the next two years, the Lord allowed calamity to come into my life. It literally got to the point where I was afraid to leave the house each day because I was afraid of what catastrophe would happen next. It led to me going through two major crises at once - pastor burnout and financial Armageddon. I didn’t have the will or desire to go on in ministry, and in the meantime, we were in danger of losing everything. To top it off, I experienced a betrayal at the hands of someone I had grown very close to. For me, that was the final straw. I grew bitter and angry and remained that way for the next two years. I was not pleasant to be around. My own family loved me, but I’m not sure they liked me all that much.
In 2014, my precious wife had a come to Jesus meeting with me. I didn’t receive it well either. But realizing how much hurt I had caused them and how close I was to losing them as well proved to be my turning point.
It would take me a couple more years to climb completely out of the hole I had dug for myself but by 2016 I had resumed preaching as opportunities presented themselves and I was returning to the old me in a lot of ways.
But you can never fully go back, and I’m not sure God wanted that for me. Having been through some tough times, God placed a burden and compassion for others on me.
I wanted to help others in their struggles. I wanted to communicate the lessons I had learned from that Six Hours One Friday book- that your life is not futile, that your mistakes are not fatal and, in Christ your death is not final. I had a head knowledge of what that meant back then, but now
I had lived it. And I remembered the impact of those who had invested in me and I wanted to pour into others the way those men poured into me. So that was the genesis of this ministry.
But life comes at you fast and the next thing you know my Mom was sick and dying and I had three kids to put through Bible college and you blink and several more years have passed.
But the Lord has been impressing on me so much how badly people need to be encouraged, how badly they need someone to come along beside them and put an arm around them. I feel like every experience I have had in my life has led me to “such a time as this.”
This is my Why. This is what gets me out of the bed in the morning. God has given me a story to tell and a deep desire to encourage as many people as I can along the way. I hope that you will join me on this journey and I pray that it will be a blessing to you.