When I was in college, I was a less than studious student….
I just wanted out, that was the only part I was certain of; besides the fact I knew I wanted to one day make the jump from college baseball to professional baseball.
The only part of college, at least academically, that came easy to me was English 101 and 102. Both were required courses that every freshman had to take, from the medical students to the clueless students, ya gotta take English, and ya gotta pass.
I learned that the goal wasn’t to teach us more English but to assess how much English we knew. So, they mainly had us write lot of papers, and you either passed or you failed.
There were several other baseball players in English class with me, and back at the dorms I watched them struggle at times to write the mostly short stories we had to turn in on various topics.
Whereas I was typically the one lagging in every other class I took, I was always the first one finished with my English paper, and it generally wasn’t even close. I blew right through them.
It wasn’t my superior understanding of “English” that separated me from my teammates. I could just bang out a story, with decent English, far faster than they could.
Just like throwing a baseball, writing came easy for me. In both cases…. I could just play.
When English classes were in the books, I never wrote another story, and I never even thought about writing another story, I just moved on down the road of life.
The next 25 years or so were a solid mixture of successes and failures. The culmination of which had led me to the place so many men find themselves in their forties…. standing squarely at the spiritual crossroads of life asking themselves, do I continue down the road I am on, or…. do I give it up.
After wrestling hard with that question for several years…. I finally gave it up.
Jesus won. Now what?
In the months prior to making that soul saving decision to follow Christ, I had begun to give God access to my life and every inch of space I gave Him access to, He went to work in.
My newfound desire to know God better, to understand His word and His ways more deeply, was also coupled with a strong desire to share with others this life changing decision I had made, as well as the miraculous things God was doing in my life.
It was both very new and very cool all at the same time and I wasn’t sure what to do with it until God put these verses in front of me in the same week.
Philippians 1:6, which states…. “Be confident of this, He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, until the day of Christ.”
Philemon 1:6, which states…. “And I pray that the sharing of your Faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ”.
I needed assurance and direction. God said…. Shane, I will finish what I have started in you. Now go, and share your Faith in me.
One statement was promise and the other was a call to action, but share my Faith how?
God never specifically answered that but there was one thing I learned I could do that just came naturally…. I could write about it.
So, I did start writing about it, and I did start sharing it, and ten years later I’m sitting here reading my morning devotional and the verse of the day is….
John 15:16 / You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit.
So, I am both chosen AND appointed?!
Specifically “chosen” by the Creator of the universe, and “appointed” to go and bear fruit for His kingdom. Talk about equipped!!
Look, I’m not special, I just did the one thing that is all any of us can do, I said “yes”. I accepted the Lord as my savior, and I put to work the gift that He put inside of me for His Kingdom.
We all have one, this just happens to be mine, and it sat dormant for over 40 years before that seed was planted in the right environment and then when it was, it did exactly what it was programmed to do…. bear fruit for the Lord and His Kingdom!
Get In The Boat. Do Your Part.
From Nose To Toes!
Shane / #16