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Psalms 107:4-6, “They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.”

THE STARTER’S GUN

I was kind of late to Christianity. Although I was baptized at a young age, it was more because I was a joiner. By the time I left High School, I was the president of the Baptist Youth Fellowship at my small church. These things can happen in small communities; the one who raises their hand gets the job.

I went to college not because I had a life plan but because it was the next step. I worked full-time during college; my goal was to get a diploma, not an education. If you don’t know what you want to be in life, what is the point in getting too educated on stuff you may never use? Sorry parents, there are a lot of kids in college with this plan.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27, “Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games, exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore, I run in such a way, as not without aim.”

THE TURN

After college, I packed up all my stuff in a Chevy Vega and headed 750 miles south to get a job; I didn’t know a person in town, had no business connections and had no direction. I was working on the next step in life; I got a diploma now get a job. A man has to eat. At this point, life was just a series of checkmarks. Next on the list was marriage and family. There wasn’t any real passion or objective to being alive. I was insanely insecure, insanely angry, and insanely driven. This mental state was a tightly joined lethal cocktail. My insecurity drove my anger which forced me to overachieve. I look back on it now, and it seems so illogical, but it all made sense at the time. The good news for me was that I was an ambivert, you know, the guy that fits well in a social environment but has to go home to hide. I could mask all of my daily issues and feed them when I was alone at night.

The weird thing was that I thought this was all normal; it was just life. Everyone was fighting to get ahead. But it was a formula for disaster; still, I didn’t see it. Even when I was in the lifeboat watching the last of the ship as it dipped below the waves, I thought, this is life; everyone has problems. A wrecked marriage and a pacemaker at thirty, stress was the fuel. Stress kept me focused; it fed the anger to be someone.

Jeremiah 12:5, “… you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out,”

THE STRETCH

Finally, I had to agree that this approach wasn’t working. I couldn’t keep it up for a lifetime. There had to be better way. Back in childhood, there was this book that was supposed to have the answers. So I got a copy, it was the Bible; I started to read. I wasn’t looking for salvation; I was looking for a better life. Up to this point, life was a sprint that turned into a marathon; I wasn’t prepared for it. I read the Bible from cover to cover eight times. Every time I learned something new about how God made me and the way I needed to live my life. I was convinced God existed; Christ was still a little iffy.

Proverbs 4:13, “Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.”

I started going to church. Over time there grew a desire in me to become something bigger than just me. I began to question my existence. Just why was I driven to achieve, and what exactly was I to achieve? Then I read the book “A Case for Christ.” From both a historical and factual standpoint, it was almost impossible to deny Christ’s ministry. He had to be who He said He was; what did that mean to me?

My conclusion; I was dead in my sin. Christ did die for my sins. He did raise from the dead. Salvation was real. I rededicated my life to Him. With that rededication, I am a new person in Christ no longer driven by anger and insecurity; I was created in the image of Christ. But I was still internally driven, still focused on worldly standards. It was still easy to separate my Christian beliefs from my material efforts. The scoreboard was about using everything God had given me to become a better me. I started out embellishing my worldly resume, then I turned to embellishing my spiritual resume.

THE FINISH

I remember the day that I finally saw God’s truth. I was on the way to the airport in the early morning. I traveled five days a week almost my entire career; it was a typical Monday morning. A friend had given me a tape of a one-person play called “The Bema.” The essence of the play was to answer the question; What have you done for Christ since you knew Him? My answer was simple, nothing. It has always been about me; it went from me-pleasing-me to me-pleasing-God. But I was still the center of the story.

2 Corinthians 9:8, “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in good works”

The epiphany was that it has never been about me. Everything God created, myself included, is for God’s glory, not mine. Everything I have, had, or ever will have belongs to Him; I’m just a caretaker of those things. I bring glory to God by taking what He has given me and serving others. This concept was a pivot point. This was the point in my life that I started to become the man God had always created me to be. This was the start of a life worth living.

Isaiah 40:31, “but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.”

Since then, I have tried to be more outward-focused. I want to see the opportunities God is giving me to serve others through Him. By the way, it took me several years to consistently give Him glory for what I was doing. I would serve someone, but I would forget to tell them that it wasn’t me but Christ in me who had served them. The first step in sharing the Gospel is living the Gospel. I’m getting better at a lot of things; I still have further to go.

Life is a marathon; within that race you can find a calming cadence provided by Christ that guarantees that you can finish the race confidently. My focus is not the road ahead, but the God of the Universe that created me to not only run the race but run it with hope and joy that the race is not in vain.

Hebrews 12:1-3, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I went to Kenya as a member of the IMED team. We fund micro-businesses in impoverished third-world nations to raise them out of poverty; this assignment was the Riff Valley, about 90 km out of Nairobi. They were part of the Narok City community, where 85% of the homes have dirt floors and no water or electricity. It is the home of the Maasai.

There are no security nets or entitlement programs; life is hard, to the very end.

MEET NAOMI

Naomi was one of our students and now the proud owner of her own business. She is a widow with six grown children; she is illiterate but brilliant. Naomi always wore a smile. At first, she seemed shy, not wanting to talk or make eye contact; most of our students, about half male and half female, interacted spontaneously. As time wore on, I got the sense that Naomi had an undefeatable steel core that would not be denied. There were moments when she made direct eye contact and, with a smile, seemed to say, “test me, I dare you.” She wanted to start a grain store, selling maze in the local market. We spent several weeks together getting to know the culture, the market, and the students. We taught them business principles, help them create business plans, and ultimately, if viable, funded their business.

THE TESTIMONY OF NAOMI

During a lull in the activity, I asked Naomi how she came to know Christ. What she told me was a heartwarming story of redemption. Kenya, especially the Riff Valley, is a hard land. It has about 40% unemployment. Government support is almost non-existent. The average monthly expenditure for a family of six is twenty-five dollars. Naomi was married to a cattle driver; a cattle driver drives cattle to market in Nairobi by herding them on foot; it would be insanely difficult by American standards. For reasons that Naomi did not divulge, her husband started to exhibit signs of mental illness. Some of these signs were fits of violence and wild ranting. He has since passed.

Two weeks after giving birth to her sixth child, she reached a critical point of hopelessness in the midst of one of her husband’s fits. That crucial point is when we feel we must give up; life has hit us so hard that getting back up doesn’t make sense. scared, tired, and depressed; she had a newborn to take care of, children to feed, a husband unfit to provide, and no help in sight;

Two weeks after giving birth to her sixth child, she reached a critical point of hopelessness in the midst of one of her husband’s fits. That crucial point is when we feel we must give up; life has hit us so hard that getting back up doesn’t make sense. Naomi was scared, tired, and depressed; she had a newborn to take care of, children to feed, a husband unfit to provide, and no help in sight; she was overwhelmed

She went into the bedroom to cry, she laid on the dirt floor, entirely enveloped in despair. Then she recalled people in the marketplace speaking of this “Christ”; she prayed for the first time in her life. Her simple prayer was, “Christ, if you exist, save me from my situation.” What she said happened next is a fantastic description of God’s love.

REDEMPTION

Her testimony was, “And God painted a new picture of my life.”

The situation did not change, but her view of it did. She experienced hope. There was a calmness and clarity concerning the road ahead. It wasn’t about immediate answers as it was about knowing it would be alright. Christ would walk with her through this trial. Answers would come later.

Victor Frankl, a holocaust survivor, believed that there is always one last vestige of freedom even under intolerable circumstances: it is the freedom to choose with how you view your circumstances. He said, “We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last human freedom – to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstances” Naomi chose wisely; she chose to hope in Christ.

THE CHASE

When you start chasing your passion, you soon realize it has always been chasing you. You will meet the Naomi’s of the world, which will confirm that you are where God planned. As much as God wants us to change the world around us, He knows chasing our passion will inevitably change us too.

Philippians 4:8-9, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

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