GENDADS

SO BIG, SO STRONG…BUT HOW LONG CAN YOU KEEP BALANCE, MARGIN, GRACE?

On one of those personal notes people like, I’m sitting in our DVS (Distinquished Visitors Suite) at Nellis AFB, Las Vegas. Carolyn and are are in route to the kids and the grandwonders we loaned them. Am up way early and simply enjoying catching up on emails and suantering over to friends blogs.

There is a point to this as Carolyn stirs in our swanky suite. I was hoping Jesus was busy already and wouldn’t get back to me about the question on the trail with Matt and Taylor on the Rite of Passage hike. “Over these 60 years of my Walk with you, have I pleased you, Jesus?” When He offered three illustrations of His pleasure and three of His “not so much,” I thought, to myself (do you see how funny that is…I was chatting with Jesus), “I can survive this…I wonder where He’ll go.”

So far so good. But then He started out, “So, Gary, if I said ‘flotsam and jetsam’ in the same sent sentence with ‘energy’ and ‘wake,’ can you guess where I’m taking this.”

YIKES, He’s not going there, is He?

He was. If I could only rewind for a redo first. All He had to say was “Casablanca, Morocco…” and I knew He was homing in on “IT”.

This could be a loooong piece. But it won’ be. [forget that, I'm now two cups of coffee into this painful review]  The lesson is simple. Gratefully, I’ve learned and changed. I’m able to pass my insight, painfully earned, to others headlong in Christian service, lay or professional.

What’s this riddle? I was (still am, but all by Heavenly Design) a guy full of energy and ideas. Later, I learned I was an 8 with a 7 wing on the Enneagram scale (personality guage therapist Matt/soninlaw and I favor). And intelligent. And educated. And competitive. And an achiever. And with control issues: “Charge the enemy, but only if I was in charge”. But charging ahead for the good of God’s Kingdom and for mankind was wonderful except for the wake I left and the trash (Navyese: flotsam and jetsam) floating on it.

Casablanca. Long story. Energy, charging ahead for good, humiliation, hurt and harm. Keeping this short means simply telling what you may guess if you know me now, especially my past. I was a steam roller. All for Good and God, of course. But charging ahead in my own ample energy and “wisdom” more than His, meant I was using His design for me in my way without consulting Him. Presumption: “I got it, use it.”

I went to rescue a team in conflict in Casa. Turns out I was the trigger device. Darn. Then there is my family left too often too long without my loving presence. All for the cause. Still, stuff, family stuff, in my wake. I’m in the DV suite because I (HMmmm, “I”; sortuva clue) made captain in my naval reserve career. Hard-charger like a big and fast boat = wake.

What’s the lesson? I could be cute and say “Walk, don’t run, in the Spirit.” Not bad. I could say “Margin” (I wrote self-transforming essays after Dr. Hansen’s book of the same name). I lived to the fullest right to the edge of the page, top and bottom, too. No place for God to add His notes in margin I didn’t have.

How about I say it, simply, the way Jesus said it…is saying it “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, wins souls right and left, has followers and books, has a monument in the city part, etc., ad nausium, but looses his way, clouds his calling, leaves his legacy floatiing in his own wake.” My life transliteration of Luke 9:25, sure, but I know now what Jesus meant.

Recently a group of us started a study that took us back to the high-energy days of Campus Crusade. It was so refreshing to review AND reinstate the simple visual truth of Christ, by way of the indwelling Holy Spirit, being on the throne of my life, not sitting at MY feet waiting for something to do. Oh, yeah. Simple. Christ on the throne of my life. It’s a daily thing. No, a moment by moment thing.

HOW’S ABOUT YOU DEAR READER? Are you serving in His strength and wisdom or your own; is HE ON THE THRONE? I don’t mean what you write in your journal, I mean what you are doing TODAY.