Joel Young Blog.com

This past Sunday Louisville played host to the Ironman competition. For those of you who don’t know, the Ironman challenges athletes to swim over 2 miles, then jump on a bike and ride like 120+ miles, and for the grand finale run a 26 mile marathon. I know, it seems insane, but there were over 2,000 people that gave it a try last Sunday.

It was pretty cool to see all the people riding down the road except for the fact that it basically shut down the only highway we have here in Prospect. The race went by our church building twice so people trying to get in and out was a disaster. it totally turned out city upside-down for a day and there parts of the Ironman course weaving through every part of Oldham county. It was all pretty cool.

But, what amazed me the most was how many people were willing to sit along the road just to cheer on athletes people as they passed.

The race in it’s entirety is over 150 miles, and took some people 15 hours to complete, and yet people stood by the road all day just to give the racers a glimpse of encouragement. I mean you think about the amount of time the athletes saw each of their supporters during the race, and you’ll realize that their encouragement was gone in the blink of an eye. It passed by in seconds and then the racers were on their own again.

I have to admit that at first I thought these supprters had lost their gourds! Sitting outside on a 90+ degree alongside a big strip of asphalt just to clap for a few passing bikers. Come on! But the more I thought about it the more I admired these people. They knew that they wouldn’t be encouraging racers all day, but they sat still, and were vigilant because they knew eventually they would get to.

Let me wrap up by saying this. We as Christians have a great opportunity to use our faith to encourage others. We may not get to do it every day, but if we remain patient, stay the course, and never leave our post, the opportunities will come. They may be few and far between, but they could make a huge difference in someone’s life.

Well, my wife’s pregnancy has officially become a ridiculous waiting game. My son has grown to a hefty 8lbs. inside his momma’s belly, and not refuses to come out. We found our yesterday at the doctor that she made NO PROGRESS towards having Reed AT ALL in the last week. It’s all very frustrating for her, and I guess in turn for me.

In the wake of all of this anxious waiting it got me thinking about something. My wife and I are temporarily living a lifestyle that is nothing more than longing and waiting for something to come along, but once Reed gets here that will be over. For some people their entire lives are lived waiting for something to happen, and it never does. Maybe it’s that dream job, or that move to a bigger house. Maybe it’s for their children to grow up, or to have children. Whatever it is there are some people who spend their whole life waiting on something better to resurrect their life from this attitude, and most of the time it never happens.

I know how living the lifestyle of waiting and wishing can wear on you, and I just want to encourage those of you who live this life to quit waiting; quit wishing. Just enjoy the life God has given you every day.

This week I heard a preacher make this insight. I’ll paraphrase as best I can.

Most Christians read the Bible like a yearbook. When you get your yearbook you go straight to the pages that you are on, and this makes you feel good. In the Bible we go straight to the parts that speak nothing but blessings to us, none of that bad stuff (that’s not really from God is it!?!?), and most of the time totally mistake the real contextual meaning in order to give it our own meaning of blessing from God.

This week I encourage you to really study the context of your Bible hard as you take meaning from it. ALL of the Bible is true and inspired; not just the parts we like to read. Your Bible is not a yearbook.

In my ever-growing effort to give the people what they want (that’s you CJ) I have gone into the vault of my musical history and pulled out this gem. It is a previously unreleased version of my song “The Times”. It was recorded with my faithful band “The Juice” at an acoustic gig we did in 2004. It is probably one of the most unique recordings of this song I have on file since we changed it up for that show only. Check it out on my purevolume site and see what you think.

This weekend I started reading a new book by Charles Swindoll entitled, Improving Your Serve. No this isn’t an instructional read on most difficult part of ping pong, it’s a book about Christian Service. I tend to pick books to read in areas that I feel I need a boost in at the moment, and over the last couple years I have felt a real need to improve my service life. In high school I had to do it for Beta Club, in college we were required to complete 15 hours of service a semester to graduate, but now that I am not being forced to serve by anyone the pressure is off.

One of the things that I was struck by early in the first chapter was Swindoll’s series of questions about the neighborhood. he posed questions like. Do you know your neighbors names? Have you ever seen them needing help and helped them? Would you ask your neighbor for help if you needed it? Questions of this nature just blow me away because in our society the overwhelming answer for most people is NO! We don’t have to run down to the local soup kitchen or mission to serve, we can do it right in our own neighborhood. Sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

I think if everyone, including ministers, made being a servant more of a priority then Christianity would grow tremendously. I bet if there were a survey taken of non-Christians who have a bad view of the church most of their reasons would center around self-centered, egotistical, non-servant attitudes of someone they associate with church. The more we can do to dispel that image the better. Just my opinion.