If you love seeing people freak right out on death-defying rides, these two videos will make you howl.
If you don’t appreciate the type of language that can escape people’s lips when they fear for their lives, you may want to click elsewhere. 😉
We all know there’s no value in worrying.If a parent or teacher failed to personally tell us, voices throughout history are eager to chime in:
“Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.” (William Ralph Inge)
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.” (Corrie ten Boom)
“Pray, and let God worry.” (Martin Luther)
“There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
Yet for all the persuasive voices speaking all the compelling words, worry takes hold on our souls. What counter-move might we make against its persistent grip?
Charles Swindoll has offered this perspective:
“On the day Jesus was crucified, it would have appeared to anyone seeing through eyes of flesh that the darkness, the devil, and death had defeated the Son of God once and for all. I will admit that those three D’s lie at the root of almost every worry I suffer. I worry about DEATH – in particular, the death of the people I love. I worry about DARKNESS, both literal and figurative. I worry about what the DEVIL is up to. All three worked diligently throughout the ministry of Jesus to bring about this long and anguishing day. But what no one could see was that the Messiah’s death would strike at the very heart of evil.”
To be sure, there will always be an invisible realms–questions without answers, ventures without guarantees. Life, by its nature, is filled with blanks.
But the message of Scripture is that much of that space is filled by a God whose very nature is gracious and compassionate, slow to become angry and abounding in steadfast love. Seen most vividly in Jesus’ death and resurrection, we are dared to rein in our ability to quickly imagine the worst, in exchange for a freedom to steadily believe the best.
The Bible’s opening scene depicts a God of light that dwells in the darkness and a God of order than hovers over the chaos. As Swindoll said above, these lessons were re-affirmed for all time in what we thought were the darkest moments of all.
As God says numerous times in Scripture, “Do not be afraid, for I am with you.”
And He is.
Even more than you would believe!
YOUR TURN: How do you handle fear? In what ways has your faith impacted your tendencies toward worry? YOUR COMMENTS MAKE THIS POST BETTER.
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Two days ago, I’d have never typed that title line.
Even today, my fingers fumbled over those keys in that order.
Blame it on Jeff Goins.He’s stirring my feathers and ruffling my pot. As my friend Dean winkingly accuses me, “Well, now you’re just meddling!”
Jeff Goins is meddling.
It began with an innocent enough tweet advertising an online series about writing. There wasn’t any cost, and it only ran fifteen days. Because my wife and I just had our third child, run an approved home, and pastor a church, I was looking for something to do with the two unclaimed minutes every day. This seemed to fit.
Declaration: That was the opening day’s key concept. In a sentence, this day was a dare:
The journey of every writer begins with a declaration. If you have written, then you are already a writer. Now you just need to keep writing. To overcome the demons of insecurity and create.
So here’s what I want you to do today: Declare you’re a writer.
He pushed us to speak to a friend, someone who’s opinion really matters to us. Sitting conveniently by myself at that moment, I timidly typed into my iPhone:
Note to self: I am a writer.
Why the struggle to pump out those twenty-eight keystrokes? Answering will require five more:
It’s exceedingly easier to speak hypothetically, something like comedian Dylan Moran (see him HERE) says about potential:
“People always speak about releasing their potential. Don’t do it! Stay away from your potential. You’ll mess it up, it’s potential, leave it alone. Anyway, it’s like your bank balance – you always have a lot less than you think.”
Left on my bucket list, it hides deep enough down to be invisible. Described as a hope, it remains a next-door neighbour to “winning the lottery”. Relegated to the realm of un-expression, a cloak of protection hangs over me.
No one will roll their eyes at me. No critique is necessary. After all, my reference to writing wasn’t “really serious”. It wasn’t a “dream”, the type you bind yourself to while burning your ships with Cortez.
It was a casual desire… just something that I might have wanted… if it ever worked out… and I ever got a shot… and a genie popped out of a lamp at a garage sale.
Except that isn’t how it feels.
To push words through my larynx or form black text on white screen: These are reality-forming acts. They involve a boldness, even a brazenness, an attitude that rattles the bars of the cell just long enough to realize that the keys controlling your freedom are on your ring.
Jeff Goins, you crafty critter! You’re prepping speech for my tongue that my skills with syntax have never dreamed of drafting.
Yes, I WANT to be a writer. Of course, I HOPE to be a writer. These feelings are mine, but they are sufficiently weak, held in check to keep me from danger or disappointment. They are also strong enough to keep me rooted right here.
But today, where I am, I’ve been dared. Beyond dared, I’ve been compelled to believe that declaration is dynamite: It shakes foundations and scatters pieces to faraway, never-thought-I-could-go-there shores.
So I declare, as part of my homework (dutiful fellow I am) and part of my hope (daring in small steps I am), that I am a writer.
Sigh.
And one more: Sigh.
Dry gulp.
Slight smile.
Now I intend to act like it.