Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Finding Destiny

“Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established.” –Proverbs 16:3

There is nothing more embarrassing than having to do pull-ups in front of your entire P.E. class – especially if you are really weak.  It never seemed fair to me that all the girls had to do was hang on the bar for 30 seconds to get an ‘A’- but we guys had to do 10 pull-ups!  Like so many other activities in school, the ‘pull-up’ test to me was just another opportunity for public humiliation – which the instructors seemed to particularly enjoy.  Of course the guys in front of me generated lots of snickering as they violently flailed and wormed their way up to the bar for every pull-up, and when it came to my turn I wasn’t sure I wanted to participate.  I figured I could pull off about 3 ‘dignified’ pull-ups – and that is exactly what I did before dropping to the ground.  The fact that I failed the test didn’t matter much to me – at least I had retained a little self-worth.

To say the least I was no ‘jock’ in eighth grade - and I despised any activity that required more movement than my thumbs while playing video games.  This was quite different from my track star brother – who somehow seemed to enjoy running laps around the local grade school’s field.  I developed a life philosophy, “I would rather rot than run”.  Academically the story wasn’t that much different – I had developed a brilliant organizational scheme that consisted of a school bag with all of my papers randomly tossed inside.  One day may science teacher stood frustrated in front of my table as I searched the contents of my bag for the previous night’s homework and yelled, “JESSE – IF YOUR BUTT WERE DETACHABLE YOU WOULD PROBABLY LOSE THAT TOO!!”  It is one of life’s little irony’s that I ended up with a degree in biochemistry- but that is a different story.

My life was heading in a certain direction and to tell the truth, I really didn’t care.  The very most important thing was conquering every video game rental within the three day rental period.  If anything I took pride in my cynical outlook on everything, until an unexpected change happened in the summer of my freshman year of high school.  My parents always had attended church faithfully, and of course I was always required to go along.  To me however God was just a distant concept, very far removed from my everyday reality.  I remember standing in a church service and wondering to myself, ‘…what if I could actually meet God.’  Even though I had attended church my entire life, the idea of actually having a relationship with God was very foreign to me.  That summer my parents sent me to a church camp, and like everything else I viewed it with the greatest cynicism.

The camp had all the elements that I expected – rowdy kids, prank playing and drama, but there was something else there that I didn’t expect.  Outside the chapel I heard the most beautiful sounding worship emanate throughout the campus, and I was instantly captivated.  I felt literally drawn to the worship, like someone being drawn to a mysterious yet beautiful light shining in the darkness.  The sense of being drawn however didn’t seem to come only from me – but it was as if Jesus Himself were telling me, ‘Come’.  The sense was overwhelming, because I never really thought that God truly wanted me – and desired me, to come to Him.  God had always seemed distant from me, but what I felt now was deeply personal.  I said in my heart to God – ‘if I can feel this way my whole life, then I will give my whole life to you.’  That night in worship I felt my hands lift up to God, for the first time fully surrendered to Him.

It is amazing what happens in your life when you surrender it to God.  The next year of my life was the most amazing experience for me, and caused teachers and those around me to ask, ‘What happened to you?’  When God was placed first in my life, suddenly I had the desire to excel in everything else.  I bought a pull-up bar and began doing pull-ups every night, and by the time the P.E. test came along – I broke the school record at 35 pull-ups.  I also broke the school record for chair push-ups at 150.  That summer I ran my first marathon over the Sierra’s with my high school cross country team.  Academically, I maintained a perfect 4.0 that entire year and received numerous academic awards.  The change that happened in me was so sudden and overwhelming that it impacted those around me as well, and the next year I became president of the high school’s Bible Club.  I believe that when you surrender your life to God in the most complete way, you don’t have to find your destiny anymore – your destiny will find you.