Take Courage

Eclipse Day 2017

We are up at my wife’s families summer lake house at Lindbergh Lake, Montana.  It really is (and I get no credit for this) the most wonderful place on earth for us.  Yesterday was golf in the morning at near by Double Arrow Golf Resort in temperatures that never got above 75 and Mexican train & reading the rest of the day.  See… pretty heavenly isn’t it.

This morning I got up and finished the book of Acts.  Wow… here is my summary of Acts.  Paul is a stud. The Holy Spirit built the church.  I have work to do.

One moment in Acts however really jumped out to me.  Smacked me in the face is more like it!  I have read most of the Bible (has anyone really read Zephaniah or Jude?) and certainly Acts before but I cannot remember another time where the Lord “stood next to” someone and talked to them.  Doesn’t he usually light up a bush, use a faceless rumbling voice from on high, or send an angel when he wants to tell us something?

Acts 23:11   New International Version (NIV)11 The following night the Lord stood near Paul and said, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”

Just take that in for one second… “the Lord stood near Paul and said…”  Is there another verse in the bible that makes the Lord God almighty seem more down to earth, approachable than this moment?  The picture that comes to my mind from my childhood of this scene is legendary Dallas Cowboy Coach Tom Landry standing on the sidelines of a game talking to my hero quarterback Roger Staubach.   Coach Landry “standing near Roger” discussing the next play.

God quietly stands next to his quarterback, Paul, discussing the next play, “You have to go to Rome.”  “I know” says Paul.  Then God gives him a pat on the butt and says …”take courage” as Paul jogs back in to execute Gods offense.  It was a deeply personal and amazing scene for me that morning as I read and then personalized this verse.  After finishing the reading my immediate response was to text this message to my best friend and accountability partner…*“I don’t know what you are doing today but this verse just jumped out at me this morning. Oh to have a moment like this in my life!  Acts 23:11 …”

My friends reply took a day to come back but when it did, as usual from this great man, he both encouraged and challenge me to “be fully me” in fulfillment of the call to take courage and go to Rome.  He shared these words back to me.

Taylor.
As I read this I was struck by the thought that you’re aspiration may already be your reality. For Paul ,he was already known in the circles he travelled. It was the Gospel that took him places he had not yet been. He was called to “be Paul” in places of new power and strange circumstances. God took him to places he might never have gotten to himself and when he did he was a witness.
I think this is your life too TD. God has called you, claimed you, and gifted you. He has taken you for a while outside the circumstances of your birth and enable you to be a witness, and encourager and provoker of faithfulness wherever you go.
So, be TD today and everyday regardless of the crowd or the power you speak to.

You don’t reply to notes like this really.  You just say “thank you”  and try to put the advice into action. So here I sit, on eclipse day (August 21, 2016) on a lake in Montana thinking that my friend knows I am not St. Paul, he knows my heart, my human failings, yet he encourages me to be “fully TD???”

I think when my friend uses the term “fully” as in be fully TD he must be saying to be the “best version of me.”  Fully must translate into best as in becoming the TD God intended me to be.  Capable of executing the plays called by God. Just when I was starting to think about what that looks like in my life today… the sun went dark at 10:58 am over our lake.