Yesterday, I finished a long day of meetings feeling energized and encouraged but ready to get home and put my feet up! Great in theory, except I was in Dallas, TX staring at a 5 hour gap between that moment and my flight time. So I decided, it was time to fly stand-by, find a quiet corner to escape the frenzy of DFW airport, and knock out my back-log of unanswered email from the day.
However, my mind turned to bigger things, in that somewhat quiet moment in the corner of the terminal my mind turned back to the Ordinary to Extraordinary devotion I wrote last week, “God uses the ordinary to accomplish the extraordinary.” Isn’t that the beginning for every wisdom hunter? God takes ordinary life and reveals His extraordinary gift of grace and salvation. I smiled to myself thinking back on my beginnings as a wisdom hunter and how God used the ordinary things of football, girls, guts and glory my senior year in high school to introduce me to His extraordinary grace.
As football captain, and some might say a star linebacker/fullback for the Albertville Aggies, high school was my athletic prime. In addition to soaking in the roar of a packed out stadium, as I rallied our team to victory, being on the football team always seemed to help efforts on getting a date on Friday night. My daughters love to bring up that fact when they look back at old messages in my yearbook! However, to me, life hinged on my personal success on the field. I was in control. Success depended on me, my talent and my performance. My identity was based on the temporal—ever changing, and not on the eternal—never changing.
However, I met my match Valentine’s Day of my senior year in high school. I finally approached my crush (since 7th grade) and asked her for a date. There was a problem, her Dad would allow the date under one condition, “Boyd, if you want to date Rita, you have to go to church with us.” Church was the farthest thing from my mind, but if it got me that date …I agreed.
That was just the beginning of God’s pursuit of my heart. Not only did God turn a date into a church service, He also used my football coach and an injured ankle my senior season to lead me to my knees (literally). At the age of 19, I asked the Lord into my heart, to take my life for His glory. Over 30 years, my crush has remained my crush and wife for 30+ years and is a constant reminder of God’s pursuit of my heart.
We all have to start somewhere. Life can seem ordinary and far from perfect, I know that because the first 19 years of my life was filled with life “stuff” that could be classified as disappointment, unfair, and filled with painful memories of an absent dad. Don’t let your seemingly ordinary circumstances or bumpy past dictate your passion to know God. He just wants to meet you each morning in His Holy Word, so you can be loved by Him and so you can love for Him. Learn with me and become a life long wisdom hunter allowing our Heavenly Father to take the ordinary and transform it to His extraordinary.
Here is a classic shot from my senior athletic awards banquet published in our local newspaper, the Sand Mountain Reporter, I’m in the guy in middle wearing the 3 piece suit!
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Boyd – LOVE this! Thank you so much for sharing. Especially love this gentle reminder: “Don’t let your seemingly ordinary circumstances or bumpy past dictate your passion to know God.”
Thank you for leading, challenging and reminding of God’s constant pursuit of our hearts.