Joel Stiff's Adventure

It was early spring and we were waiting at the bus stop.

I was probably in seventh or eight grade.  That’s a little deceptive because I skipped the third grade.  This made me a year younger and smaller than all my classmates.

About eight of us were playing two hand touch football on the asphalt parking lot.  We usually had a quarterback and a rusher that would count to eight Mississippi.  The rest were receivers and defense providing coverage.

On this particular day, I lined up against the biggest and strongest guy.  This is the guy who started shaving in elementary school.  The one who was taller than some of the teachers.  The one whose chest hair stuck out of the top of his t shirt in junior high.  We had been classmates for four or five years already.  We had played many football games before school.  Usually, he was out of my league and so I would cover someone else.  This day, I thought I’d give it a shot.

Because he was so much stronger than me, I decided to hit him as hard as I could once the ball was snapped.  Now remember, this is touch football on the parking lot.  No one is expecting anyone to come out full tilt.  But I did.  I hit him with everything I had.  It knocked him backward and on his butt.  There were a good number of kids that were just watching including a bunch of girls. And I just embarrassed the toughest guy in front of them.

I tried to switch men on the next play, but he wouldn’t have it.  When the ball was snapped, he hit me as hard as he could and I went straight back, fell flat on my back and I can still remember my head bouncing off the asphalt.

He looked down at me as he offered me a hand up and said, “You better be more careful who you decide to hit that hard.”

I’m more careful these days.

I tell this story frequently, so forgive me if I’ve told it here.

Shannon and I were married and I was still in college when my brother came down to visit.  We lived in Portage Indiana right off of Route 6.

Heading out for the day, the three of us stopped at a Mobile gas station to fuel up.  The gas station also shared the building with a Dairy Queen.  While I am filling up the car, Johnny says that he is going in for a cone.  I told him that I would be getting a car wash after the fill up, so we can meet up however.

Shannon and I are moving through the automatic car wash.  The soap suds were being swished around the windshield and then the rinse cycle washed them all away.  We then moved to the air dryer section of the wash.  It was a very strong set of blowers that were used to get every drop of water off of the vehicle.

By now we can see my brother standing and waiting at the end of the car wash.  He never looked happier.  On his face was a big smile in between the giant licks he was giving to his large vanilla cone.  It was a good day for him.

As we advanced down the track toward the end, my brother began to walk toward the car.  He felt it was safe enough to enter the wash.  I think he was just anxious to rub it in about how delicious his ice cream was.

As he approached, his shirt began to ruffle.  Then  his hair began to blow around a bit.

Then it happened.

Before he knew what was coming, one of the blowers had turned in his direction and blew that large ice cream all over him.  His face, his shirt and the driver’s side of my freshly washed car were now covered in ice cream.

He has a great spirit and never takes himself too seriously.  We laughed and laughed as he got into the car with his empty cone.

Come to think of it, he still owes me a car wash.

We had an annual teen revival each February in Georgia.

Every year, we would choose a theme and design the entire program around it.  One particular year, we went medieval.  The auditorium was decorated like a castle complete with gray brick wallpaper, suits of armor and animal heads.

Our skit was a thirty minute production that also utilized the same theme.  In this year’s skit, our pastor was going to ride in on a Belgian draft horse.  We always had a full dress rehearsal before the actual performance.  We wanted to be sure the horse wouldn’t be spooked by all of the music, strobe lights and smoke machines.

During the rehearsal, the horse did great.  He was ridden in down one side aisle and dismounted at the front center of the auditorium.  He was very patient and showed no signs of being spooked by anything.

The lights came up and we were discussing lines and logistics when there was the sound of rushing water all of a sudden.  We all started looking around at one another trying to discern the source.  Then one of the kids blurted out, “Ewwwwww!”

This massive beast was relieving himself right at the altar.  I don’t know how much urine a Belgian draft horse’s bladder holds, but it flooded the carpet.

After talking to the horse later about why he would do such a thing, we found out that he wasn’t a Baptist.

One of our Georgia youth trips was to New Orleans.

One day, the girls went into the city to explore and the guys had a day on the water.  The next day we switched.  There was to be tubing, pontooning and jet skiing.

While the guys were on the water, Luke and I decided to take the jet ski out.  The water was pretty still that day, if I remember correctly, so we had to make our own fun.  It was a big two person jet ski and we found that if we got our speed up pretty high and then cut the handlebars hard to the right, the rear end would swing around and we would skip sideways across the water’s surface.

Occasionally, we would “catch” on the water and the machine would throw us pretty forcefully onto the lake.  It was great fun.  Until the jet ski tipped over.

Now, my friend Roy had invited us down.  We were staying with his parents and using all of their equipment.  Roy had been an amazing host and had only given us one rule: do not roll the jet ski.

We obeyed that rule.  We didn’t roll the jet ski, it rolled on its own.  As soon as we surfaced, Luke and I flipped it back upright.  It couldn’t have been upside down for more than ten seconds.  Once upright, we started it back up and rode it on in.

Later in the day, someone tried to use it, but it wasn’t running right.  It was running fine when Luke and I brought it in and now it wasn’t.

Roy immediately blamed me for the machine not running right.  He still blames me to this day.  It is one of those things where you are falsely accused and have to live with it.

Last summer, Winston was riding my friend Jere Lipnick’s jet ski off of porpoise point in St. Augustine, Florida.  It quit running while he was riding it.  Jere couldn’t get it started again.  It had to go into the shop for repair.

Winston had nothing to do with this issue either.

But I bet Roy would blame him for it.

 

We’ve all heard the fables about rubbing a bronze lamp only to have a genie pop out and offer us three wishes.

What we forget is that it is only a fable.  We tend to approach God and prayer the same way.  “Ok, God, you said ask and now I’m asking so gimme.”  And He doesn’t gimme.

James chapter four gives us good insight into this kind of misunderstanding about prayer.  He says that we have not because we ask not and when we do ask, we ask amiss that we may consume it upon our lusts.  In other words, we are selfish pray-ers.

The first three verses of James four explains that lustful prayers do not work.  When our heart is in gimme mode, we aren’t going to see what it is we want come to fruition.

Prayer is like a weight loss regimen or saving for retirement.  There are rarely immediate results.  Occasionally it works that way, but not often.  Weight loss occurs when we change our diet, cut back on some calories and increase our activity levels.  Retirement is funded when we save a little here and a little there over a very long period of time.

Prayer changes you when it is something that you put a little time and effort into over a longer period of time.  God is not in the windfall business.  He is trying to conform us to the image of His Son and that takes time.

While we are committing to a daily appointment with God, He starts to change us from the inside out.  When this happens, those lusts that James keeps talking about start to metamorphose.  Real needs rise to the top, while vain matters are something the old us used to cling to.  Now that we are maturing, we put away childish things.

So if you’re arm is getting tired from rubbing that lamp to get your three wishes, you can stop.  A little time spent alone talking to God every day will get you what you’re looking for.

You can listen to me talk about it here.  It’s entitled “Pray”.

Has anyone ever yelled at you?

Man, I’ve been yelled at quite a few times by quite a lot of people.  At the time, the drama makes what they are yelling seem really important.  More often than not, the yelling is just the yellers way of getting you to do what they want you to do.  They lack the ability to formulate a compelling argument, so they try to force their way with, uh, force.

Yelling back only escalates matters. That isn’t a suitable solution.

So, ignore the yellers.

Unless the building is on fire.

It was actually night.

We had an amazing crew of mechanics that cared for our bus fleet.  Sanford Falkner was our crew chief.  He managed engines, transmissions, air systems, anything.  You name it and Sanford could fix it.

Rick Henderson was another.  Rick handled weekly maintenance and safety checks as well as jobs that one man could manage without help, alternators, starters, exhaust, etc.

Craig Eisenmann was our body and paint man.  He helped me paint our first bus as well as the other twelve.  Craig can tell you why I listed the first job separate from the others.  I still wake up in cold sweats after that one.  He also designed and painted our coach bus making it something to be proud of.

Rodney Claxton was our fourth always making himself available to handle any job that the other men may have not been able to get to.

These men have logged thousands of hours of volunteer time to keep our buses on the road.  As bus director, I could not have done my job without the aid of these guys.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Bus #17 had broken down on the shoulder of the road right outside of the bus barn.  There was no way to get it inside and a transmission had to be replaced.

I still remember looking down the hole in the floor at Sanford and Rick.  They were lying on the ground in puddles of water.  The rain was driving down and flowing like a stream around them.  The only light was from a security light by the front of the barn.  They were trying to get the bell housing attached to the motor.  My job was lifting the transmission up by the shift lever and holding it still so they could start the bolts.  After many attempts, we got it on and the bus ran the next day.

I’m sure I said thank you, but I never did thank them enough.

 

One day on the Carrollton route, we were heading down 166 toward town to pick up.

As we drove the long winding road, there was a bull heading in our direction on our side of the road.  He was a fully grown black bull.  As we drew nearer to him, Jere slowed the bus down to nearly a stop.  I jumped into the stair well and opened the door.

At this time, my brother in law and sister in law, Matt and Stephanie were working on the route with us.  When I opened the door, Stephanie came unglued.  She started yelling at me, “Close the door! Close the door! We don’t want him to get in!”

Jere and I looked at each other and laughed and laughed.  This bull was so big, there was no possible way it could have fit through that door.  Not to mention that we were still moving and he was still moving in the opposite direction.  She was still terrified.

We never saw him again.

That’s the way irrational fear works.  We see something in the distance that might be a problem.  Emotion kicks in before we can think.  Our panic causes us to take measures that are unnecessary.  Instead of enjoying the ride, we allow Satan to steal our joy.

And that’s no bull.

In Georgia, Jere Lipnick and I started a bus route.

It was in Carrollton about 15 miles from the church.  We had names for all of the neighborhoods where we picked up riders.  One of these neighborhoods we called “animal farm” due to the number of individual animals and different species we spotted roaming about.

In animal farm, we picked up two brothers named Ernest and Joseph.  Ernest was in his early 20’s while Joseph was around 18 when they started riding.  They were with us a number of years and continued to ride even after I came north.

One Sunday, Ernest came walking out to the bus with a boot velcro’d to his right foot.  As he climbed the steps we noticed a cast on the foot with his bare toes sticking out of the front.  Worse than that was the presence of five long pins sticking straight out from the end of each of his toes.  Just the appearance of this foot made us all cringe.

He stopped to answer all of our questions of which I remember no answers, but the image of that foot is burned into my memory forever.  Once our curiosities had been satisfied, he began to make his way back to his seat.

On the way there, he swung his foot a little too fast and a little too far to the right.  In so doing, he ended up kicking the seat post with one of the pins stuck in his toe.  Yeeeeooooowwww!  Just thinking about it again makes me squirm in sympathetic pain.

Poor Ernest.  He did stay on the bus.  He did make it to church.  He did suffer for his haste that day.

When a person is hurting and they are not themselves, it is often best to slow down and lay low.  Don’t try to make progress.  Don’t try to get anywhere.  Just take a little time to slow down.  There are times when we need to be more cautious than we ordinarily would.

One man put it this way, “Don’t make any decisions when your decision maker is broken.”

 

I worked five years as an assistant pastor in Georgia as youth pastor and bus ministry director.

One of the ministries that the church oversaw was a radio station, actually two stations.  The man who was in charge of the stations was named Ken Johns.  He is a delightful man who I still consider a close friend today.  Every Thursday, Ken would play tennis with Jere Lipnick, Rick Henderson, Jeff Andrews, David Thomason, David Holcomb and myself.  We had a great time together.

I take my tennis very seriously.

By that I mean I am passionate.  I play hard and can get quite vocal in my games.  I never broke a racket, but I have shouted my frustrations for the world to hear.  Mostly, I get frustrated at myself.  Occasionally one of the guys would make a bad call on a ball that I hit.  Then I might get frustrated at them.  It was never personal.  It was always just part of the game.

At the conclusion of each Thursday night, I would make a sincere apology for my outbursts and promise to do better the next week.  These confessions were met with laughter, mockery and disbelief.

One night, Ken Johns, who I nicknamed “Smokey” due to his wispy grey hair, told me that I taught him something that changed his life and one day he would let me know what it was.

I couldn’t wait to hear it.  I knew it had to be good.  I wondered if it was some deep spiritual truth he heard when I was preaching.  Maybe it was something I had written.  Maybe I taught him some great leadership principle while serving in my ministries.  Whatever it was, I knew it would be prestigious.

The day came when I resigned and Shannon, the kids and I made plans to move back to Flint to start Lighthouse.  It was during our saying of goodbyes that Ken Johns (whose pronunciation of the word “dollars” is “dollas” and I still use that myself today) told me how I had changed his life.  He said, “You taught me that serving God could be fun.”

Oh man, was I let down.  I thought for sure he was going to tell me something far more grandiose.  No such luck.

As I look back on it now, I have different feelings.  I watch people who go through the motions of religious duties with difficulty and dread.  Others cannot bear to drag themselves into a church for fear of being bored to tears.  The idea of living for God is anything but a good time.

Now I have a different opinion.  You see, I love serving God.  Ever since I was fifteen years old and began my life of faith, I have had an amazing time.  I love my church and the people in it.  I love the manual labor and I love serving people.  I love vacation bible school with the kids, activities with the teens and working with our adults.  I love preaching, listening to preaching, singing, worshiping, working in bus ministries, baptizing people and telling folks about Jesus.  I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life.

And if showing people just how much fun it is to serve God is the reason He has put me here, I’m good with that.