Josiah Road

Time Is Running Out!

posted by Sarah Gallagher 27Oct

God has been talking to me a lot lately. Or maybe I just now cleaned out my ears so I could hear Him. One of the main things He has laid on my heart is a sense of urgency. The phrase “time is running out” keeps popping into my mind and consuming my thoughts, and in turn, my actions.

For example, I have always loved quality time with people (Facebook will tell you that is my love language. Not that I rely on Facebook quizzes to dictate my spiritual life.) I LOVE getting together for coffee dates, even though I don’t drink coffee. I have had the opportunity to meet with new friends and old friends recently for lunch, “coffee” or just to chat under the pretense of food. Lately, however, I have felt a need to connect with people individually and to thoroughly appreciate the people God has placed in my life. I keep having the sense that I am running out of time and that any time not spent with people (or a productive, necessary activity) is time wasted.

So here’s the crux: isn’t living with urgency how Jesus lived on earth? He made time for people – went out of his way for strangers as well as friends. He was a traveler – He did not have a home. He went around teaching in temples, prophesying at the dinner table and spent time fasting intensely, healing people and raising people from the dead. I mean, c’mon! He did not mess around.

Jesus knew a time was coming when He would no longer be in man’s flesh, able to sit down in our homes and teach our children. So He took the town by storm and gathered a team of men to help Him spread His message of love and redemption. He revolutionized His world, not pursuing His own pleasures on earth, but rather by serving man, taking time to invest in others, and teaching how to love completely.

I do not know why exactly God is placing this sense of urgency on my heart right now but my prayer is that I will always live with urgency and I may be a more effective Christian because of it. Once we grasp how incredible and infinite and complex our God is, it will revolutionize our own life. Then we will become a catalyst in our world and become empowered to drastically change the world. Let’s hold each other accountable to be this kind of catalyst so we can get with God’s incredible plans for our lives, our cities and our world.

Mark 13:35 “Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn.”

A Solid 9.5 For Style

posted by Daniel Blackaby 20Oct

The hockey rink. A blissful oasis of joyful memories, where magical moments happen more frequently than within the halls of Hogwarts. A haven of nostalgia, it is a place where friendships are born and battles are won… and for some, a place where we hopelessly attempt to recapture our pre-twenty-college-pound-glory.

Steven Spielberg couldn’t have scripted it any more dramatically. Rallying from a two-goal deficit, my team forced overtime in dramatic fashion. The extra session solved nothing, so the game hinged on the most exciting moment in hockey – the shootout! Back and forth, neither team able to claim the upper hand. Eventually all sixteen players on both teams had tried their luck on the opposing goalie…except for me. Adding to the storybook tilt was my girlfriend. She was visiting me from Canada and two days earlier had become my fiancée. As I took center ice, the fate of the game resting on my stick, I winked to her, “after killer moves I am about to make she’ll never regret signing on to my team as long as she lives!”

Launching forward with superhuman speed, I took the puck and headed down ice. In the next mill-a-second I gauged that the goalie was weak glove-side, would be fooled by a deke and was of west-Ukrainian descent. My stick entered into a complex pattern of precision moves, spurred on by the infatuated cheers of my fiancée, then…WOOSH!!!

In a blur of motion I realized my skates were pointing heaven-ward and I was hurling through the air at approximately twenty miles an hour. My skates had caught an edge. Pirouetting across the sky, my body entered into a series of triple salchow and double lutzes not seen since Kristi Yamaguchi’s prime. Bouncing off the ice’s surface, I completed a beautiful double-single-double combination. With a flurry of climactic motion – BANG! – I slammed into the boards. I can’t remember what was more challenging. Avoiding eye contact with my disgusted teammates afterwards, or trying to convince my fiancée to still marry me!

The immense pressure of my fiancée watching had gotten to me, and I had stumbled (to put it inexcusably lightly). We all must deal with pressure at some point. In the 2006 Winter Olympic Games speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon felt similar pressure. Although heavily favored in his race, he stumbled out of the gate and fell to his face. As Christians we can also feel heavy pressure. With the world constantly analyzing our every action, many Christians can become paralyzed by the accompanied pressure. Fear of messing up and ruining our witness, or else fear of the pressure that comes along with following God’s will can hold us back. The Bible compares life to a race, and urges us to, “run in such a way as to get the prize.” Don’t let pressure hold you back. You will never claim the prize by tentatively walking to the finish line! God never expects us to be perfect, but he does ask us to put our whole self into following him!

1 Corinthians 9: 24 “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”

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