Looking to Work Here?

It was, and to this day, is, the single coolest drummer’s name I’d ever heard: Tony Beats. If you know him, let him know that his name was an inspiration. He came to the house for a drum audition for our band. We were set at keys, vocals, guitar, and bass. All we needed was a drummer. 
 
When he introduced himself and began to load in, I was impressed by the kit he brought. It was, once assembled, a Neil Pert type of set. That means he had everything mounted on a cage. There were toms of many sizes, electronics I’d never seen before, a huge kick drum, cymbals on top of cymbals. It had to have cost him as much as a pretty nice car.
 
We kicked off rehearsal and one thing was evident. Tony was lost in his own tool set. He missed drums, lacked rhythm and, sometimes, it felt like he was spinning in circles.In spite of the incredible name and drum kit, we didn’t pick Tony.
 
The next drum audition came from a guy who looked like Jesus. I mean that literally. We invited him in because, well, He was knocking at the door. 
 
He brought a bass kick, a snare, one cymbal and a high hat. Four pieces in all. We asked him if he had more and he assured us he did, but this was an audition and if he couldn’t impress us with the pieces he brought, then all of the other pieces were unnecessary. He was right.
 
He felt the band’s direction intuitively and in one truly spiritual moment caught a rhythmic hitch perfectly. It was a movie scene. The kind where a singer sings perfectly including lyrics she has never heard. Like that. He joined the band. Our new drummer was an expert at the fundamental basics. 
 
Today, youth workers have more tools than an octopus plumber. They are surrounded by tools; many of these are excellent. Discipleship apps, game sites, cohorts, mentors, seminary degrees, specific translation and study Bibles, online curriculum, video resources, AI announcements, skit scripts, speakers, seminars, conferences, bands, comedians, magicians, artists, networks, subscriptions, and affordable pizza. Despite the glut of help most youth ministries are in decline or, maintaining status quo. What’s the problem?
 
Well some of the struggle to attract and minister to students is cultural shift. Smart phones, the 15 year, unrestricted experiment on unsupervised teenagers. The Anxious Generation, a 2022 study on the effect of the rewiring of the adolescent brain by Jonathan Haidt, sites students becoming less engaged by real life, addicted to their own dopamine and strangled by a pressure to gain social media approval. The average amount of time spent on social media, and this does not include zoom classrooms or homework, is over 7 hours a day.
 
The sequestering of our teenagers to their own rooms during Covid has also born ill effect. Decision making, risk-taking and physical challenges have been tragically hampered. The most difficult piece to the research, at least by page 150, is, we are not sure if the effects can be reversed. 
 
It may feel as if youth workers have an impossible task to accomplish. The feelings are most likely right. But then again, ministry has always been an impossible task. But not to God.
 
Students are still primarily interested in answering three questions. 
 
In their book, 3 Big Questions That Change Every Teenager, Kara Powell and Brad Griffin discuss the same 3 questions, I believe teenagers have always asked. Who am I? Where do I fit?  What difference can I make? Doesn’t seem like rocket science, does it? Over the next several months I will be adding a blog about each of these core principles.
 
Youth workers should wrestle down expertise in just a few areas. A four piece kit may be the ticket to effectively communicating to today’s students. After all, we signed up with a deeply seated belief: “Our obedience, empowered by God’s faithfulness to His promises amounts to a mobilized, energized, discipled body of teenagers. These six areas of concentration originally came through Dann Spader at Sonlife. Over the last 25 years of rural ministry
 
1. God’s Word abides.
Anything in my own authority or pulled from my own experience is likely to become subjective and even irrelevant. God speaks to us through His Word. I have referred to the process as the Greatest Relational Miracle. Infinite God, speaks timeless wisdom to flawed man. Man uses the imperfect tool of writing it all down. 2000 years later we pick up the ancient manuscript and read the words of God with our imperfect minds, skewed contexts and sinful hearts. They reach into our souls and we understand something of God.
When we are under the authority of God’s Word, we can discern and speak with the Holy Spirit. That matters. Becoming a communicator of God’s Word is more than being a critic, reader, or paraphraser of it. Discect it. Digest it. Apply it. Simplify it and learn how to engage with it!
 
2. Be concerned about the right image.
Some ministries attempt to give students something they are not interested in pursuing. Students are interested in relationships but afraid of the risks involved. When we are investing in students and the things they are interested in, we are sending the message that real relationships can be trusted. Time spent with, words spoken and things done for, are still primary love languages. Forgetting my agenda and legitimately pursuing teenagers is an area of expertise.I need to know where to find students, what they really like, who they respect and where they are making their investments. 
 
I have discovered most youth workers are actually driven by their own middle-aged agendas. If students do not share that same agenda, you can expect diminishing results.Students will show up to perception. In other words, they will trust the hype, right or wrong. That’s how people ended up paying good money to see, The Last of the Airbenders. There wasn’t a sequel because the image did not match the perception.
 
Are we about Jesus, relationships, life-transformation or God’s Word? Figure out your values and then form your image. 
 
3. Love them through the tough days.
You don’t plan tragedy. You just know it’s always around the bend. Family strife, disappointments, breakups and doubts are commonplace. Unfortunately, so is illness, death and spiritual struggle. We can only be there when it happens. Timing is important. By the way, more students in your care equals more time spent in care for your students. You need a system of care. It involves more people than you because the problems, difficulty and struggle will be greater than your ability to deal with them. 
 
4. Create community which connects.
The fight against a culture where permanence has been obliterated is difficult, endless work. Students, volunteers and staff all are looking for meaningful relationships which unite them in a cause. Make sure that you take every chance to draw people together into loving, invested, recognizable families; families, in this case, meaning groups of like-spirited people. By the way, this never happens accidentally. It is something you refine, commit to, mull over and prepare for.
 
5. Pray as a commitment.
None of us can do this alone. The needs are too great, especially if your ministry begins to attract more students. Prayer is not the expressing platitudes to God. Prayer is the heart cry, the desperate longings and submission to the will of the Father. It is also access to the power of God Almighty! It is the very presence of God. It is our reliance and His demonstration. In Exodus 33:15 Moses begs God, “If Your Presence does not go with us,” Moses replied, “do not lead us up from here.”I wonder how our ministries would look if this was our daily prayer.
 
6. Live like Jesus Christ.
This is the part where sharing faith, inviting, humility and death happens. It seems if I could keep this thought at the forefront of my mind each day, I would naturally accomplish each of the above goals. There is no science to effective youth ministry. It is all God’s, and it is completely supernatural. I want my ministry to reflect Him… not me.

I have been thinking quite a bit about saying, “Goodbye,” to the past year. Frankly, there are some parts I wish were not a part of the collective memory. I have joked, not very well, about being glad that the year is done. Now I am aware that many of our friends feel like they would love to see a continuation of 2024. Good stuff kept rolling. Kids married nearly perfect spouses, they received raises, their teams won and they even lost a few pounds without trying, but even the most fortunate of us have to admit that every year has its share of turmoil. As I processed this past annuum, I have decided my approach to this last calendar year isn’t very helpful. It actually is unbiblical and even untrusting of my God’s intent. Here’s where I start. 

I begin by acknowledging the difficult things as being uncomfortable, perhaps even unwanted. 

Some of you have had years that are beyond desired. Illness, loss of loved ones, jobs lost, family tensions, disappointing kids and unforeseen hurdles crowd into our otherwise perfect year. If I had my way, bad things would not have happened. I also would not have had to stretch toward eternity. 

In each struggle, although I cannot pretend to see what God is doing, I know that He is doing. This doesn’t mean He has caused the cancer, cost me my relationship or lost control of the world. It does mean that we can find Him in each of these things, at work to bring about His great story. I really have to learn to see my life as a small part of HIS story. Sometimes it makes me feel a bit like an insignificant pawn in God’s master plan, chess game.

If I remove the fact that God loves me and endured ultimate discomfort, pain, inconvenience and shame for my sake, I often feel as if He doesn’t really care. A lot of people give up on submitting to His love because they have already determined they are good enough without it. If I, however, realize His intent in allowing struggle, no matter how difficult, and this is the additional caveat, this life on earth, which being all I have experienced, is a preparatory precursor to eternity, is to refine and mold me into the image of Christ. 

I was sitting on a deck in Tennessee with my two son-in-laws and my oldest daughter. They were involved in a deep discussion about how they each, had learned to embrace their faith in Jesus Christ, personally. It was incredible to be the fly on the wall. 

The three themes that unified them were consistency of believers around them, the regular intervention from the hand of God and suffering. The last caught my attention. I actually wondered if believers (primarily me) should seek out struggle. Fortunately, 2024 offered me adversity as a tool toward greater reliance on Christ. I didn’t have to seek it out this year. You see, if suffering is one of the primary keys to embracing Christ on this deeper plane, then I have been gifted intimacy by virtue of challenge. 

2024 was a shaper of my mind, heart and resiliency. Gifts of a loving God.

Romans 8:28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

James 1:2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Allow perseverance to finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Here are a few lessons from the pits of despair… or should I say, “Hope.”

Each struggle has an eternal purpose.

Most likely, I cannot see it today, any better than Job, Joseph or any of the other scriptural sufferers. I may not until I walk in eternity. I can trust the process though. God is faithful and good.

I choose how these circumstances will shape me.

Each distress affords me an opportunity to lean into my walk with Jesus or to run away from Him. This is no easy decision. I have to squelch my own sense of entitlement, aversion to misfortune and desperate desire for ease. Each hardship is formidable because I want whatever comes easily, but true growth always comes from battle. It’s as if there is an unseen battle for my soul. I believe that my eternal soul rests in God’s hands, but I can lose my hope in that faith. Each day I must choose to trust God’s plan.

Each person has to learn these truths on their own.

I am the focus of each affliction. God intends for each of these distresses to make me into something I am not yet. 

As 2025 was rung in, I couldn’t help dread a little of the unknown struggles. There is too much trust to jump into a new year. After all, none of us know what it will hold. We do know who holds it all though. We know what His intent is. 

I suppose being grateful for 2024 is a great start to anticipating a remarkable 2025. 

On Sunday night, while the ministry night was coming to a close, our last regular school year event, there were people in the corn field, doing their work. The people in those corn fields have no vision of the corn maze that their work is helping to accomplish. In Harrison County, Ohio, the same dynamic will be happening in a few weeks. In Kalkaska County, they won’t be planting corn, but they will be establishing trails and maze sights. 

They can’t see the maze yet, or the hundreds and hundreds of students who will flock to Crossroads Farm sites for the annual event. They cannot see those who will respond to the Gospel either. 

There have been so many, “I didn’t expect to see that,” moments here at the farm, and I know across all of the branches. 

Did you know that if you bounce a Mountain Dew 2 liter bottle, it builds pressure and bounces higher. I am about to make you the coolest grandparents in the world. If you continue to do this, the bottle will, when dropped cap down from a bell tower, blow its lid and launch like a rocket to heights exceeding said tower!

Did you know that a hotdog, fired at someone out of a balloon launcher at 20 feet cannot be caught by a 5 gallon bucket, but will leave a hot dog shaped welt? Even through the catcher’s equiptment. I know a lot about water balloon launchers. Do you know that an egg, if frozen solid will blow through a plywood castle at 200 feet? Did you know that an egg, unfrozen can knock a kid out at 100 yards?

Did you know that if a 120 pound girl, makes contact with a giant earth ball on one side, at the exact same time as a 245 pound linebacker hits it from the other side, she can travel up to 15 feet airborne!

Do you know how hard it is to create a flaming arrow that will stay lit during flight?

Did you know that Tide detergent glows in the dark? Or that middle schoolers will do anything for points, or if you put a high school guitarist on a stage, but turn him off in the mix, he will still think he’s awesome?

Everyone who has worked at Crossroads Farm does.

Who’da thunk it. 25 years ago, Crossroads Farm launched on a wing and a prayer. A lot of people waved goodbye from Trinity Church in Lansing, pretty sure this was the fatal end. Don’t misunderstand, they hoped the best. Quite a few contributed. Most prayed. They just had never seen it before. It’s tough to buy in to wishful thinking. How can you make sure you are witnessing something God is doing as opposed to something a pipe-dreamer has launched. 

For those of you who watched 25 years ago, congratulations! This is a celebration of something God did through you against all probability! The problem with a 25th celebration is that, in many ways, it’s not very long. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. In other ways it is too long. We forget or assume on some of the amazing things that are a part of our story. For the purpose of this blog, I can summarize our 25 years of CRF with one statement.

The phrase is, “Well, I didn’t expect to see that!” 

I remember in our first building, a new student walked through the doors of the old church and stared at the lights, decor and students and said… “This is not what I was expecting!”

A few years later and on virtually every first-time visit to the Shed, we heard, “This is more than I was expecting.”

Bands that have played at the Murder Mystery, walk into the barn, are swarmed and crowded by hundreds of teenagers, have all said, “This is not what I was expecting!” 

In fact, while at the National Youth Workers Conference a few years back, we were connecting with a talent agent for a number of bands. He asked us to describe our event. I got about three seconds into describing our Murder Mystery, and one of his bands jumped forward. They said, “I saw this on KJ52’s feed (a popular Hip Hop artist)!” It is awesome! We want to play it!” And then they, like everyone younger than me, proceeded to show a reel to each other about our event. 

We are not what you expect. 

I wonder if Christianity shared the kind of God who is not what we saw coming, if it would have the same PR problem it does currently. I think not.

How often has God exceeded your expectations?!

Our theme for the 25th anniversary celebration is, “Things unseen.” It is a forward look to the things that we believe God has called us to do. If you were there at the beginning you might say, "Oh, no! Here we go again.” But that’s not a scary thing. It is the way we have lived this call for the past 25 years. 

I have fond memories of one of our first students at CRF. I remember him jumping out of a car which had careened into our driveway, and running up to our house, and through the door, while his best friend shot him with a pellet gun. I remember him duct taping a newly deceased deer head onto his car hood, kinda like Boss Hog’s Bull horns. He taught me the game Possum Punting. I never expected to see any of that.

I recall the day God rescued the vision with a surprise $35,000 check from a man I barely knew. God built the Shed with a large gift from a person I wouldn’t have asked. Our board has been energized by leaders who were far too busy to care about rural American teenagers. I didn’t see any of that coming.

I didn’t see the desperation that God would require of our prayers. I didn’t see the numbers coming, in some cases so much faster, and in some so much slower.

I didn’t see that Dawn would pray for a bar of soap, which God provided through a dear elderly friend. I didn’t see a house fire coming in the third year. I didn’t see the friends who would walk away. 

I didn’t see 9/11 coming. I didn’t see the pandemic coming. I didn’t see the hardship, adjustments, reliance, the plodding, slow, hand of God. If I had, I would have quit before we started. 

I didn’t really see many of our existing staff joining us. I didn’t anticipate that my best efforts were nothing. I didn’t know what God was doing, or why he was taking so long.

The answer is written on my wall. God is more concerned with who you are in Him than what you do for him.

I told our team as we set up for the 25th anniversary celebration, “All of those times I was waiting for God to do something I saw, He was waiting for me to become something so that He could move without crushing us. He is patient, but not slow like most of us understand it. 

I wonder, while some wait to receive the assurance that God is going to do what we see, God continues to say what a dear friend said often to me: “You ain’t seen nothing kid.” But now, my friend, “Dart,” has seen it all!

I think Harold and Ruth Ashton would be pleased with what they’ve seen… not Dawn’s and my vision but God’s. So are Gene and Berna Baker. Paul Bamford, Lou, Larry, and literally hundreds of others who left this earth without seeing what they thought they would.

You see, the last 25 years have been God demonstrating a better plan, a bigger impact and a greater vision for CRF. It has been a test run. 

It has been about the People,

God’s faithfulness,

His unmerited blessing.

BUT…

1. God has more

9Rather, as it is written:

“No eye has seen,

no ear has heard,

no heart has imagined,

what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

10But God has revealed it to us by the Spirit.  1 Cor. 2

We use these verses to talk about heaven, but they are much larger in scope. It includes our eternity, but it speaks of our life in Christ. 

I was speaking at CRF The Lanes this year, and I talked about our vision problem. I made the statement, “Without Christ, the best you can do, is you.” I have friend who says it this way, “You don’t know what you don’t know. The mortal problem, is that the best I want is only the best I’ve seen. God has more. It’s been said, humans use less than 10% of their brains, misquoted and not generally true, but we do know that high school boys use a tenth of their words, and middle school boys use a tenth of their coordination. I contend that we use a minute portion of faith. 

God reveals the direction we should walk but seldom the arrival time of our travels. My time will come to an end, but God’s desire for rural students remains eternal and infinite. 

As we look at the next 25 years, which will certainly surpass my time here as president, it has been our goal to rough plan our directions. We have begun to think of it as the CRF Line. A stretch of 13 branch sites running from Pennsylvania to Montana through the great upper midwest. We have begun to communicate with leaders, research those areas and chart a course. 

I cannot see the faces of those students. I cannot even see the leaders of each branch, churches or pastors yet. God does. I am confident of this however, If God sees them, then He is waiting, the passage says, “Preparing.”  

2. This Generation waits to see a God BIGGER than they can imagine.

Don’t you? Listen to a memory, Isaiah has.

3When you came down long ago,

you did awesome deeds beyond our highest expectations.

And oh, how the mountains quaked!

4For since the world began,

no ear has heard

and no eye has seen a God like you,

who works for those who wait for him!  Isaiah 64

We need to see God for who He is, and then we began to see things we haven’t imagined. 

Dawn always desires more. More from our time… and her problem is that she wants to squeeze an immortal eternal God into our mortal temporal hours. More from our gardens, our hospitality, our conversations and our ministry. It’s what happens when you see God for who He is and want to see what He will do. Sometimes I wonder why we spent so much money on a reclining lounge chair! CRF has always done more.

The Shed alone has had over 3,600 students as a part of their regular weekly programming. 10,000 have heard the Gospel. We have sent 184,000 texted devotions to students. Our busses cover about 600 miles each Sunday. Next year it will increase by a couple of hundred more. We pray by name for every single person on our mailing list each week. Over 4,500 households! It takes us over two years to pray through our list. Our published training curriculum, The ARMS of a Servant Leader offers our volunteer Coaches 24 hours of classwork annually while they receive an additional 36 hours of training each year! We expect each Coach to give five hours every week to student ministry representing nearly four full work weeks in terms of man-hours. We call every kid. Receive prayers for each student by name for our big trips, and many of you are a part of those prayer teams. We plant corn in April and May in order to create a maze in June and July, in order to have hundreds of students hear the Gospel, families and schools to have the experience in October. We pack hundreds and hundreds of Christmas gifts, deep fry about a thousand Oreos, and serve a full feast to all of our students at Christmas. We labor over announcements and crowd breakers. We pick up kids across 9 counties. Our Winter Retreat is a spectacle. Our Good Friday experiences are immersive, our summer bible studies are involved and our summer trips are unforgettable. All of this is our utmost for His highest!  

I didn’t see how God would impact my children. I didn’t see the number of adult helpers which would come alongside this ministry. I hadn’t anticipated nearly 200 students showing up to the first event. I hadn’t seen students outgrowing our home for prayer breakfasts! I hadn’t seen the numbers of salvations, baptisms, students in ministry, kids of 1st generational students now attending. I didn’t see the number of unfulfilled suicide notes. I cannot have seen the students who have been rescued from lifetime drug addictions, and if the statistics are correct, this ministry area has seen teen pregnancy decline from leading the State, to now being in the bottom third! Not all us, but partly.

Now we wait for God again! I’m asking God for the branch directors of 10 more areas. I’m asking that He’ll send us people from areas who will pray. While I wait, He sees the students and the leaders and the finances and the impact!

3. Our job is to see the impossible

7For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Cor. 5:7

This is not a self help cue. It is the way the church is to operate! Through His eyes, seeing the unseen people and places. We are asking you to see students you have never met, places you will never visit and years you will not live to! We desire that you see what God sees, and then do what God says. This is God’s work… And by the way, when you do what you expected to do, you shouldn’t anticipate that God will do more than you expected.

4. God’s job is to do it.

Whether it is moving a creek to accommodate a corn field. Praying for land that seems too expensive. Training leaders who sometimes seem more long term than your immediate needs. Calling Influencers and leaders you should have no audience with. Asking for favor we don’t deserve but God wants to grant! What does HE SEE! Doing the next!

I desire to inspire you by virtue of the faithfulness of God. Whether you are a branch director who believes that you have a pretty clear view of what God has in store, or a friend who has been here for all 25 years of our momentary life at CRF… whether your vision is being fulfilled or not, to inspire you to stop seeing the way we all see and to see what God sees. I will act in obedience to pursue all that my Heavenly Father seems to be asking me to do. I will hold loosely to my vision, because I know the world, your world, desperately needs to see something beyond our corporate vision for life, faith and hope. It needs to see heaven come down in the form of a man. It needs to see the miraculous nail scarred hands of Jesus. It is near sighted to not see the glory of the cross as our entire existence. We have chosen to live in the promises as opposed to the realities. We need more. We need all of Him, entering all of us, impacting all of the world, for all of eternity.

We know that God sees things differently. My question is, what if God is waiting for you to let go of what you see in order for you to see what He sees. 

Here’s what I know. You ain’t seen nothing yet. What are you waiting for?

Wanna hear something funny?

I was on a Zoom call with about 40 leaders from around the country yesterday... Wait for it. At some point in the call, I needed to plug in my laptop… Wait for it. I shut my video down in order to move around my office, locate my charger and plug it in… Wait for it. When I plugged it in and looked up at my screen, there it was. Our Crossroads Farm Zoom video profile picture, normally a CRF logo, was instead, a picture of Bert Spalding, our RCI Director. 

I realized how confusing it would be for the other participants to see me one moment and Bert the next. 

Notwithstanding his scholarly and distinguished good looks, we look nothing alike.

Alexa recently picked up a conversation between my oldest daughter and a friend of hers, and then in a random act of control, broadcast it to our car. You may now insert your favorite conspiracy, matrix or antichrist story here. 

My point is not any of those things, which may, or may not be applicable. It is simply to say, whenever technology is added to our communications, we have added another interpreter to the conversation. My question through each one of these scenarios was, “How did that just happen?”

Have you ever felt like this? 

How did my marriage end up with this much distance between my spouse and I? How did my kids miss that value?

We, at CRF, are in a constant effort of exegeting student culture. Words change. Pastimes change. Identities and passions change, and we are to make sense of it, determine ministry courses of action, and apply God’s truth to a generation. It is a herculean task… Wait for it… If I am doing it. 

I am in the process of reapplying my knowledge of the Holy Spirit to my job, my marriage and my roles as father, boss and communicator. I have known, at least cognizantly, His role and partly His function. I rely on the relationship, but sometimes ignore his beckoned call. There must be a spiritual, supernatural involvement from God for us to make spiritual, supernatural changes in our lives, our relationships and our communities.

Here is a reminder for you. 

He teaches us how to do the things He has called us to. 

But when the Father sends the Advocate as my representative—that is, the Holy Spirit—he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you. John 14:26

My problem is my own propensity to solve my own problem with my own wisdom, through my own strength, in my own time. Frankly, I end up putting the wrong face on a problem and communicate through the wrong channels too many times.

Psalm 46:10 says we are to, “be still and know that He is God." 

My pace always demands my solutions, but God has another principle at work in my life these days...

Wait for it.

That’s it. Submit my pace to the Holy Spirit and do not rely on my own solutions. I tend to get a more correct picture and deliver a correct message to the right audience.

By the way, I no longer refer to my home system as Alexa. I call her Hal.

It is mandatory for prospective Routledges to view the film, Miracle before we can talk further about dating, career or life. 

The 2004 Disney release is dear to me and my family (forced) because I played hockey in Minnesota in the year the USA Olympic team achieved a nearly impossible upset victory over the best hockey team in the world. The American team was selected from a pool of collegiate hockey players and pitted against the Soviet assembly of largely paid athletes. To understand the herculean achievement, one only needs to recall this Red Army team defeated the NHL All Star team by a score of 6-0, short months before the Olympic Games in Lake Placid, NY. 

The real reason I was so completely, emotionally tethered to the movie, is personal. In one of the earlier scenes from the movie, the camera zooms in on the Bloomington Ice Arena. I tell my girls, perhaps in a slightly embellished way, this was a rink where I threw up in every corner. 

I’m attached by blood sweat and personal connection. Some of my teammates knew a couple of the players depicted in the film. Close enough for me to share in the revelry of the gold medal. A person would have to live in Minnesota to understand the passion for hockey in the state of 10,000 lakes. I was there. Herb Brooks coached at the University of Minnesota. It was all so personal.

In my office, above my desk is a glass case holding a replica USA,1980’s olympic jersey. It is signed by the captain of this historic sports team, Mike Eruzione. It is a constant reminder of greater things. I wonder often, what percentage of this watershed moment in American sport lore can be attributed to young men believing in the miracle before the moment of the miracle.

It begs the question, “Can believers expect greater intervention from God simply because we have learned to pray expectantly?”

In other words, are my actions emboldened by a core belief that God cares about my efforts and the outcomes? I believe it.

CRF is, among other things, a study in action sparked by faith. There were so many times in the history of this ministry, when it would appear our future laid behind defeating an indestructible opponent. Scripture is replete with accounts of youthful, and in most cases, unadvisable initiative. David slew Goliath with a stone fired from a boy’s weapon. The Hebrews marched quietly around a fortified city. Moses showed up in a royal Egyptian court with demands of the unreasonable release of a slave work force. The miracle stories all begin with a first step. 

The first step seems to be the most onerous. It requires a requisite faith without reasonable assurances. I have found miracles are held captive by our lack of first steps. We love the romance of the miracle. We are afraid of the first step. 

The first step may be a phone call, a check written, a conversation, a job inquiry, or even a scrap of paper with the improbable concept scribbled. 

My challenge to each person this year is to imagine an intervention in your most common affairs by an invested, loving and miraculous God. Then take a single faith step toward the miracle. Second steps happen naturally enough when our feet hit the seabed of the Red Sea.

Al Michaels shouts excitedly in my mind, “Do you believe in miracles?! YES!”