Wisdom Beyond Your Years

This past Sunday at church, I had the privilege of hearing Howard Pittman give his testimony about physically dying and meeting God (and the devil) face to face.  Obviously, Mr. Pittman came back into his mortal body to tell the story after the ordeal, but his testimony is nothing short of astounding.  I was sitting there listening to him give a detailed account of Hell and Heaven and somewhere deep inside, I know it’s true without ever being there myself.  It’s funny how we are designed as human beings, to recognize truth when we hear it.  Yesterday, I even had the honor of taking this man out to a dinner to talk one-on-one.  He spoke at another service that evening and once again, I was dumbfounded by what he had to say.  But what is really interesting here is what impressed me about this man was not his testimony or his experience with unearthly powers.  What impressed me so greatly about this man, was his wisdom.

As we talked over dinner last night (and by talked I mean he talked and I listened) I was blown away at his personal experiences in just everyday life.  He was sharing stories about when he had been to this place and that place and how it was to raise children and be in ministry.  The whole time I was just soaking it up.  Here I am sitting across a dinner table from a man who has so much life experience that my own life seems like it hasn't even ever started!  He even taught me that the interstate was engineered in the USA as a copy of the famed Audubon in Germany and was designed to move military equipment without stopping from one side of the country to the next.  Maybe you knew that already, but to me, that was the icing on the cake!  This man was a living history book and I had the chance to ask anything I wanted to know. 

Google is great, but it can’t tell you what it was like to live during World War II.  Sure, it can give you a detailed description and can give you all of the factual information about it, but it cannot provide the emotions that accompanied living through such a tumultuous era.  As I was listening to this man talk about ministry and all of the places he had been, sharing the Gospel of Jesus, I suddenly felt very humbled.  I thought to myself, this is how Timothy must have felt in the presence of the Apostle, Paul.  Now I make no claim to be a disciple of Mr. Pittman, but I could feel a connection with Timothy, being a young person in the Faith, gleaning everything you can from a war hero in the army of the Lord.  When Mr. Pittman got up from the table, I felt like I had learned so much in such a small amount of time.  His perspective on the way the modern church is headed down to how to read your Bible was nothing short of sensory overload.  I didn't want to leave! 

I’ll not soon forget that time I spent with Howard Pittman and his son.  The Lord used the time to remind me how He has designed his Kingdom.  Consider Proverbs 1:8-9.

      My son, hear the instruction of your father; reject not nor forsake the teaching of your mother.  For they are a [victor’s] chaplet (garland) of grace upon your head and chains and pendants [of gold worn by kings] for your neck.

As a young person, this verse of course applies to me in the natural realm of wisdom, but as the church of the latter days, it has a greater application.  We have the awesome advantage of having fore-runners in the Faith, otherwise known as ‘fathers’ and ‘mothers.’  So what does that mean for us?  It means that someone else paid with their blood, sweat, and tears what we can accept freely.  Someone’s ceiling of potential can be our floor.  The Kingdom of God is organized just as any kingdom would be.  There is a king who conquers and rules as best he can to leave his heir a better life than what he had.  His heir then conquers more and rules better than his father so that one day his heir has the same opportunity.  It would be rather a waste of life if a king’s heir decided to give up everything his father gave him and go start his own kingdom, leaving the previous kingdom with no one to take it over.  What will happen to all of that conquered land?  What will happen to all of those people depending on a king to rule them?  Most likely, those things will become spoils and anarchy will divide and conquer, leaving the king and his great kingdom a glorious memory and nothing but. 

Unfortunately, we do this a lot in the Kingdom of God.  Blame it on culture or independence, but either way, we abdicate the throne that was handed to us by our forerunners.  We disregard the sacrifice of the people who have gone before in the name of ‘making something for ourselves.’  But that’s not the way it was originally designed and so we will only grow to the potential of one that way.  God designed it so that the church would grow to the potential and the synergy of many.  The problem is, when ‘many’ do a great thing, ‘one’ is lost.  We have all heard the age-old adage, ‘there is no I in TEAM’ but imagine this:

A relay race team, made up of 4 of the world’s fastest runners is set to compete at the Olympics.  Each member on the team has a special niche for the part of the race they are supposed to run.  For example, Runner 1 is an excellent starter and knows how to get off of the running blocks better than anyone in the world.  The race is about to begin so the starters get to their marks.  The beginning shot fires and the runners begin racing.  Our team, let’s call them Team A, is off to a great start!  The first runner has a 3 meter lead to the next runner behind him and has set up the race beautifully for Runner 2 to continue the huge lead.  But while Runner 2 is setting up on the blocks, he decides that if he takes off where Runner 1 started, he will never be remembered as the 1^st in the race.  So when Runner 1 makes it to Runner 2 and hands the baton to him, Runner 2 lets the baton fall to the floor, takes out his own baton that he has in his coat and decides he is going to run the 1^st lap over again in addition to the 2^nd lap he was originally supposed to run.  Of course this fails miserably and Runner 2 runs out of breath just after he has completed the 1^st lap giving the other contestants in the race a 1-lap lead over Team A.  Runner 3 then decides he will take up the baton and try to run what Runner 2 failed to complete, starting again at the 1^st lap.  Again he fails miserably, putting Team A behind 2 laps and almost ensuring defeat for Team A.  The final runner approaches the track and tries to do what the others could not, again starting from the 1^st lap.  By the time he finishes the first lap, he is crossing the line with all of the other contestants who are finishing their race.  Team A never even got to the 2^nd lap.  How sad that a team who was designed to work together and claim victory couldn't even get to the 2^nd lap of the race because they would not work together.

Team A is the church in this allegory.  We have people who have gone before us as 1^st lap runners who are trying desperately to hand off the baton so we can continue the race, but instead we decide that we want to run the 1^st lap.  Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things who ran 1^st?  Of course not, but we let things that are this insignificant stop us from completing the race.  There are men of God, much like Howard Pittman, out there who have blazed a trail for us and are getting ready to hand off the baton.  It is irresponsible for us to ignore what they have done and try to do our own thing.  It is in our best interest, and in the best interest of those people that we are trying to reach with the Gospel, to take the baton from these forerunners.

What does that look like?  It looks like spending time with the man or woman of God that He has assigned to you.  It looks like taking the older generation out to dinner and just listening to what they have to say.  It looks like getting around the people who know more than you (and I guarantee you, there are plenty) and asking questions, serving them, and building relationships with them.  Take time to learn from their successes and their failures so you don’t have to repeat their mistakes.  One of my favorite quotes from George Santayana is, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and it is so true. 

We have a job to do here and it’s to get passed that finish line into Heaven with as many people as possible.  We don’t have time to allow Satan to distract us with visions of grandeur that don’t amount to anything in the long run anyway.  Our goal is not to gain the world and lose our soul (Mat 16:26), it’s to serve Jesus out of love and to the best of our ability, consistently becoming made perfect in Him.  We don’t have time for pettiness, it’s a detour, a distraction and the consequences are unimaginable.  We have been created for the lap of the race we are in right now.  Whether you’re a 2^nd lap racer or a 4th lap finisher, you have been given the tools to finish the part of the race that is set before you.  Turn your head, get prepared and allow the people who have gone before you to hand off the baton and give you a lead in the race.  It’s the way the race is designed to be run, but more importantly, it is the only way the race can be won.