A Chapel Service Reflection
Phoenix International Raceway
November 12, 2012
“Reflecting Upon the Phoenix Chapel Message”
Bob Butcher
I consider the Phoenix Chapel Service a couple days ago a fiasco. It really was a very unique experience and I have pondered it quite a bit since. Yes, it had a powerful message to all of us I believe, however due to the circumstances involved I think it really was left wanting for most of those attending.
I am not sure what the worst scenario was at that time. I had a problem with our printer and never got my usual printed version to hand out printed. Nor was I able to email my usual teaching copy to my Ipad which was really strange. Therefore I had nothing to teach from like usual. Sometimes I have had time to learn the message, however, although I had the message in my heart since late September, I only wrote it Monday night before we left Wednesday and never got it to print on Tuesday despite many attempts for both the printed flyer and the Ipad version. That was totally frustrating but I thought it would all work out when I got to Phoenix and I could get to Staples, FedEx, or Office Depot and get it printed off my travel hard drive. Boy was I surprised when for the first time none of them could open my travelling hard drive!
So here I was with no notes or anything and I did not have the message memorized at all. Fortunately, a number of people took my invitation to attend the Nationwide chapel instead of ours. But then, a number of people stayed for our usual K&N Chapel to my surprise. The rest is history. For those of you reading this that attended, I do not know what you thought, but I certainly can tell you that I was not happy at the content of the message shared and especially the presentation. I don’t think I have ever presented a more disconnected message.
As I write today, I believe that I understand so much more from hanging out with a young friend Matt yesterday discussing both our weekends. There is a story to Matt. He has been an inspiration to me and a significant sounding board to discuss spiritual things that God is doing in the world today for the last few years now. Prior to that; I had been sort of a “father image” in his and his brother’s life since they moved to Salem back about 1989. They had lost their real dad to a drunk driver at a very young age. We have been through a lot together. Matt has been an accomplished, professional skate-boarder and has been a huge mentor to the skate-boarding teenage community around Salem and Portland, OR plus anywhere else he has travelled to compete or film competition.
As we discussed our personal experiences over the weekend, Matt in Grant’s Pass, OR and me in Phoenix we found how much they coincided with the message I had on God’s gifts placed within us and His callings set up during our lives. This young 30+ year old man reminded this 66 year old Pastor how God looks at us before the beginning of time; perfect, pure, full of faith, and sold out on serving Him!
The difference is the God sees us that way while we only see ourselves as failures, impure and imperfect sinners that can only be used with His Holy Spirit power alongside us to pull off whatever we are doing in His kingdom at the time. But, God sees us how He created us with the gifts He placed within us and with the calling we have chosen to fulfill today.
I began looking at those two ends of things. In my past I certainly had the gifting of a race driver but never fully took that talent to the highest possibility due to some bad choices I made back then in my life.
When I consider today’s career and calling in comparison to back then I am reminded that maybe I was never meant to go past what I attained. Yes, either way today at my age both might have worked out to come to the same place today, but would I have missed the calling today? I do not know.
However, I accepted the calling to be on this side of the driver’s seat to do what I do today with MRO and YWAM (Motor racing Outreach & Youth With A Mission) for the last twenty-five years. These two ministries have been the REAL prize! While I CERTAINLY am not the gifted public speaker and teacher that I would desire to be; I can fully see that I operate in my MRO role as a Pastor to the NASCAR K&N Pro Series with the love and passion that is unsurpassed!
Maybe, just maybe, it is this calling that I walk in today that God saw me as before the beginning of time and long before He created me to be born. That, to me today is an amazing revelation.
So that message in the Phoenix K&N Chapel last Saturday was for me every bit as for all of you. We need to consider the gifts and calling that we walk in at any given time in our lives and take time to process them with the Lord especially and then with some wise, Godly counsel. I am not saying that is me for you, however throughout your racing careers I certainly will be here for you confidentially. That you can count upon until the Lord calls me home my friends.
That Phoenix Chapel message is complete on our website and listed just prior to this at: BeyondCheckeredFlags.com
Bob
November 12, 2012
PS: You might also be interested to know that when I got home after spending time with Matt that I was able to print the flyer and email the message to my IPad. Now that, is bizarre! Maybe I will not try to figure what that was all about!