Baltimore in the bag!!  So it’s Wednesday and we’re getting ready for Revolve in Charlotte, NC.  We’ve been in Sumter, SC for a couple of days with some family and we’re heading up to Charlotte later this afternoon.  We’ve had a nice little working vaca here, specifically with the first scrub-a-dub of the Mav.  And I’ll tell you what, it needed it!!  Floors scrubbed, bathroom cleaned, and we’re good to go.

We’ve got a Hoops of Hope event planned for tomorrow.  Last week’s event at His Way Christian Bookstore in Baltimore was an interesting experience in humility for us.  So, we spent several days laying groundwork so that people would know about the event, would get excited about Courtney and Austin being there, and would come out in force.  Well, we showed up and Austin showed up and he and I played H-O-R-S-E for two hours because we were the only people there.

At first Courtney and I were disheartened and a little embarrassed, simply because the bookstore had gone out of its way to set this event up, staying open late, setting up an area for Austin to sign his book, “Take Your Best Shot”, and providing us with a place to park and shoot.  I guess my feeling on the matter initially was, “Well Gee God, we’ve done all this work for nothing.  What’s the point?”  That question, obviously loaded with discouragement, haunted us for a couple of days.

However, as is typically the case with these sorts of things, God began to work on us through conversations with others and through quiet reflection on our attitudes toward what we’re doing in this RV.  I think that so far our attitude, though maybe subconscious, has been, “We expect fireworks from the Lord since we are doing all this work for Him.”  We forget sometimes that the work He may be accomplishing is in us, not always through us.  And though sometimes those actions go hand in hand, many times they don’t.  When our ‘ministry’ or whatever we happen to be doing for the Lord seems to not be yielding fruit, it causes us to stop and question God and ourselves.  “Where are you?”  “Why aren’t you showing up?”  “What are we doing wrong?”  It’s as if we believe God needs us, otherwise His purpose wouldn’t be accomplished.

Isn’t that one of the great tragedies of the human soul, believing that God needs our efforts instead of the other way around?  Isn’t it us who need Him in every facet of our existence?  Do we get so wrapped up in doing something big for God that we miss what he might be doing in us?  For my part in the rest of this journey, I’m going to try and stop waiting for God to show up and start making sure that I show up to receive what He’s doing in us through this experience.  Are our money raising goals important?  Yes.  Is our desire to do what we set out to do valid?  Absolutely.  But if we begin to get distracted by the action of ministry, the act of serving God itself, taking pride in what we’re doing, that will limit our growth and undermine the spiritual direction God may be leading us in personally, not just the direction of our Hoops of Hope journey.

May God direct us each in every day, and may we remember to show up, arriving in each moment with humility and anticipation of what ever He wants to do.  See you in Charlotte.

Michael