Recently I had the honor of addressing a prayer breakfast of some 250 people for the ministry PARDONED BY CHRIST, founded 15 years ago in Raleigh by an ex-offender who realized the tremendous uphill battle it is for those who have been incarcerated to re-enter society successfully.
At first, I was reluctant to agree to speak to an audience that on the surface it seemed that I had very little in common. After all I was raised in an upper middle class environment, haven't ever been arrested (which isn’t to claim I have never broken the law), judged, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated. Nor have I been released back into a world that makes my success very difficult because of my record, causing difficulty to get a job, to rent an apartment or to find a helping hand. Talk about the deck stacked against you.
My friend Mike Shank, founder of PBC, read my book, THE QB MENTOR, and he phoned me one day and said "Scott, I want you to share the quote from the book on page 203."
It is a scene where the QB MENTOR, Coach Steve Wilson is addressing me in my despair over the fact that my son had just been informed that he had RE-TORN the ACL in his left knee, and would miss the entire next football season. Our family was devastated and distraught at this tremendous blow to his dreams and future. Questions of why, how, why now, for what reason? Just washed over us.
And Coach Wilson said "life will require resolve, and extraordinary resolve does not come from ordinary life circumstance."
And that is what I shared with the PBC audience that morning, and I related it to my leukemia diagnosis and its accompanying 2-3 year mortality prognosis.
I said "all of us in this room are faced with EXTRA-ORDINARY circumstances which will require EXTRAORDINARY resolve and grit to overcome." I went on to share that another name for this resolve is faith.
And it is true, extraordinary faith comes from extraordinary circumstance.
So when we look at what we are facing in life, I have found it helpful to realize this truth, and to find comfort that the Lord never gives us more than HE and I can handle TOGETHER. And I find a lot of comfort in that simple, yet extraordinary reality. I pray it may encourage you in your life as well.
Amen and AMEN.