A Season of Walk-Ons

Some of you reading these words are doing life in such a way that something new and unfamiliar might not be on your personal radar.

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Some assignments are about to change. These changes will be unexpected but filled with joy and newfound purpose.

In high school, I lettered in two sports, swimming and golf. My swimming event was the 400-yard freestyle. I also swam a leg on the 400-yard freestyle relay. The golf team experience was a single-year experiment that was fun, but swimming was my first love. I had been swimming since I was a pre-school kid so it came naturally. My father won the California State Golf Championship for his handicap. He won the title during the final round at Pebble Beach only 9 months after picking up a golf club for the first time at the age of 53. I was OK in golf but didn’t get the gene transfer to play under the label of a natural, so I went back to swimming.

After high school, I attended Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington where I swam on the university swim team. While I still loved swimming, as a California boy, I could never adjust to swimming inside an echoey and enclosed indoor swimming pool. After a year on the swim team, I realized I was as big as the other guys in our jock dorm who played football, so I decided to be a walk-on. I tried out, made the football team, and donned a Whitworth Pirate uniform. The second year, I took a spear hit from a big eastern Washington farm boy as I went up to block a pass. The impact from his helmet tore a pectoral muscle and broke a couple of ribs. I was out for the season. The next year I left the university for greener pastures.

I wrote all this personal history to create a context for something I believe is a word from the Lord. Some of you reading these words are doing life in such a way that something new and unfamiliar might not be on your personal radar. A change is coming, a change you did not anticipate. You were trained and have experience in one area of Kingdom involvement, but now the Lord is asking you to walk on to something new. This coming season of change will be a departure from the known.

As you consider this shift you need to remember if the Lord has called you, He has also equipped you. You will walk on bringing a new and growing passion to be part of a team and a yielded heart in submission to the will of God. That is all the Lord needs to accomplish His will for your life in this new and unexpected season of change.

 

This is an updated edition of a post originally published on Garris Elkins

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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About the Author

Garris Elkins is a Kingdom Winds Contributor. He and his wife, Jan, serve the global Church through writing, speaking, and mentoring. They live in southern Oregon, tucked away in the foothills of the Rogue Valley. Their shared desire is to have each person learn how to hear the heart of God and become a transforming voice in their culture.