“I wasn’t ready for that!” “ Wow, that caught me off guard!” – How often have you heard those statements or maybe even verbalized them yourself. Something comes your way unexpectedly and you are unable to field the ball, duck the punch, handle the emotion, take the opportunity, or recover from the accusation. If I had know the guy was going to pull out in front of me, I would have hit the brakes sooner…
I took an advanced motorcycle safety course years ago. It was a few years after I was in a horrible accident myself where I was caught off guard and rammed a car coming the other way at 50 plus miles per hour. He had hit his brakes, so he was slowing some, but I was unable to react and plowed right into him at full force never touching my brakes, trying any kind of avoidance maneuvering, or reacting in any way. I was glued to the handlebars watching it all unfold in front of me wishing I were someplace else and that my seven year old son wasn’t on back with me. It is on my list of things I never want to experience again!!!!
Three years later, after the crutches were gone, the metal removed, and the limping to a minimum, I was thinking about putting a hunk of shinny chrome and throbbing horsepower beneath me again. But this time I knew I needed to do something to prepare for the unexpected, hence the advanced safety course. The main thing I learned from that course was to look for potential hazards before they become hazards. Preparing for the unexpected. Now at various times when I am riding alone and there is no one around me, I hit the brakes as hard as I can to see how quickly I can safely bring her to a stop. I look for potential hazards in front of me and quickly think through a scenario, if that guy pulled out right now, where would I go? What would I do? If I am going around this curve and someone is in my lane, where would I go? Most times I am enjoying the ride, but when the thought comes, “how fast can you stop?” I react.
I think the same thing applies to our walk with the Lord and the challenges of life. We are not sure what the dynamics are of any given day. We are aware of many things that will take place as we are usually scheduled to the max. But we do not know when an opportunity for Jesus to enter a situation presents itself or a plan from the enemy begins to unfold. I was talking to an individual one time who made a terrible mistake with someone of the opposite sex who wasn’t their spouse. I asked how it happen. Their response was telling. They said, “I had never considered what I would do if the situation presented itself so I wasn’t prepared to respond appropriately.”
A well know baseball player said something like this in an interview after a very successful game. He said, “All I can control is my preparation.” What an accurate description of life. While you cannot prepare yourself for every situation, and certainly cannot control everything that happens, you can prepare yourself to respond to the Holy Spirit. After all, He always knows what is going to unfold in front of you and He often gives you’re a prompting if you are in tune with Him. (Side note; three days before my accident while going up over a mountain, the Holy Spirit told me I was riding too aggressively and needed to slow down) So make it a habit at the beginning of every day to be in touch with the Holy Spirit and take control of your preparation for the day. You cannot control how the ball is coming at you but you can control your preparation to field it.
D.O.V.E.