Tow Mater Award

Mystery weekend is over. Mystery weekend is a weekend for the youth at our church, where they spend the weekend with a group of kids from the same grade, in homes of leaders who pour into their lives. Lots of activities, music/worship and teachings are done through out the weekend. We helped out this year. Wife made some large dinner rolls and cupcakes. I helped out with "security" and setting up rooms.

Anyway, one of the main themes of the weekend was "who are you" and "what is your identity"? Great teachings...Are you identified by your beauty, popularity, job...or are you identified by your relationship with Jesus? Great stuff.

I of course, found myself thinking about my identity. What I did come up with is, I am definitely NOT a person who identifies himself based on the prototypical "manly" traits. Dos had his boy scout, pinewood derby on Saturday. This is where the boys build cars out of pine, that weighs no more than 5 ounces, and they race them. Dos and I built a car (by build I mean we bought a kit and put it together). We went up and at weigh in time his car was 6.8 ounces. So we took the weight we had on it off, which brought it down to 4.8 ounces. Not bad we thought.

Fast forward to race time. A 4 lane race track, each kid races once on each lane and their average time/speed is calculated and used to determine the winners. Dos's group was the first group. And they're off....only Dos's car didn't even make it to the finish line!!! All the other cars averaged about 160 miles per hour. Literally, it's all computerized and that's the speed that came up for them. Except Dos's....99 MPH. ugh! One of the guys running the race, asked if I had put any graphite on his wheels?

It was at this point I realized, if I were to sit down right now, and take two tests. Test A being the MAN test and test B being the WOMAN test...I'd pass the woman test with flying colors. I do know you need to grease the pan when making a cake, or the colors of your shoes should match your belt. I don't know how to wire a house for surround sound or that you put stinking graphite on a race car. Isn't graphite in a stinking pencil. Good grief.

Moral of the story #1: Dos got a large trophy, called the Tow Mater award (from cars the movie) for having the SLOWEST car of all 60 or so cars that raced. He was so excited. :) All he cared about was the size of the trophy...sure winning would have gotten him a large trophy, but so did coming in dead last. He asked me to help him build the slowest car again next year!!!

Moral of the story #2: How do you identify yourself? All the things you may identify yourself as, a mom, a dad, husband, doctor, popular, pastor, cop, smart, pretty...they all are things that will fail you. Every single one of them. Once you are living your life for Jesus, that's what identifies you, or should identify you. I know for me, God hasn't blessed me as manly man, or a crafty guy, or mechanically inclined. He has blessed me with the gift of being a donkey, He has blessed me with an amazing family and friends, He has blessed me with a steady job.

I get caught up in being the funny guy, a dad, a friend, a developer...and it's time for me to be radical and break through my "identity crisis" and be identified as a Christian. God's blessed me with all of those things as tools to glorify Him, not glorify myself.

How about you...do people look at you or hear you speak and know you are serving the lord with all you do? Do you use those gifts He has given you, for His greater glory?

Oh and remember....when building a pine car racer...put graphite on the axles. Even I could have told you that! I've known that for like 36 hours now. Very manly!

God is Good!