Grap Opportunity By The Mane

This post is from Pastor Jake

Chapter seven, from the book “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day” by Mark Batterson, is rightfully titled Grab Opportunity by the Mane and it makes divine sense that this chapter was given to me to reflect on.

As Chapter seven is read, a man named John is introduced. To you or I, he is just a lawyer, but to the author he is a man seizing a God size opportunity. I say that to follow up with a quote that Batterson states about these opportunities and it is this: “But God is in the business of making sure we cross paths with the right people at the right time (127)”. I read this and the words jumped out at me with such truth and understanding from my own experiences. One in particular would be the current location I am at here in Hibbing. As a few months ago, I was in the Florida panhandle enjoying, some may say, the warm late winter air when I decided at 0730 one Saturday morning to go to a Christian Education seminar at the district. The only catch, it started at 0800 and I was forty-five minutes away. Of course, if you spend even a minute getting to know me, that this is no problem, so I saddled up on my steal horse and rode out to Marianna, FL to the district grounds. I had the pleasure of sitting in a CE conference for children and meeting Jason Noble our National Children’s Director. We started to talk, as I am apparently gifted at, and started to connect the lines between us and making the world smaller by the people we had in common. By the end of the conversation he had wanted to place me as Children’s Pastor in one of forty churches that needed one.

So the God size moment was in front of me. Batterson states “Think of every opportunity a gift from God. What you do with it is your gift to God (132)”. My ultimate goal was to become an effective pastor somewhere. I was becoming discouraged by my surroundings because of simple things like being single and not “fully qualified” that I figured I was just always going to be working on becoming a staff pastor, yet here was the Gift of an Opportunity. Walking through the door and becoming the best I can be at being an effective Children’s Pastor, will be my gift back to my Father.

This book is all about opportunity and grabbing it by the Mane. I would like to sum up my short version of the experience I have had with God’s gift with a true statement from Batterson: “Dreams are still achieved one opportunity at a time (130)”. My dream for the last three or four years was to be where I am. God brought me here ordained encounter by ordained encounter. Dreams are still coming true in the Kingdom of God. The only question we can ask ourselves when the moments come is: are we gonna let the lion walk on by, or are we gonna get two big fists full of his mane and hang on for the ride of our lives!

Pastor Jake