Living Amazed and the Call to Bravery

By Al Perrotta Published on March 1, 2017

On Tuesday, February 28, Stream Founder James Robison released his powerful new book Living Amazed, which shares stories from his life where being open and obedient to God in personal encounters small and large has had profound impact on his life and others’. In the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing stories from the book and those inspired by the call to “live amazed.”

The call came early Saturday morning. James Robison was on the line. He had spoken the night before at the Prestonwood Baptist Church’s men’s conference, and was asking, “So, Al, how do you think it went?” Yes, it’s a bit like Marie Callendar calling up, wondering, “How’d the pie turn out?”

Yet, before I could offer James a critique of his message, I was curiously struck by an image from earlier in the evening. Anthony Evans, Jr., son of evangelist Tony Evans, was leading a time of worship. One line from one chorus of one song had the couple thousand men not only on their feet, but fully engaged: “I am brave.” The fervent desire of those men of God to be — and be thought of — as brave was palpable and potent.

Unfortunately, our hunger to be “more than conquerors” often slams right into the fear that we are less than adequate. James, I realized, had spoken to those fears.

Climbing Aboard the Truck

As he does in Living Amazed, James told the story of his first preaching experience. It’s hard to believe this, watching him in the pulpit or on TV, but James Robison was a quiet, painfully shy kid. When he got the call to preach the summer after graduating high school, folks around him were not only shocked, some were downright dismissive. “Do you think God can use me?” he asked a deacon at his church. “No,” was the reply.

Still, the following Monday, James was at work as a pipe-fitter’s assistant on a construction site. At lunch, the talk from the hundred or so older men was “typically obscene and degrading.”  “I couldn’t eat my lunch,” James says. He suddenly felt compelled to “jump up onto one of the flatbed trucks and shout with all the authority of a coach or a drill sergeant.” 

“Listen, I’m just a boy trying to learn how to be a man, and all I’m hearing from you all is how to think filthy, talk filthy and live filthy. Men, I wouldn’t talk about a dog the way most of you talk about your wives.” 

The boy then spoke of God’s love, how He sent Jesus “to die for you and to give you life, to show you how to live and love your wife and family. I just want you to know that if I can help you, I’m a helper. If you will just call me, I will tell you how you can know Jesus.”

Get the book to read the wondrous things that followed: the souls saved, the relationships restored, the wonderful works of God. Great stuff. But I want to focus on this fact: James got on the truck. No experience, no special standing with his co-workers, no guarantee he wouldn’t be greeted with taunts or tomatoes. He got on the truck. That’s bravery. That’s Holy Spirit-fueled boldness.

What truck bed is God calling you to climb aboard? What God move is awaiting you to say, “I got this”?

“Lord, Help Me Get One More”

Perhaps you are hesitant to start the climb. Philippians 4:13 offers powerful encouragement. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” “All things?” you may be telling yourself, “I’m having enough trouble dealing with one thing.”  In the heat of our personal situations, it’s easy to overlook the implication within Paul’s words. “I can do this one thing, this one task set before me now through Christ who strengthens me.”

Doss on top of the Maeda Escarpment, 4 May 1945 - Wikimedia Commons

Doss on top of the Maeda Escarpment, or Hacksaw Ridge, 4 May 1945 – Wikimedia Commons

Sunday night, we watched Hacksaw Ridge. Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond T. Doss, a conscientious objector in World War II who served on the front lines as a medic but refused to touch a weapon. In the Battle of Okinawa, the bloodiest battle of the war, Doss and his unit are set upon by the Japanese. It is brutal, almost unbearable. The Mel-Gibson directed film makes Braveheart look like a Teletubbies video.

Still, amid the hellfire and carnage, the blasted bodies and savagery of the enemy, Doss crawls, dodges, runs, carries, drags the fallen to safetyAnd with each rescue of a wounded comrade, the weary Doss prays, “Lord, help me get one more.” Over and over again, “Lord, please help me get one more.” In all, 75 men were saved. His feat was nothing sort of miraculous. 

Doss lived amazed.

Doss’ amazing journey didn’t begin when he climbed Hacksaw Ridge. It began when he made the courageous decision to remain faithful to his Seventh Day Adventist beliefs. Doss faced court-martial, contempt and accusations of cowardice without flinching. A bayonet, one could argue, is easier to brave than ridicule. 

One Act of Bravery

Whether it was James climbing onto the flatbed or Doss standing still rather than come forward to claim a rifle, simple acts set in motion events that reached far beyond a Pasadena, Texas construction site or an island in the Pacific. Were these men superheroes? No. In fact, a major theme of James’ book — and his message to the men Friday night — is that the least of us can live amazed.  It simply takes an openness to God.

Openness to God offered us access to His power. Paul says in Ephesians, “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” 

He adds in 2 Timothy, “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.”

It’s that courage that turned an uneducated, uncouth, fisherman afraid to even confirm to a young girl he was tight with Jesus into the fearless, eloquent voice of Pentecost.

The same bravery that turns you away from tawdry images on the Internet, enables you to treat people with kindness when they deserve a kick in the rear. The same bravery that gives you the strength to admit an addiction and confess a failing. The same bravery that empowers you to lay hands on the sick. The same bravery that allows you to fully answer the call on your life. Or answer the need of a stranger you run into on the street.

Or drag souls to safety right out from under the enemy. 

It’s the power to have us praying, “Please, Lord, help me get one more.”
 

Living Amazed is available from Amazon and other fine booksellers. Excerpt used with permission. 

 

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