Category: The Adventures of JB

One of the frustrating things about my return to Melbourne is there isn’t much I can personally do to move things forward.

The Immigration department of Australia is going out of their way to help during the process, but there’s still something annoying about not being able to help with a problem.

In the past when this frustration reached a boiling point I would try to work harder..somewhere in my head was a voice that said “if you just try hard enough things will work out.”

The problem is of course this voice lied to me. Eventually each of us encounter problems that cannot be fixed by working harder.

It took me a while for me to get that message into my strong-willed [1] head. However once this finally registered the question was, “how do I respond to this waiting period?

Eventually an unexpected answer came to me…be faithful in the small things.

You see we serve a God who deserves first place in life [2] but doesn’t want to demand our obedience. Instead He gives to each of us a choice; do things the way we want to, or obey Him

Those who obey God (obey faithfully) will encounter His blessing, while those who choose their own way will face consequences.

In practical terms faithfulness involves:

1. Finding what it is that God wants us to do in that moment
2. Then obeying, and allowing Him to do the work

God doing the work means these acts of faithfulness will often seem random or unimportant. But it’s as we follow the Lord in these that He does an awesome work.

Last Thursday the Lord led me to call the office of my Immigration Lawyer after hours [3] and ask if there was anything that I could do to help with the application.

To be perfectly honest I had very little faith this would make any difference, but as the Lord continued to challenge me I decided to simply obey.

The next morning at 8:30 I received an email from him saying important paperwork had been sent off to Immigration.

Now maybe he would have sent that email even if there wasn’t a message on the answering machine. But I can tell you all of the “hard work” on my part never resulted in paperwork being sent to Immigration.

This experience along with others has taught me hard work isn’t the most important thing to God [4] because I get the glory from it. Instead the most important thing is faithfully following Him one step at a time so HE gets the glory.

Of course this doesn’t mean God doesn’t want us to sit on the coach and watch tv while eating oreo’s all day. However we must make sure our hard work is invested in His plan.

I’ve always been fascinated by social-media (Facebook, twitter, Instagram) and a part of me wanted to make it part of my relationship with prayer supporters.

There’s just one problem with that…
I’m a Facebook stalker

That makes me sound terrible, but basically a Facebook stalker is someone who reads the posts of others, but never interacts with them [1], or shares anything of their own.

One problem with being a Facebook stalker is there are people who honestly wanted to learn what’s going on in my ministry using social media.  Because of this a goal this year is to share ministry updates of a more personal nature [2] online. Step one  was to actually ask, “Why haven’t I done something like this before?

The answer’s quite simple…I was waiting to share something awesome

We have all had those “God experiences” when the Lord just worked things out in a way that could only be done by Him. I would share those experiences or other special updates [3] but little else.

Sometimes I found myself sitting at a laptop thinking of an awesome story to share online [4] which points out the true problem of being a Facebook stalker

By only sharing the awesome stuff I portrayed Missions as one awesome experience after another with no pain whatsoever. This false reality could seriously damage individuals who expect the Christian life to be this way [5].

The answer to Facebook stalking isn’t to just share bad news all of the time…instead it’s about looking for sharable moments that God brings into our lives.

Last Saturday I went grocery shoppig the day before the Super Bowl.  When I went to check out the cashier started ringing up my groceries but didn’t put them in the cart, instead she started organizing them into stacks [6]. After a stack was organized she would neatly pack them together in the cart.

I asked her if they taught them how to do that but she laughed and said “no I’m just a neat freak.”

Impressed with her job I uploaded a picture of the cart on Facebook.

It got twenty-three likes, and five comments.

You know what that teaches me? Something doesn’t have to be earth-shattering to share it online…it can simply be a cashier who took the time to do things the right way.

A Mindset of Excellence from John Wilburn on Vimeo.

A few Saturdays ago (January 24) I ran a particularly hard nine miles with my training group.

However that didn’t keep me from fulfilling my role as the groups “entertainer” [1] by telling jokes, sharing stories, and even singing a few bars of “A Whole New World” from the movie Aladdin [2]!

Last Saturday (January 31) I ran an easier six miles with a very different response. There was little talking, no jokes, and wheezing and gasping instead of Disney songs.

What made the difference? I moved up to a faster group

Our training program is broken down into groups of 1 to 5. Since some people in each group are faster than others, they are then divided into an A and B

Part of me was tempted to stay in 4B (already a fast group) were I was one of the stronger runners instead of moving up to 4A were I would be one of the last finishers.

What led me to finally forced me to make that decision was the little voice in my head that whispered “hey you could do a little bit better.”[3]

The real problem though was my goal

Up till a few weeks ago the goal for training looked like this:

1. Run about a 2:10 Half-Marathon [4]
2. Get back into running shape
3. Entertain my training partners

This is definitely an awesome goal, but these are all things I’ve already accomplished…in other words they are too easy.

Here is what my goal looks like after moving from group 4B to group 4A:

1. Run a 2:00 Half Marathon or less
2. Be at the front of the group (I’m currently towards the back)
3. Run a 9:20 overall pace per mile (currently 9:30 is the fastest I can do overall)

Do you see how each of these goals push me harder?

That doesn’t mean it’s easy creating goals to push us to the limit. While stretching out after Saturdays run with 4B they expressed how much they missed me [5].  The thing is I missed them too [6] but on race day I will be thankful for the training sessions with a group that pushed me.

It’s easy to go through life doing what’s comfortable or things we are gifted at. But there will come a day when those hours singing Disney and telling jokes instead of pursuing excellence will come back to haunt us.

Worth a 21 Page Application from John Wilburn on Vimeo.