Men of Fuel.

Over the last couple of years “Adventure/Obstacle” races have been taking the country by storm.  Warrior Dash, Tough –Mudder, Muddy Buddy are a few of them, but the one that seems to be getting the most recognition is the Spartan Race .  Crazy that as dangerous as they are these races are selling out at a record pace.  Perhaps there is something inside of us that feels called to that which is not safe, something that comes alive outside of the routine where we spend so much of our life.

I have included the link for the Spartan Race (http://www.spartanrace.com/) because I thought the video, when you open the link, did a good job of capturing the idea of what we discussed last week.  Not to mention that I loved the fact that they included the quote from Rocky Balboa that we discussed last year.

Below is the quote that is also heard during the video.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Have you been liberated from your own fear?

Set your alarms and join us on Wednesday morning for week two of our current series “Safe”: Limit day.

See you on Wednesday

Hope you guys had a good Easter, and that you were able to watch at least part of the Masters.  Had you told me last week that a Christian that owned the General Lee (http://jalopnik.com/5900439/masters-winner-bubba-watson-owns-the-original-general-lee) was going to win the Masters ON EASTER I might not have believed you. So this week as Bubba wears a Green jacket while driving an Orange car with a big 01 on the side, we begin a new series at Fuel: SAFE.

Think about that word.  What comes to mind?  I ask that because when I think of that word I tend to see it as a good thing.  But is it always a good thing?  Could there be an aspect of what we think is safe that actually isn’t.  I mean I don’t see safety being a huge topic that is discussed in the bible, or taking up the space that I want it to in my life.

What I do see in the bible is God actually calling people out of their safety zones.  Why is that?  Could there be something more important to God than me playing it safe?  Could there actually be more for me beyond the territory of my life that I previously deemed to be safe?

Well, set your alarms and come on out in the am as we begin our new series “Safe”

See you guys in the morning

Men of Fuel

For the last (almost) two years one of the tag lines of Fuel has been “Invest and Invite”.  As a matter of fact, Fuel itself grew out of the idea that we wanted to provide a “relevant environment” where guys could “invite” their friends to “explore aspects of life, purpose and faith”.  Well here we are on the doorsteps of Easter weekend, and I can’t think of a better time to leverage all of the investing that we all of have been doing by extending an invitation to tomorrow mornings Fuel.

Tomorrow will be our second week of our “Countdown to Easter” series.  Again, please take advantage of this opportunity to invite the guys in your life in whom you have been investing.  See you guys in the AM

Men of Fuel,

When I was in the fifth grade, my father was the Captain of the USS Blue Ridge, which was flag ship of the seventh fleet.  We were stationed in Japan, so a few weeks after the release of movies in the US, the Navy base on which we lived would start showing the newly released films.  For some reason the movie theatre on base had given my father one of the new movies, and this giant movie projector that he set up in the Captain quarters of the ship and invited a friend of mine and his family over to watch this movie.  The movie was Rocky.

I remember watching that movie like it was yesterday.  The feeling of being completely captivated by a story is something that I will always relate to watching that movie.  Think about it, that movie had it all.  A guy that no one believed in, a guy that didn’t believe in himself, was given a chance to fight the heavyweight champion of the world.  Not only did he make it through all 15 rounds he took the fight to a split decision.  Perhaps he didn’t win the fight but he was victorious as no one even gave the guy a chance of making it through round 1.  What I find so hard to believe is that they decided to end the story like that.  You would think with all the momentum and all of the characters that the story could have continued.

Oh wait……it did

Rocky II was the rematch between Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed.  While only ten months has passed since there last fight, there has been some changes in Rocky’s life.  He has married Adrian, and they are expecting a child.  Rocky begins training for the fight, but Adrian faints during an argument with her brother Paulie, and Rocky stops training and refuses to leave her bedside until she recovers.  She is completely unconscious but scene after scene shows Rocky sitting by her bed reading to her, until the day she wakes up says “There’s just one thing I want you to do for me Rocky”, to which he replies “What’s that?”, and she says WIN.  At that moment you realize that it didn’t matter if he was fighting Godzilla, you knew he was going to win…..and he does.  But even after that there is still so much that hasn’t been explored yet, that I can’t believe they didn’t make another…….

Oh wait……they did.

Rocky III shows Rocky as the heavyweight champion who seems to be spending more time in the bright lights of fame instead of training for his next fight.  However that doesn’t seem to matter much as Rocky never seems to face anyone that challenges him.   At the exact same time they show the rise of Clubber Lang, and hardcore boxer played by Mr. T, who during a confrontation before their first fight, pushes Rocky’s longtime trainer Mickey to the ground causing Mickey to suffer a heart attack.  Rocky gets beat by Clubber Lang and Mickey dies.  All seems lost until Rocky runs into Apollo Creed who agrees to train Rocky for a rematch with Clubber Lang.  Rocky wins and we all left the theater singing “Eye of the Tiger”.  Too bad the story ended there.  After all, if Rocky could beat Clubber Lang, who else could he beat.  I guess we will never know, since they never made another.

Oh wait…..they did

Rocky IV begins with Apollo Creed getting back into the ring to fight Russian giant Ivan Drago.  Ivan Drago beats Apollo Creed so badly that he dies from the injuries sustained in the fight.  Rocky decides to avenge his death and in the end ushers in the beginning of world peace by defeating a Russian Boxer in Russia.  Perhaps that wasn’t the part of the story I was looking for, which is a shame, because that is how they decided to end this story.

Oh wait…..no it wasn’t

Rocky V.  Seriously?  All that time, all that money and this is how you decide to end this story.  I felt cheated.  Thinking back to sitting in my father’s ship completely lost in the story of the original Rocky was so amazing that Rocky V didn’t even feel like it deserved to be part of this story.  After all these years of fighting all the victories, all the loss that Rocky has gone through, maybe I am getting older, but I wanted to see more of the fight in the man instead of the man in the fight.  Too bad they never made another….

Oh wait….they did.

Rocky Balboa.  This is how you go out.  30 years after the first movie Rocky Balboa gets one more shot.  Not at a title belt, but a promotional fight with the new champ.  What makes this story so great is that the fight in this movie is a backdrop for everything going on outside of the ring.  If you haven’t seen this installment, do yourself a favor and check it out.

I mention the above because sometimes I think I live my life, the same way I watch movies.  I divide segments of time and judge them as good or bad based on my previously desired outcome.  Unfortunately that’s not how life plays out.  Life may have many sub stories but it truly is one ongoing story.  Me losing my job, or me winning the big deal isn’t the end of the story.  It’s part of the story.  Winning the game, or losing the girl, isn’t the end of the story, it’s part of the story.  I think that’s one of the reasons that Jesus’ disciples had such a hard time understanding what he was saying.  I think it’s the same reason we have such a hard time as well.  We are always trying to view eternity through the lens of our current situation or circumstance, instead of the other way around.

Set your alarms and come on out tomorrow morning as we begin our two week prep for Easter with: The Never Ending Story.

Invest and Invite

D.R. Carlson

Men of Fuel,

The below story was taken from a show that aired on NPR.

There’s a tiny island called YAP out in the Pacific Ocean.  Economists love it because it helps answer this really basic question: What is money?

There’s no gold or silver on Yap. But hundreds of years ago, explorers from Yap found limestone deposits on an island hundreds of miles away. And they carved this limestone into huge stone discs, which they brought back across the sea on their small bamboo boats.

It’s unclear if these stones started as money. But at some point the people on Yap realized what most societies realize. They needed something that everyone agrees you can use to pay for stuff.

And like many societies, the people of Yap took the thing they had that was pretty — their version of gold — and decided that was money.

A piece of stone money was really valuable; you wouldn’t use it for some everyday purchase. You’d use it for something big — a daughter’s dowry, say.

“If somebody was in real dire straits, and something happened to their crop of food or they were running low on provisions and they had some stone money, they might trade,” says Scott Fitzpatrick, an anthropologist at North Carolina State University who is an expert on Yap.

One key thing about this money: It was really heavy. A big piece could weigh more than a car.

As a result, this very concrete form of money quickly made the jump to being something very abstract.

“They often talk about the stones themselves not changing hands at all,” Fitzpatrick says. “In fact, most of the time they wouldn’t.”

So imagine there’s this great big stone disc sitting in a village. One person gives it to another person. But the stone doesn’t move. It’s just that everybody in the village knows the stone now has a new owner.

In fact, the stone doesn’t even need to be on the island to count as money.

One time, according to the island’s oral tradition, a work crew was bringing a giant stone coin back to yap on a boat. And just before they got back to the island, they hit a big storm. The stone wound up on the bottom of the ocean.

The crew made it back to the island and told everybody what happened. And everybody decided that the piece of stone money was still good — even though it was on the bottom of the ocean.

That sounds silly doesn’t it?  That people would assign value to stones.  How ridicules, their just stones.  You couldn’t buy a car with them, or a house, or food, or cloths.  Well on Yap I guess you could, but here they would be worthless.

But what if we were doing the same thing?  What if we were assigning a value to something that was actually worthless anywhere but here. And what if we were in turn basing our masculinity and identity on something that had no value.  The question is, would we want to know?

 Set your alarms and join us tomorrow morning for our Sixth week of our Identity series “The Island of YAP”

See you guys in the AM