Mr. Shirey wrote:
In God’s providence, this was my third five15 trip to Rancho 3M. Although each trip has had a different flavor, one aspect remains the same: they are both physically demanding and yet spiritually refreshing. The demands come when you’re running on a few hours of sleep, working long hours, and when you whack your head on the 5 1/2 foot high door frames in the middle of the night – for the second time. The spiritual refreshing comes from seeing the fruit of your labor in the Lord to serve Dean and the Ranch children, and the great times of biblical fellowship each day with the team.
I generally haven’t gotten real gung-ho about these trips due to the rough blend of challenges – my primary motivation has been to seize the opportunity to build with my kids as we serve the Lord together. But, as this trip approached – and as I prayed about it – God worked in my heart to get motivated about several projects that were assigned to me. In God’s plan these projects appealed to my interests and abilities so that in the end this trip became the “funnest” of them all - to date.
Without minimizing the great times of fellowship, what stands out the most to me is the amazing success that God gave us on the projects. The Spirit enabled us to greatly exceed our natural abilities. I see this mainly in the virtual completion of the addition to Dean’s house and the completion of the fence around the Ranch perimeter. Considering that on Sunday, none of the fence team knew how to weld, and yet by 10 pm on Friday we had fabricated and installed 914 feet of fence panels including 7636 welds and 1200 rebar cuts, this was an amazing work of God’s grace like you see in the book of Nehemiah. In Nehemiah 2:8, he speaks of how the “…the good hand of my God was upon me.” This theme runs through the account of rebuilding the wall. This favor of God was expressed on the trip in the team learning how to weld quickly, teens working extremely hard all week at whatever task was required – without complaining, teens leading certain work crews at times, being able to hire a local part-time welder for a few days, and overall much fruit of the spirit to accomplish all this with grace.
So, from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory.
Posted on
Sunday, May 3, 2009
by Steve Whitacre
filed under