The Kreider Connection
Racers For Christ
July, 2010 Newsletter
July 4th reminds us of how fortunate we are here in the United States to have the freedom we do. Having grown up in a free country it is hard to imagine living under oppression, and we are not thankful enough to all those who paid the price for our freedom. May we never take freedom for granted, thanks be to God!!
As we enjoy freedom some independent spirits like me have a struggle not to take it too far. Some even have the elusion that they can be free from God, putting them in bondage to Satan himself. The enemy can deceive us into thinking we don’t need God. We then forget the price Jesus paid for our freedom from sin.
Serving God is a great privilege regardless at what level you serve. The last two months have been a struggle for me. I forgot how old I am and strained my back and hip causing me to miss a few races and even spending several days in bed. When I miss races, I feel like I let the racers and our supporters down. But God has used the time to get me to refocus on Him. As I have said before I don’t do still very well. My recovery is well under way and Linda’s life will be much easier not having to deal with my impatience. I look forward to seeing many of you at Columbus (message will be on “The Ultimate Deception”) and hope to be at full health and speed.
There are several examples in scripture about pruning. Certain plants produce better when they have been trimmed or cut back. We are alot like that, and I feel this has just happened to me. My prayer is that God will use us to reach and encourage more souls in what’s remaining of our lives than He has in the portion we’ve already lived!! What a grand time it will be some day when we all join in glory land. I just pray that all of you will be there to share in the experience.
We print at the top of our staff memos, “Our purpose as chaplains with RFC should always be that more people will walk the streets of heaven someday because we let God use us.” Is there really any greater reason for living?
Blessings to you,
Glenn and Linda
976 Coyote Ave., Greenville, IL 62246
Phone: 618-292-6048
Email: kreiders@papadocs.com
A GROWN-UP APPROACH
Kneeling at their beds, my granddaughters still say that old, familiar bedtime prayer, the one you probably learned as a child: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take. And this I ask for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” They have updated the last line to: “May angels watch me through the night and wake me with the morning light.”
It’s a lovely little prayer, just right for a child’s bedtime. It asks for the small things that are important to children. After all, when you’re young, what could be more important than being kept safe – especially when you don’t know for sure what’s under the bed or in that dark closet? Even today, that gentle prayer brings a kind of peace to my spirit.
When I wearily fall into bed at night, it’s so easy to hark back to comfortable, childhood prayers. Certainly there is nothing wrong with them. But maybe now, as my hair continues to gray and the concerns of the day go far beyond what might lurk under the bed, I need to do more than rehearse those simple lines.
St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Perhaps Paul is telling us that it’s time to move beyond gentle prayers. Maybe now, when terrorists darken our future and the world cries out for hope, pleading for God’s people to make a difference – maybe it’s the right time for all of us to pray prayers more like this one:
Lord, we come into your presence seeking a gracious blessing. But we dare to ask for an
outrageous portion of Your grace. We ask that You not simply equip us, but that You
chase us out into Your world.
Make us people of vision who look not in but out, not backward but forward, not down but
up, not at what cannot be done but at what might be accomplished by Your Spirit.
Make us those who seek mountains and not valleys, narrow paths instead of wide and
easy ways, sending us new places instead of resting places, starts instead of finishes,
horizons instead of waysides, tomorrows instead of yesterdays.
Give us running shoes instead of slippers, alarm clocks instead of sleep switches,
accelerators instead of brakes, sailboats instead of sandcastles.
Make us startle even ourselves with the power that You give. For all we do is moved by
Your breath, enveloped by Your spirit, filled with the wind of Your grace, and resounding
to Your glory and not ours. “Give us wings to fly like eagles” (Isaiah 40:31). We pray in
Jesus’ name.
But then again, perhaps we wouldn’t want to say a prayer like that. After all, what if God answered with a mighty “YES”? Then where would we be? Would we be ready?
The Rev. Ted Schroeder