Air Force and Jesus

I should first start this post by saying we are all wretched sinners - every single one of us. It's only by God's grace that we are saved. There is nothing we can do in our 'walk' with the Lord to save ourselves from eternal damnation. It's a free gift, and you don't even have to pay shipping and handling. Romans 3:23-24 says,

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Something a lot of Christians struggle with is the free grace of God, but then this expectation of living a life that resembles that of Jesus Christ. Perfection. How does it all fit? Lately I've heard a lot about a grace provoked obedience. Basically somebody does you a HUGE favor. The response to said favor is to treat them well and honor them. You treating that person well didn't purchase the favor, it's simple cause and effect.

<Enter the part where I relate the above to cleaning up after 350 campers>

Discipline drives excellence.

Last week we had 250 freshman from the Air Force Academy. The group is part of the Air Force's Christian outreach program (I'm almost certain it isn't funded by the gov't). The group was great, and you could tell they lived very disciplined lives.

Each Sunday the campers 'help' us clean camp by stripping beds and folding clean sheets/blankets in a specific way. Camp lingo for this phenomenon is 'folding bed packs'. I'm generous when I say we typically have a 2% success rate of camper folded bed packs. This means the camp staff gets to go behind each camper to correctly fold the sheets. We re-fold bed packs in between vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms (see: Warrior Princesses below).

Air Force freshman were greatly different than other groups. First of all, their bed pack success rate was at least 60%. It was absolutely amazing to see how well these guys folded bed packs. We give each camper a page long description of how a bed pack should be folded, so it's not completely straight forward.

Even more amazing than their greater success rate was when one of the Air Force cadets saw us correct his bed pack. The cadet walked up to the intern who fixed his mistake and asked what needed correction. Our intern then showed the cadet how to correctly fold the bed pack. The cadet then unfolded the now correctly folded bed pack and refolded it with his newly found instruction. He will never need to know this skill ever again in his life, but he still wanted to adhere to the level of excellence that's expected of him. Pretty amazing huh? What would it look like if we brought this level of discipline to our faith?

Proverbs 1:1-7 talks a lot about knowledge and wisdom. I think a healthy dose of discipline will greatly help in becoming more like Christ.

¹ The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel:
 ² for gaining wisdom and instruction;
   for understanding words of insight;
³ for receiving instruction in prudent behavior,
   doing what is right and just and fair;
⁴ for giving prudence to those who are simple,^[a]
   knowledge and discretion to the young—
⁵ let the wise listen and add to their learning,
   and let the discerning get guidance—
⁶ for understanding proverbs and parables,
   the sayings and riddles of the wise.^[b]
 7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
   but fools^[c] despise wisdom and instruction.


All of the above is great and we can only receive things like wisdom, insight, prudence, etc by the grace of God. However, I don't think we should expect them by osmosis. This is where the grace-driven obedience comes to play. It's the response to the favor.




But remember, our good deeds are still tainted. Isaiah 64:6 says,


⁶ All of us have become like one who is unclean, 
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.

Picture from Agnes Vail falls... Yup, it's snowing in October.