The Road Warrior: What Energizes You?
Life on the road is tough, I won’t lie to you. But after 21 years of it, I have figured out a few things that absolutely light me up. And when traveling, it is important to find those things that GIVE you energy and avid those things that TAKE energy from you, if at all possible. Here we have my short list of the things that put the fuel in my tank as a ROAD WARRIOR.
1. SEEING PEOPLE REPENT - As an evangelist, there is nothing I would rather see than a person hear the gospel and be moved by God’s Spirit to repent of their sin and confess faith in Christ. This is the penultimate experience for me, knowing that someone has gone from death to life. If that ever gets old, something is really wrong with me.
2. COFFEE - No shame in my game…I drink it by the gallon and don’t apologize. And no, I am not addicted, I can stop anytime I want to. I JUST NEVER WANT TO. There!
3. MUSIC - When I need to be energized, especially after pouring my heart and soul out on a stage in front of a thousand college students, and I have a 3 hour drive ahead of me to get home to my wife and boys, I need guitars. So my special stash of favorite music comes out, including Third Day, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Tonic, John Mayer, Hillsong, Johnny Cash, or Stryper.
4. PEOPLE - Because I am an extrovert, people give me energy as opposed to sucking it out of me. I love conversations with folks when I get to hear their story. I love the large crowd, seeing the look of concentration of faces as I preach, hearing the laughter at one of my comments, and keying in on the vibe of the audience.
5. UNDERSTANDING - I don’t demand or expect to be served when I go somewhere to preach, but I sure appreciate it. I am energized when I arrive at an event and it is organized, people seem relaxed and prepared, and they offer to help me (with my books, a bottle of water, etc). When they spend the extra $20 to get me a non-smoking room, or when they splurge for the extra $45 to get me a direct flight from Charlotte instead of saving that $45 and requiring me to fly through Detroit to get from Charlotte to Knoxville. This means they understand what I have to go through to get there, and it is just a special touch that makes me look forward to going back there in the future.
There is much more that energizes me and I will share that in the next blog, but right now, my family awaits, so I leave cyberspace to be energized by them.
March 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
Stryper ROCKS!!!
I don’t know if you’ve talked about this before or not, but could you share some of your thoughts on the high’s and low’s in terms of you going and preaching and seeing life changing decisions (which is great) and yet the difficulty of not being able to stay around and help those people follow through on their commitments and see the fruit.
I know you are called to travel and preach…but do you ever struggle with the fact that you don’t get to develop deeper relationships with students?
Is it rewarding for your personally to have those who brought you in to speak later contact you and give you progress updates? Does it happen very often?
Thanks!
March 1st, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Great question Phil. And I wonder also about those that come to the Lord and basically are left behind to be mentored by others? Do you ever followup on any of these decisions, or do you do any personal discipleship with your obvious crazy life?
Do you experience lows if decisions are low?
Thanks.
March 1st, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Thanks for the great question. I used to obsess over the fact that I had to leave after people got saved. I would worry about them, what would happen to their faith, and what if nobody ever discipled them. I do not obsess over this any longer for 2 reasons.
First, I need to trust the Holy Spirit. Nobody personally discipled me (though that is the goal) and I turned out ok because the Spirit of God lives in me, and even when I did not have a personal mentor, He was my teacher as I prayed and read the Word. I think many times we underestimate the power of the third Person of the Trinity.
Secondly, I need to trust the church, the bride of Christ. I am an evangelist. My gift is to proclaim the gospel. The church has the great responsiblity to disciple believers in community and equip them for works of service. Put plainly, it is not my job to disciple or follow up on each decision made, that belongs to the local church. And I do take great pains to make sure that there is a community there that will take the ob seriously.
Finally, I do get to personally disciple people, but they are the people that live here in Boiling Springs, that I can have time with regularly, that are able to travel with me form time to time. I am also discipling my children, which is one of the greatest joys in my life. And I have close friendships with a handful of brothers here that I would not trade for the world.
I think responding to your questions more in depth might be a good idea for another post, what do you guys think?
March 2nd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Yes, another post is good. Here’s another question. Do you have a church you’re a member of and you attend when you’re home on Sundays? What does Charie and the boys do when you’re gone?
March 5th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
question…
how did you get started? I speak but I am not finding a lot of people beating down my door to have me come speak at their event.
any advice?
-jordan