In 1997 Rick and I joined Mark and Tammy Stein in creating R.A.D.I.C.A.L.S. at Northwest Bible Church (NBC). It was a new ministry for 4th and 5th grade students during the 11:00 service and the first year we taught it we used Josh McDowell's Right From Wrong curriculum. I still remember the curriculum and the lessons we learned from it that year, especially me! Right From Wrong was written in response to the tendency toward relativism and was specifically designed to help young people recognize what is the right thing to do by studying the attributes of God and comparing their choices to Him. I can still remember the four steps it taught
1. Consider the Choice
2. Compare it to God
3. Commit to God's Way
4. Count on God's Loving Protection
We talked a lot that year about the kinds of situations the students faced, especially making choices in school and with their peers when other's attitude is often "there's no right answer, just what is right for you". We talked about how sometimes when you do the right thing you don't get an immediate reward for it and it is often hard to do. We got a lot of good discussion with our students and it was a great curriculum, maybe the best I've ever used.
Then... at the end of the first year we, and especially me, got a first hand example of how well those simple steps worked when it came to recognizing the right vs wrong thing or reaction. At the end of the year the R.A.D.I.C.A.L.S. were having a pool party. We had rented the Cypresswood Clubhouse and Pool which included paying for a lifeguard. The morning of the party we arrived at the pool to find that it had been vandalized during the night. Pool furniture and supplies had been thrown into the pool, there were pizza boxes and pizza crusts in the water, along with beer cans and some other junk. Of course, being me, my first reaction was to get upset and mad but I can still remember mentally using the four steps we'd been using with the kids. I literally considered my choice of getting upset and mad about the pool not being ready for our event versus keeping my temper and recognizing that it wasn't the fault of the lifeguard we had met there that morning. I asked myself "what is God's way?" and committed to holding my tongue and being kind. In fact I told the man that we'd help and Rick and I jumped in the pool and started getting the trash out of it while the kids who had already arrived took what we handed them and put it all away, returned the chairs and tables to where they belonged, threw away the garbage and swept up around the pool. Within about 30 minutes we had it all cleaned up and our party just proceeded like nothing had happened. Everyone was having a really good time and I had kept my temper (a MAJOR accomplishment for me) when the manager arrived. He came over and asked me if I was the person in charge of our party and I told him yes. He handed me our deposit check for the rental of the facility and told us how much he appreciated our help and that he was giving us back our money. It was really a little epiphany for me and I called the kids over and talked to them about how I had deliberately used our Right from Wrong steps to decide on my actions that morning and how they had WORKED. Both in a personal way by giving me the peace I felt from holding my temper and doing the right thing but also in a "reward" kind of way by getting back some of the money we had spent on the party.
I've thought a lot about that experience this week as we prepared to put our house on the market. When we decided to move to the west side of Houston we put our house in Spring up for sale. It was a sellers market in Houston and everyone we knew was selling their houses so quickly, 7 days, 10 days that was all we were hearing. Meanwhile...a little back story. Northwest Bible Church had hired a new youth pastor the previous year. Their family had moved to Houston from out of state and were trying to sell their house back in their home state in a decidedly non-sellers market! Since they had moved to Houston they had been living with different church members, their family had been split up with one child living with one church member's family and another living with another. (these were older kids, high school age) Anyway, needless to say in following God it had been a pretty stressful year for them, meanwhile we had moved into our new house in west Houston and our house in Spring was NOT selling. Long, loooong story short we realized that God really wanted us to rent our house to this family and yet I'll be totally honest and tell you that it is NOT what we wanted to do! We really wanted to sell it, in fact our plan was to sell it and use the proceeds to put a pool in the yard of our new home and I'd been waiting a LONG time for a house with a swimming pool! In spite of that when Rick and I recognized the right thing for us to do we committed to doing what God wanted and offered our home to this family to rent. The story got ever more dramatic as they faced life changing stresses, the loss of both of their fathers, tough work situations and a lot of soul searching about God's will. Our house became a bit of a refuge for them, a place to call their own and retreat to and the wife and I especially became good friends (you have to realize we had left NBC long before they started renting our house) and I now count her as one of my very best friends. We told them that they could rent our house for as long as they needed to do so. Like we used to tell the kids in R.A.D.I.C.A.LS. the rewards aren't always obvious but the knowledge that you are doing the right thing is in itself very rewarding and the fact that I had gained a good friend was also in my opinion an example of God's loving protection after choosing to follow his will.
Fast forward to this September, the other family moved back to their home state and we got our house ready to go back onto the market over the past month. On Wednesday we put our house up for sale and on FRIDAY we had an offer above asking price from a pre-qualified buyer! We signed the offer on Saturday and both Rick and I were almost in tears because we have found over and over in our life that when you consider the choice, compare it to God, commit to God's way and count on God's loving protection it works. Big situation or little situation, big choice or little choice... it works!
