Pedal Faster Baby!!!

As I am teaching my daughter how to ride her bike without training wheels one of “those” spiritual moments hit me and I felt a blog coming on. She is 7 and is sometimes afraid to venture out and try things. She is afraid that she will get hurt, or someone will see her and I find it very sad at such a young age to be affected by something like that. Here is the thing, I believe in being real with my kids. They need to be able to trust what I tell them. I don’t feel it right to feed them a line of B.S. and then have them find out from someone else that daddy was trying to keep something from them. So before we even started she asked me if she would fall and I told her yes. I told her that I would be with her every step of the way and that I would keep my hand on her but eventually I would let her go so that she could get the hang of it on her own. I told her that everyone falls but that you would have to just get right back up dust yourself off and get back on the bike and keep pedaling. Well, then it happened… she started off great. I told her pedal faster baby you’re doing it. Then she saw that she was doing it on her own and what do you think happened? You guessed it, she panicked. She lost her focus, lost control of the bike and headed straight for the mailbox. Crash! She had her first wreck and being the sometimes fear monster that she is, she gave up. She was afraid of getting hurt again, so she was done for the day. She was so focused on the pain that she could not see the outcome potential, if she had just kept on trying to pedal faster. For all you mothers that may be reading this, let me tell you she was fine…it was just a small scratch. And I guess that’s what was so frustrating for me. Then it hit me, how different am I or better yet how different are a lot of Christians out there? Here we are trying to learn how to ride our spiritual bike (here is the kicker) “Without Training Wheels” and we want so bad to get out there and do it ourselves but we can’t get past the thought of getting hurt. So it paralyzes us from ever learning to do it ourselves. We never leave the front porch. We have to wait for people to come to us instead of us going out after them. How many people are going to hell because we are afraid of our Father letting go and letting us figure some things out. Sometimes we are going to crash. Sometimes we are going to get hurt, sometimes it hurts real badly. Picture an adult riding a bicycle with little kids training wheels on it, how crazy would that look, but how many of us are at that point. It is time we take some chances. Be bold, take some risks and know that we might get our knees skinned up but all wounds heal and we learn from them. One of the last things my precious girl asked me was “daddy will I be on training wheels the rest of my life” and I told her no baby but you are going to have to take some risk and not be afraid because I will always be there to pick you up. Our Heavenly Father is the same way. He is there to pick us up. He loves us but he wants us to take those risks and show Him how much we truly love Him. So PEDAL FASTER BABY and let’s hit the road…
Love you all, Kristian