The Bungee Jump

I’ve never bungee jumped, but those who have say that it’s the experience of a lifetime. There are many others who’d say that anyone who did something like that would have to be crazy. And there is some truth to this…. Just think about it: you tie one end of a big rubber band around your leg and the other end around something solid, and then you jump off a perfectly good platform that’s not about to fall!

As we walk through life, there are times God asks us to do things that seem just as crazy. As I was thinking about this, I remembered being a kid and taking swimming lessons, and there was this incident with the HIGH DIVE! There I was, this nine-year-old kid, barely able to swim, standing on a board about fifteen feet in the air (to me, it seemed at least a hundred), and my instructor wanted me to jump. I had a little bit of a hard time with that. If he had started me with the high dive first, there would have been no way he’d have gotten me off that board, but he didn’t. My instructor first had me jump from the side of the pool, then the regular diving board, and then the HIGH DIVE. And even then, there was someone in the water below, saying, “I’ll catch you—I won’t let you drown!” (That was good to know.)

Well, after chickening out a few times, I finally did it—I jumped! And before that summer was over, I was jumping off that board all the time—even backwards and while doing tricks. God has worked the same way with me in other parts of my life. You see, this is not my first jump….It’s just my biggest so far. I’ve had several smaller leaps of faith leading up to this one. The bungee jump that I’m referring to happens on January 15. I’ll be leaving my day job at Second Harvest, and I’ll be going into fulltime ministry with Manna Café.

Ever since that chicken-legged kid on the diving board, I’ve been building up to this. Some jumps were great, and some were belly flops, but God didn’t let me drown. There was playing in a Christian rock band when it wasn’t cool, which led me to start a sound company (which was a flop), but this led me to Provision, where I was introduced to street ministry for the first time, which (after a seven-year detour into the wilderness where I almost drowned) led to leaving three jobs to become an inner-city missionary for 75 dollars a week. And that’s where I fell in love with the poor, became a street minister, received the vision for Manna Café , and met and fell in love with my beautiful wife (she’s my rib). Even there, there were some flops along the way, but God didn’t let me drown.

This brings us to about two years ago, when Vicki and I started going into Tent City (and actually doing ministry on our own). This time last year, we chartered Manna Café Ministries as a nonprofit organization. Now it’s time for the biggest jump of all: establishing MCM as a full-fledged ministry. So just like the bungee jumper puts his total trust in that big rubber band, I’m putting my total trust in God—strapping Him to my ankle, standing the platform of a perfectly good job, and jumping (!!) into a life of full time ministry—and all I know for sure is He won’t let me drown. Some will say I’m crazy. My prayer is Jesus will say, “Good job.”
I know as I’m writing this that there are some of you that God is calling to your own jump. So as I pray for you, you pray for me so that we don’t chicken out. I’LL SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE.

AAHHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Pastor Bubba