Getting the Most Out of Life

Posted on Sep 20, 2011 in Blog | 5 comments

Let me start this update with a quick racing report. We are starting The Chase in Cup. It has been a battle all year long – 26 hard fought races. We have 10 races to go. Both the #11 and #18, Denny and Kyle, are ready to go. This is going to be an exciting Chase because I think everyone in it has a chance to win it. We are going to be battling away as most of you race fans who follow us know.

In the Nationwide series, we continue to set records. Kyle Busch wins at Richmond. That’s 10 wins this year in Nationwide. That group over there has been doing a great job.

Regarding Motocross, we just finished the year in California with Justin finishing 8th out there overall. Les Smith, who was filling in for Davi Millsaps, finished 10th. We are getting ready now for Anaheim. It won’t be long now before we’ll be racing again in Southern California.

Quick update on Game Plan for Life – I know a lot of you out there have been prayer partners and I really appreciate it. I want to share something with you today. We have our small group study that we came out with through LifeWay. We now have all eleven chapters of the book and I think it is presented in a great form from examples on the football field to racing. We had Derwin Gray and myself do some introductory sessions for the eleven different topics in the small group study. As a part of that process we have been speaking in prisons which are part of our speaking outreach. I received something that was really exciting for me. I spoke at prisons in Orlando and I gave my testimony there. After I left these prisoners they did the small group study. This is 23 letters I got from prisoners with most of them sharing with me that they either made a decision for Christ or that they had strengthened their walk with Christ or they had made a commitment that once they got out of incarceration to go back out and start living for the Lord. I am so excited about this. I just ask each and every one of you out there if you could pray for that speaking ministry or if some of you out there might be in a city where you feel like you would like to be a part of a ministry where we come and speak and give our testimony. The most effective thing I have done is speaking out to the unsaved. Typically what we do is come to the city and form a committee. That committee will recruit 100 table hosts and we put it on a grass roots level. Those table hosts will be able to invite predominately unsaved men to come to breakfast. We’re hoping in each city to have roughly 1,000 in attendance which is roughly what we have been doing. We chose not to do this at a church which can be an intimidating site for some people. We do it at a local hotel and convention type center. It’s easy on the invite for the table host to say we are having a free event here – we give you a free breakfast, a free book and Joe will stay and sign the books afterwards. We are getting ready to do speaking events 3 weeks in a row. We also leave the group studies for those who would like them. Anyone who would like to do that, please let us know at GamePlanforLife.com.

I was studying what I wanted to share with you from a devotional standpoint. I was studying the first chapter of Joshua, third verse. And really what God says there to the nation of Israel is that I am going to give you and I want you to take possession of the Promised Land. That total area was 300,000 square miles. He said I am going to give it to you, I am going to be there with you, I’ll help fight whatever kinds of fights we gotta have but I want you to take this entire land. 300,000 square miles – now that’s big and Israel with God telling them and promising them they could take the Promise Land ended up taking approximately 30,000 square miles. So Israel got 10% of what God had promised them they could have. I got to thinking about that – how about you and how about me? How much am I getting out of what God has promised me that I can have? My greatest fear us that someday I am going to stand before the Lord and He is going to say “you know what Joe? You did pretty good. You got roughly 10% of what I had for you.” At that point, I am going to panic. How about you? How much have you been promised? Are we claiming everything that God has said “DO THIS”? He is going to give you the strength to make it possible for you to do these things. That’s kind of my fear and I am speaking to myself here.

The other part of that study is that if He says he is going to give this to you, what should we do? We know in Joshua 1:9, He first says to Joshua “be strong and be courageous”. So he is saying to you and me “be strong and be courageous”. He is saying “step out”. So how do we do that? The first thing is “do not let my Word depart from your thought process”. Always be focused on the Bible. He has given us a game plan – the game plan for life. He says “always be focused on my Word”. We’ve got a game plan and we need to make sure we study it. Then He says in Ephesians 6 “put on the full armor of God”. Every morning I try and say to myself before I get out of bed to try and picture myself putting on the full armor of God. He kind of lays it out there that we should be a peaceful person, we should take the shield of faith which will ward off the firey darts of the devil, we should tell the truth, and we should put on the breastplate of righteousness and confess each and every sin. His Word is our sword and then put on the helmet of salvation. Get prepared for the Spiritual battle.

So those two things he says are critical. I think he lays out the game plan for us and He made a promise for us. The question for you and I is “are we claiming everything He has got for us?” I was really speaking to myself there and I thought it might mean something to all of you also.

We would really like for you to go to the GamePlanForLife website. We have some new things coming up on the website this month. We went back to 1974 when President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. The article there takes a look at forgiveness in our lives. I think that might be interesting for you. We have the Top 10 Cal Ripken, Jr. moments and that refers back to our study on a life of purpose. We should all be living a life of purpose.