Day 3

Everyone is just now laying down to get some rest. We had a good day, but a challenging one. Thankfully we didn’t hit much rain at all, but the wind was strong all day, blowing from the southeast. During our session tonight there were many stories told of how the students helped each other biking. The stronger riders would take the lead, creating a draft for those who were tired and struggling.

One of the coolest things about the bike trip is seeing how the struggles, successes, and teamwork involved relates back to everyday life and our spiritual walk. For instance, take the example of the wind today. In life there’s many times where you struggle, things get tough, and it seems impossible to go on. You feel like giving up, throwing in the towel, getting off the bike. Left on your own, there’s a good chance you would. But when you have others with you on the journey who care about you, want to see you make it to the finish, and are willing to step up and help you get there, you gain hope and confidence that you can. Suddenly you gain the strength to press on and finish well. Life is hard, especially in a world messed up with sin, so why would you ever want to just go it alone?

God has designed and created us to be relational. To need others to help us, shape us, and go with us. One of the biggest goals of the bike trip is to give students a tangible experience of what that’s like. In the process, they come to understand not just their need of others to help them bike into a strong headwind, but their need of others to spur them along in their faith and life. Hebrews 10:24-25 is just one of many verses that talks about this. Spurring one another on, encouraging one another, loving one another.

Each day we have a memory verse that’s printed on the maps. The whole group is encouraged to memorize it and take time to dwell on it at times while they’re biking. Today’s verse was Romans 12:12, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” It was a great reminder and encouragement in light of the struggle today.

Tonight’s teaching session was on the spiritual discipline of prayer. In it’s simplest form prayer is just talking with God. It’s carrying on a conversation with the Creator of the universe. But it’s more than that, too. There’s one pastor who describes it as a “walkie-talkie in a time of warfare”. That’s a good analogy.

A lot of times we can pray to God as if he were just some big genie in the sky who grants our every wish. Or like the person on the other side of a drive-through window who takes your order and then gives you what you wanted as you drive around. Prayer is more. It’s a full-on dependance upon God. Seeking his direction over our own messed up thinking. Seeking his will first above our own. That’s not to say we shouldn’t bring our requests and concerns to God, we should, and he wants us to! But our first goal ought to be seeking God’s desires.

Prayer can be hard for a lot of us, so we talked about learning how to pray, too. After the week is over, I’ll come back and post the teaching notes here for anyone who’s interested.

Tomorrow is a short day, destination Shelbyville. We’re done biking at lunch! I think the total mileage is only 38(ish) miles. We’ve biked about 157 miles so far. After lunch tomorrow we’re heading to the pool to swim and relax for a while. It will nice to have a little down time in the middle of our week. If we get wifi again in Shelbyville, the plan is to post some videos tomorrow afternoon.