Cheyne Jobbins
Southwest Regional Coordinator

A sobering reality in surfing is when you think you’re surfing really well, then watch a video of yourself for the first time. In your head, you were doing turns like Kelly Slater until you watch the footage and realize that Italo surfs better than you switch in his end-of-heat celebrations. I had one instance this very week where I felt like I did an amazing maneuver during my session. I told my friends how fantastic it was, only to look up the Surfline camera rewind and find out it was mediocre at best.

In the same way, we can think we are truly living out our faith in fantastic ways. We are going to church, serving others, or maybe even leading worship. In our minds, we are killing it! The Lord brings the sobering reality in two ways: the Holy Spirit and our immediate community. I need the people around me who will tell me that I am rubbing people the wrong way, being inconsiderate, complaining too much, or being negative. Luckily, unlike surfing, they won’t be filming the ugliness of when I am not living out my faith as I should. But we truly need this type of community around us so we can sharpen one another.

Let us not surf like Slater in our minds, living a false reality, and let us not live our faith in a false reality either.

Proverbs 27:17
“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”

(Photo by: Nick Simmons)