6th Corona Letter

Years ago, I sat under the leadership of pastor Ed Johnson at First Baptist Church of Ocala. One Sunday morning he said something that I have never forgotten, even though I don’t remember the context of the sermon he said it in, the point of it still reverberates in my heart and head.

He said, “You never know what’s in a frog until you squeeze.”

It is such a great quote, with such an awesome practical application, that I have written it down in my Bible. And I have lived that quote on multiple occasions. Let me give you some illustrations on what I think it means….

As a fire fighter and paramedic you train for the absolute worst calls you can ever have. Be it a cardiac arrest or a trauma call. In school you go through scenario after scenario to see if you have the basic understanding of the skills down, you run through the protocols and procedures to see if you are doing things in order. You graduate from school get a state license and one day you find yourself sitting in an ambulance and you’re going to your first “Real” call.

Do you have it down? Will you get the right diagnosis? Will you treat it the proper way? Stop shaking. Someone’s life depends on you now.

My first call was a suicide by gunshot. I jumped in and did everything I knew how and afterwards I felt like the greatest failure ever. Later that evening after I went to bed, I heard two veteran paramedics talking about the call. The one asked the other what he thought about the “new” guy, It was me they were talking about. To my surprise he responded, “He’s going to be good, he knows the skills and he has confidence, he’s just wet behind the ears right now.”

The “frog” had been squeezed.

Years later as a deputy sheriff, serving an eviction, the guy I had been talking to, unknown to me had felony warrants. Something didn’t add up, the guy from next door came out and told me the guy was stealing his property and the next thing I know the guy took off running. I gave chase. He jumped a fence and turned around, gun in hand and shot at me. I slid up behind a small oak tree and called for back up and waited, gun drawn.

Once again, the “frog” had been “squeezed”.

Do you see what I am getting at with this awesome quote, “You never know what’s in a frog until you squeeze it”. Yeah, I know what most of you were thinking in the beginning, “Well sure I know what’s in a frog when you squeeze it. Guts, guts and blood.” And in a way yep, that’s exactly the answer. You find out what is keeping that frog alive, his guts and all that they do.

So, what’s inside you right now? Or, how about we ask the question, What’s been inside you over the years?

Let the trials and tribulations of life come crashing in, let the gales begin to rattle your house, let the waves like a tempest begin to batter your very foundations and let me tell you something, you will find out what you are made of in a heartbeat. And so will everyone else.

That ugly, long, brutal divorce – Were you nothing but a big mushy blob of fear and anxiety and depression? Did the loss of a loved one drive you to taking the form of a stinky, pile of despair and brokenness? The loss of that job that you have had for 20 years and so desperately needed leave you in a tailspin of anger and hatred?

Or was there something bigger in you? Something better? Something that rose above the situation and circumstances and shined like a billion suns and trillion stars and you and everyone else saw it. You showed greatness, class, fortitude, character and integrity even in the midst of terrifying and insurmountable circumstances.

As Christians, this should be an important question for us, at the end of the day, what is inside of me, what am I made of?

Listen to the Words of the apostle Paul for a moment and see what he was filled with:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 4:13-19 (ESV)

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:7-11

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

1 Corinthians 11:1

I think you get the point. Paul was filled with Christ. Christ consumed him. Everything in his life was about Jesus and Jesus in him, to him, through him. Paul could not imagine his life without Jesus, because he was so filled with him. The Holy Spirit moved and worked and was manifested in all that he did, said, and thought.

All of the great men and women of the New Testament had one common thread through their lives, they were filled with Jesus Christ and walked in the power and leading of the Holy Spirit that indwelt them.

All of the great Christian hero’s of the faith that we see throughout church history? You guessed it, they were filled with Jesus. Jim Elliot, Charles Spurgeon, Fanny Crosby, Dietrich Bonehoeffer and the many others.

So, you guessed it. What am I going to tell you today?

Be filled with Christ. Be filled to overflowing. Be constantly filling with Jesus.

Yeah, times are difficult right now. Yeah, bad things are happening. It might get better, it might not. But I know this, I am going to do everything in my power to be daily filled with as much of Jesus as I can be, because if I am filled to overflowing with Him, I can get through anything Satan or this world may throw at me all day long.

If Coronavirus wants to squeeze me, guess what’s going to come out? Jesus. I hope that every time I’m squeezed, Jesus comes out.

If you are squeezed today, what’s going to come out?

Soli Deo Gloria