I had more speed than I realized. I knew I wasn’t going to make the corner. I was going to skid out and end up with some significant injuries, but I had to try to make the turn…
What happened next blew me away. In fact, it was a paradigm shift – I would never see things the same way ever again. I took the corner like I was on rails. No skidding. No wipe out. No injuries.
Man – this is an awesome skateboard!
It was the mid-seventies, the second wave of the skateboard craze. Skateboarding had started in the 50’s, but really got rolling in the 60’s. It was called side-walk surfing because it was mainly the pursuit of surfers when there was no break to surf. The technology was fairly antiquated and continued that way until the mid-seventies and the advent of polyurethane wheels. This was the game changer that catapulted skateboarding into a new era. This was the wave I was now riding.
I originally bought a pretty basic board at a skateboard shop in West Vancouver. But then my family was taking a trip to California – the epicenter of the skateboarding universe – where I knew I could buy the latest and greatest gear. So, I emptied my bank account and bought Road Rider wheels, Bennett Hijacker trucks, and a Santa Cruz fibreglass board. Wow – I had the coolest board in North Van. (At least in my neighbourhood.)
My old board had a certain degree of capability, but my new board…well, I really didn’t know what it was capable of. Or, what I was capable of on it. My first taste of my new board’s capability was that high speed corner. On my old board I would have been dead, but on my new board I hugged that corner like the roller coaster at the PNE.
My whole understanding of what I was capable of took a seismic shift.
It was such an “ah ha” moment that I still remember it over 35 years later. What I thought was impossible was now possible. It has been said, “Most things worth doing were once thought impossible before they were done.” I thought it was impossible for my skateboard to take that corner, but it did – my paradigm was shattered.
It seems like a trite lesson from a crazy kid on a silly skateboard, but it’s not…
What do you believe about your capability?
How many corners in life have you come flying into wondering if you were going to make it? In some you may have crashed, but in others you may have come through with increased capability.
The Lord sees what you are capable of more than you do. He will push you to your limit to show you that you are capable of far more than you realize. He will lead you and guide you in the way you should choose – which may be very difficult sometimes. You may feel like you are careening into a corner at high speed wondering if you will survive. Wondering how on earth this can work out. It’s in those times we need to trust that our Lord is far greater than we realize, and that we are far more capable in Him than we realize.
Yes, the Lord loves you where you are, but He wants to take you further than you ever thought possible. When we get our eyes off of ourselves and our own incapability, we will see the Lord and His capability – and that’s when we end up going places in God we never imagined.
Offer your limitations to the Lord and He will offer you His limitlessness. God is God and that changes everything. It’s time for us to stop living life looking at our own capability – living like we are riding on an antiquated skateboard. It’s time to start believing that God is who He says He is and in Him we can ‘take corners’ we never dreamed possible.
His capability is infinite, which means in Him we are capable of far more than we realize. Let’s get our eyes off our own incapability and trust Him – we’ll be amazed the corners we can take!
Ephesians 3:20
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,”
Philippians 4:13
“I can do all this through him who gives me strength.”
Psalm 32:8
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.”