Today I'm honored to share a talk with you that my good friend and former NFL chaplain Jerry Leachman gave at a large men's breakfast hosted by The Center. Here is an excerpt:
"There is an incident that happened a few years ago in Cleveland. I had a guy from Cleveland in one of the groups and he said, that happened. They tell the story about the Cleveland symphony orchestra. Some seasons ago, the orchestra was forming a well-known piece by Mozart called “The Magic Flute”. Midway through, a powerful storm raging outside the symphony hall caused the lights to go out. Undaunted by the darkness, the musicians hardly skipped a beat. The members of the orchestra knew the music so well, they carried on the performance even though it was pitch black dark in the symphony hall. At the end of the Mozart symphony, the audience burst into thunderous applause, clapping and loud at this extraordinary feat. A stagehand illuminated the conductor with a flashlight, shined it along the front row. The musicians took their bows, the applause crescendoed again and again and again. It was a night never to be forgotten.
This illustrates a great lesson. Do we know the Savior by heart? Have we rehearsed in the good times? Have we practiced the presence of God to the point if the times went dark and the lights went out, if we couldn’t see the conductor, would we still make the music? Dark times will come. Storms will for sure make everything seem pitch black, but, like you, I want to get to the point in my life where I barely miss a beat. I want to do that not for my own soul’s sake, but for the applause that will resound to the Lord, Jesus Christ. This leads me to ask you 3 questions:
"What do I really want in life? How much am I willing to pay for it or suffer for it? And who or what gets my time?
You need to decide what you really want, what your mission God has called you on. You might reply, "I don’t know if I believe. I don’t care." Yet you’re still called of God. He put you here for a reason. I encourage you to align up with the God who came into the cosmos and created you and everything else. You have a destiny. One of your missions is to find out what your destiny in Christ is. Put His jersey on and then find out what He has put you here to do."