As a young father of two precious children he lost his wife to a brain aneurysm. At that point he had to learn to stand on his knees. Tommie Harris Jr. was a chubby kid, a high school athlete, a college football All-American and an NFL star. He learned to play through the pain at every level. This plan is the first of five in the series.
For Generations
Day 1
Scriptures: Isaiah 40:26, Philippians 1:6
Darkness is an interesting force. It’s not synonymous with the “Dark Side” from Star Wars, it’s not inherently evil, and it does not even have to be considered equal to the absence of light. The truth is that darkness can be an accelerant or an extinguisher, depending on how you interact and react to it.
I had my first taste of real darkness when I was 14 years old. Sure, I had experienced the dark before like when I was little, and my mother turned the lights out at bedtime. Also, since my father was in the army, I had seen dark nights from vantage points all over the world by age 14.
Fitting in is a difficult game that every kid plays. It’s a game that doesn’t have a final buzzer. I was a chubby boy, not fat, but round. Like most 14-year-olds, I was trying to find myself by who I hung out with. One night we were doing some things that we ought not have been, when we heard the sirens of the local police. The chase was on. I ran as fast as I could, yet with sweat pouring down my face, it seemed like the faster I ran, the closer the cops got to catching us and the farther my ‘friends’ ran ahead of me. Unfortunately for me, that night the chubby kid was the only one who got caught.
When they closed the door on me at the juvenile detention center, the darkness was so thick I could taste it. Even though I didn’t fully understand then, and wouldn’t understand it for quite a while, the darkness in that room was doing something to me.
Long before my night in juvey, there was another boy who sat imprisoned by darkness. Just like me, the darkness was doing something to him too. Producing somethin’, developing somethin’, building somethin’… special.
It’s time to identify the dark that is producing, developing, and/or building something in you. It can feel like it’s against your will or that it is working for your benefit.
How many of us feel like we are believing for what has not yet been done? Believing for something that was initiated in a time of darkness?
If that’s you, I would like to invite you to explore some of the great things that God has developed in darkness. Over the next 4 days, we will discover the darkness that developed a boy long ago. We will discover the darkness that is developing you.
True development happens in the dark.
Day 2
Scriptures: 1 Samuel 16:11, Psalms 63:1-8, Romans 8:28, Lamentations 3:22-31
A time long ago, in an ancient country there was a boy named David who was insignificant to say the least. He was not well liked. Most would have described him as a bit awkward, small, ruddy, and handsome in his own way. His father was rich in land and livestock. His brothers were quite a bit older, popular, and treated like royalty compared to how the boy experienced his childhood.
The boy would not grow up to have memories playing in the yard with his friends. Instead, his days and nights were filled with work. The climate was dry and the crops only grew in their season. His days and nights were filled with walking and then walking some more, as he followed his father’s flock of sheep while they grazed the sparse ground. The wind would move the brown grass against his body as he walked. The smell of salt water from a nearby sea would fill the air. The bleats of his sheep would call his senses to pay close attention making certain that the flock wasn’t trying to communicate some impending danger. The night sky brought with it an accelerant – like lighter fluid – the darkness brought development. The darkness produced a maturity beyond his years. The darkness developed an elite level of combat that not even the country’s finest soldiers could muster. The darkness was building a man who would someday stand before thousands just as confidently as he stood nightly before sheep.
My night in juvey ended just as quickly as it had begun, but its effects were far from complete. After, I was kicked out of my school and enrolled in an Alternative School. The darkness that I tasted on my ‘one-night stand’ in juvey set in motion a development process that I would have never imagined, but one that I could never enjoy the fruits of without the process that came as a result of it. I’ve learned that I must… you must submit yourself to the process.
The process for you can be any length of time and happen anywhere. It might be a season, a year, a month, or even a day. It might be junior high, high school, or college. It could be you just got married or you’re raising your kids. Maybe you are getting divorced or you just lost a loved one.
For me, football has been a big part of my process. When I was going through recruiting at the University of Oklahoma, all the critics told me I would be a great Sooner before I had actually achieved it. In the midst of it all, the great Barry Switzer reminded me, “You have to do the work first. You can wish all you want, but work must be the primary focus.” From this I gathered that it was imperative that I submit myself to the process.
I can still hear my Father’s voice, saying, “Son, you gonna have to DWI (dewee)”, it was his way of saying that I was going to have to “Deal Wit It”. I had to submit myself to the process.
What process do you need to submit yourself to? What darkness is at work on the inside of you?
There is a unique piece of God that you cannot experience outside of the valley. In Psalm 23, the psalmist writes that “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear NO EVIL…”. What I hear the writer of this scripture say, is that the experience to be had in the valley, in the darkness, will be used by God in a powerful way in your life and mine.
Notice it. Acknowledge it. Understand that this process that God is working in you is for your good.
Remember that I was the chubby kid, but in the dark I learned that in order to change I had to see myself differently. What I learned in that dark moment was that I did not need to try to become my friends but to become me. The process was developing who I was always supposed to be.
Day 3
Scriptures: Jeremiah 17:14, Psalms 34:1-22, Matthew 7:7-8, 1 Samuel 16:10-13
Imagine for a moment that you are a piece of paper, not an ordinary standard size paper but a specialty paper made for a distinct PURPOSE. Specifically, you are photographic paper. Not the kind that you put into a Canon Printer, that waits for a duplicate image to be laser-printed onto its surface. But the kind of photographic paper that can only become all that it is meant to be when it is held in the hands of the photographer and taken into the dark room.
If you listen closely, you can hear the photographer’s voice talking about how incredible and unique the photo will be when the process in the dark room is complete.
But the difference between the photographer and you, at least in the beginning moments of the process, is that he has already seen through the lens what you were to become when all you can see is a blank slate.
In Malachi 3:3, God is referred to as the silversmith who sits as the refiner and purifier of the ‘blank slate’ silver. We believe that God knows what He is doing. But sometimes it is still so hard.
God’s perspective is always more advanced than our own, but the question is not ‘Can God see the finished product of you and me?’
The question is ‘Will you and I choose to keep moving forward in this process that we call life even when the darkness is all that we can see?’
Remember back on Day 1, I asked you a question:
How many of us feel like we are believing for what has not been done yet?
Sometimes the dark is painful, sometimes the unknown is a struggle, and sometimes the anxiety is overwhelming.
I love the scripture, but for our time together I want to invite you to see yourself in David’s story. The country boy who lived his childhood amongst the sheep is well known. You can find David’s story in the book of 1 and 2 Samuel.
Consider this… the darkness is what prepared David for his most well-known battle. The darkness was the threshold to his future, even though from the outside it looked like it would keep him wandering in the field forever. The darkness is where he looked to be the most alone, but it’s also where he was most at peace. The darkness is where he fine-tuned his musical skills that would eventually pave his pathway to the palace. It was out of the darkness that he came to be anointed king, but directly after being chosen by God in front of a disapproving father and seven jealous brothers, he was strangely directed to go back into the darkness.
It makes me think of homemade bread. The dough must be kneaded, allowed to rise, and then cooked before it reaches its fullest potential. David was put back into that place of process where he stayed hidden for a bit longer.
What about you? Where are you at in your process?
How does the darkness feel to you? Painful? A struggle? Overwhelming?
Day 4
Scriptures: 1 Samuel 17:1-11, 1 Samuel 17:20-23, 1 Samuel 17:32-37, Philippians 4:13, Matthew 19:26
If I learned nothing else in my years of playing in the NFL, I realized that if you’re willing to push through the pain, amazing things will begin to happen. It is no small feat getting up every day going to a job full of the world’s most athletic 1% in physicality. However, once you’re there, playing in it isn’t the real accomplishment, the real accomplishment is playing through it.
Tenacity and perseverance are critical inside and outside of the league. It’s more about mental strength, than it is about physical strength.
Are you familiar with resistance strength training?
According to Google: Resistance strength training is a form of physical activity that is designed to improve muscular fitness by exercising a muscle or a muscle group against external resistance. In other words, resistance makes you stronger. It’s true in life, just as it is in the gym.
Sometime after David had been anointed to be king and then so strangely sent back into the dark nights of the field, his presence was requested by King Saul. Saul was depressed and he had heard that David was a skilled musician. So, David was sent by his father, Jesse, to the palace to serve the king. Isn’t it interesting that one king was blinded by the dark and the other king was being developed in the dark?
After a short time of serving as the King’s personal musician, David returned again to work in his father’s field while Saul went to war with the army against their neighboring enemy. Their enemy was the Philistines, a notable force and well known throughout that territory as professional warriors. Their country was equipped with some of the most skilled blacksmiths in the area, outfitting their army for battle. The Israelites were professional shepherds, farmers and fisherman, but they were not warriors.
Battles like these would go on for days… like a standoff, the two forces constantly sizing each other up. But this battle was different. The Philistines had come equipped with a champion, a giant of a man known as Goliath.
On one particular day, David’s father summoned him from the field to send him with food to the front lines where his brothers were serving in King Saul’s army. David went as he was instructed… obedient, willing, and surrendered, still just a boy and not old enough to join the army himself. The darkness had prepared him for this moment. Upon his arrival, he heard the commotion from the battlefield. He heard the champion challenging his people and mocking his God.
Naturally David volunteered to fight the giant. He was prepared. But King Saul questioned his ability and tried to outfit him with his own royal armor. David explained that the king-sized armor would inhibit his movement and explained that he had already killed the lion and the bear with just his sling and his knife. The darkness had accelerated his growth. All that time, it had been producing, developing, & building something in David.
What has the darkness been developing on the inside of you over these last couple of days? What still needs to be developed? Can you see that God has been at work even in the darkness?