Dare to be Uncommon

Hello this is Shelby! I know it is shocking, I am actually writing on this blog. Today, I helped a friend of mine who is a member of Traders Point Christian Church, volunteer at the "Dare to be Uncommon" seminar. The seminar was from 9am to 1pm and the speakers were Tony Dungy, Stephen Arterburn, Bill Butterworth, and Bill Dallas! I went thinking that I was just going to volunteer, but God really spoke to me. I want to share a thought from one of the speakers....

One of the speakers, Bill Dallas, has an amazing story (for the sake of time I am not going to share the entire story.) However, let me share a few details. He was a wealthy real-estate broker in the Bay area. He was not a believer at that time, but through many different circumstances, lost everything. In the midst of his loss, he was arrested by the FBI for commingling of funds, which was a felony confiction. He was sentenced to 5 years in San Quentin California State Prison.

Bill Dallas was describing his story when he comes to the part where he described when he first entered 4-N-10, which represented the location of his cell when he first began his journey in the prison: 4 floor, northblock, and 10th cell. He described his incredible, but pain journey in the state prison for 2 1/2 years, when he was coming to the close of his message. He described the last days of his time in the prison system... he had moved from cell to cell, block to block, and floor to floor, and the very last day before he was released he was put back in the exact same cell as when he began.... 4-N-10. He closed with this...." God brought me to San Quentin and placed me in 4-N-10 on my very first day, and when He took me out of prison on my very last day, He did so from 4-N-10. The journey had come full circle. God used prison to accomplish what needed to be done in my life. I had entered as a broken, hopeless, self absorbed, shallow person. I had fought with God, begging Him not to make me enter that cell. Was He indeed a God who loved me? If so, then where was He? Why wasn't He involved? Didn't He see my pai? Didn't He care? Now I had my answer. I left 4-N-10 as a humbled, hopeful, growing servant of God. Without my seeing it, He had been there. He had been in control all along. He always was. He always will be."

I was reminded today that no matter what life circumstance, God is with us in the beginning, the middle, and the end! He reminds us that He is working, even when we can't see His mighty hand at work. He is a God that take a man that was numbered H64741 (his number while in prison) and turns him back into the man (with a name) that God wants him to be. Today, remember that God is molding you into the person He wants you to become and that you will see God's hand come full circle and you will look back and say, "blessed be the name of the Lord."

Check out his story in his latest book Lessons from San Quentin.

This will probably be one of very few posts that I ever write, but it was so good today, I just had to!

Signing out! Pastor Shelby