August 26, 2009

Producing Brad Minns Story Video

Excerpt from Ch. 17 of “Astonishing Grace to the Chief of All Fools” (Page 156)

For months, I continued battling about what direction to go in my career and how to earn a living while trying to satisfy my growing desire to work in the kingdom of God.  In an email to my friend, Carol Ann Dykes on August 27th 2009, I write, “I’m finally caving into the pressure from Keri to get out on the road and do the thing, I’m supposed to be doing …speaking, and promoting the Kickstart brand.”

At the same time, I was feeling her pressure, I felt an even stronger burden to find some way to do kingdom work and I felt one of those ways was to produce another documentary type God story for my friend Brad Minns.  Brad was a former three-time world deaf tennis champion and one of the first winners of what would become the “Body for Life” physique transformation competition.  Most importantly, he had a powerful testimony about how Jesus Christ saved him and pulled him out of the world of fitness modeling. 

Keri and I had known Brad since we had the Lord’s Gym when we had hired him as our head trainer.  From that point forward, he and I had remained close friends and did quite a few things together.  From the first few times I met Brad, I felt like I was his biggest fan.  He was one of the most loving and humble Christians I’d ever met, and you could tell he really loved Christ and was so bold about sharing his faith.  Brad was an inspiration to me, and I felt like His story could be so encouraging to other Christians, and that he needed to be out there speaking to others.  I couldn’t understand why people weren’t ringing his phone off the hook to have him speak.  I wanted so badly to help get his story out there.

It was going to take a lot of my time and work to produce the story, and Keri was very reluctant, but because it was Brad, she finally agreed for us to help him this way.  I ended up taking more time to produce the story than I had expected, and Keri once again became so critical of my work, telling me God didn’t need me to try this hard, and that I was wasting my time.  Keri and I had gotten into a bitter argument about it, just before I left to take them a finished DVD of his story.  They were so pleased with the video, that Brad unexpectedly gave me a check for $2000 for the video.  I was so blessed, because we not only needed the money, but I felt like God was validating the hard work and my obedience to do the work, even though it wasn’t paid work.

I was so mad at Keri from all her contempt and disrespect that by the time I came home, I slammed the check down on the countertop as hard as I possible could, while exclaiming, “How’s that for wasting my time?”.  Even though I was so angry and unlike Christ when I said that, I so hoped she would eventually feel remorse and be humbled, but of course that didn’t happen.  From here, things only got worse, until I once again could no longer take it.