Bigstuph Blog – Thoughts from Steve

During my 5 month sabbatical I was “introduced” to Francis Chan, although I can not recall who told me about him.  After watching a handful of videos, I started to listen to his podcast sermons.  The guy was speaking TRUTH from God’s word.  He was wiping away the grey that I had let filter into my life.   When I was 14 years old, I was hospitalized after a water skiing accident.  I was trick skiing and I was “attempting” a helicopter.  This trick was being performed for about 12 or so spectators that were riding in the boat.  My attempt to hit the wake and do a 360 failed and I shattered my right femur.  As a result of the accident I had to be in the hospital for 6 weeks in traction.  The trauma of the accident somehow punctured my right kidney with a quarter size hole.  In order to see the hole in the kidney I had to have an x-ray with iodine.I was severely allergic to the iodine, and my throat closed up and eventually my heart stopped beating.  I was in and out of consciousness for 45 minutes or so.  After it all ended the doctor came in and said “son you were on your deathbed, God must have a purpose for your life, because you should not be here” Shortly after this experience, I began to felt called to shake up the church.  I use to read scripture as a 14 year old and recognize the obvious differences between what scripture says and how I was living my life.  I read scripture in a “black and white” fashion.  This “idealism” for seeing God’s word for what it was slowly went away over the years, and although I have always felt called to “wake up the church” I began to live my life just like everyone else. Until I ran across the sermons and the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  This reading scripture for what it says, rekindled my spirit and desire to learn more and so I was provided the chance to spend sometimes up to 8 hours a day in God’s word.  This went on for weeks, then months.  During this time the word of God became alive again.  More to come… 

As many of you know, I took off for 5 months beginning August 15th 2009.   I took off to find myself again.  Why did God put me on this earth?  What is my purpose?  Why am I here?  I had spent 16 years building a business for what reason?  About four years ago we came up with a cool mission for our Stuph brand.  It was simply this – To leverage our resources to change this world.  It all sounded good, but what does that mean?The purpose of my sabbatical was to simply find out what it meant to leverage our resources to change this world.  About a month into my time off, I decided that in order for me to find my way, I needed to decided which way that would be.   Towards the end of September, I decided that it would be the narrow way.  I had heard that term my entire church life, but I was confident that I was not on the narrow road.  What was different in my life than anyone else?  What was in my life that screamed to the world that I was passionately in love with God?  Not much quite honestly.  Sure I did the right things for the most part, and certainly said the right things most of the time, but I was tired of working so hard to keep my head above the spiritual waters.  There had to be a different way. Sometime in mid October (two months into my sabbatical) some one told me about a guy named Francis Chan.  To this day, I can not remember who told me about this guy – but a few days later I googled Francis Chan and this is what I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_uwWPE6lQ I watched and instantly knew that I liked this guys message.Stay tuned…this story gets really crazy