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Prepared not Ready
We all have heard more than is necessary about multitasking and productivity.  We have hands free calling, Alexa can turn of the lights and lower the AC.  We can use tools like Trello, Evernote, and Expensify to collaborate with our teams from anywhere at any time.  Even on this show we encourage using your N.E.T time to add some additional books to your reading list.  All these things are useful, fun and can help you with your preparation, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready.
Caveat – Life can throw you a curveball.  You can have a bad day and you feel like all you can do is just go through the motions.
In today’s show we want to shine a spotlight on what it means to be “Ready” for each Wednesday night meeting, what’s at stake, and how to keep the main thing the main thing.
Facts from Barna Research:
“What you believe at age 13 is pretty much what you’re going to die believing”
“Moral Foundation is formed by age 9”
Royal Rangers is relational.  From the boys in your patrol to the commanders you work with and the Outpost as a whole.  Royal Rangers is dynamic and multifaceted.  We believe that Jonny Barnes envisioned Royal Rangers to me a family.  Like minded Christ followers that would walk a season or two of life together.  You can put a lot of preparation in to what life may bring your way but being truly ready – well that’s something all together different.
Speaking of Prepared vs Ready.  Where does out canoe excursion fit into this idea?  (Peace River Story)
What’s Prepared?
You have the materials printed.  You’ve read them over.  You have your supplies.  When it’s your time to present, you go through the material just as instructed and end right on time.  You have fulfilled your obligations dutifully, professionally and with a very pleasant demeaner.
There is a kind of duty you can perform that doesn’t honor anybody, but when its motivated by love you receive the joy, you receive a reward.
What is Ready?
Ready is leading with love, seeing through the eyes of the heart, and remembering that the enemy has come to kill, steel, and destroy.  Being ready starts at the beginning of each day with prayer and devotion.
1 Corinthians 13 The Message (MSG)
The Way of Love
13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Now, let’s be clear.  These are not two mutually exclusive terms.  You can come in to your weekly Royal Ranger meeting full of joy, delighting in serving your Outpost and full of love for the boys and the ministry platform, but without preparation that strives for excellence you will soon loose the interest of the future men you mentor.  Be prepared and efficient and be anchored in God’s love and truth.
In the story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Dorothy meets a lumberjack made of tin.  The Tin Woodman had once been a real man, who had been in love with a beautiful maiden. It was his dream to marry her, once he could earn enough money to build them a cottage in the woods. The Wicked Witch hated his love, and she cast spells upon the man that caused him injury, so that one by one his limbs needed to be replaced with artificial ones, made of tin. At first it seemed an advantage, for his metal frame allowed him to work nearly as powerfully as a machine. With a heart of love and arms that never tired, he seemed sure to win. “I thought I had beaten the Wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than ever; but I little knew how cruel my enemy could be. She thought of a new way to kill my love for the beautiful Munchkin maiden, and made my axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting it into two halves. Once more the tinner came to my help and made me a body of tin.
Fastening my tin arms and legs and head to it, by means of joints, so that I could move around as well as ever. But alas! I now had no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did not care whether I married her or not . . . “My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud of it and it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could not cut me. There was only one danger— that my joints would rust; but I kept an oil-can in the cottage and took care to oil myself whenever I needed it. However, there came a day when I forgot to do this, and, being caught in a rainstorm, before I had thought of the danger my joints had rusted, and I was left to stand in the woods until you came to help me. “It was a terrible thing to undergo, but during the year I stood there I had time to think that the greatest loss I had known was the loss of my heart. While I was in love I was the happiest man on earth; but no one can love who has not a heart, and so I am resolved to ask Oz to give me one. If he does, I will go back to the Munchkin maiden and marry her.” (L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)
Notice, there was a man who was once real and alive and in love. But after a series of blows, his humanity was reduced to efficiency. He became a sort of machine— a hollow man. At first, he did not even notice, for his condition made him an excellent woodman, as any person can become productive like a machine when he forgoes his heart. Notice also that it was the Wicked Witch who brought the disaster upon him. Baum’s mythic tale reminds us that the Enemy knows how vital the heart is, even if we do not, and all his forces are fixed upon its destruction. For if he can disable or deaden your heart, then he has effectively foiled the plan of God, which was to create a world where love reigns. By taking out your heart, the Enemy takes out you, and you are essential to the Story.
Eldredge, John. Waking the Dead: The Glory of a Heart Fully Alive (pp. 37-38). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
A single day’s troubles can throw us for a loop and for us men it is easy to retreat to the safety of efficiency and set our humanity aside.
The Ready for Anything motto of the Royal Ranger code urges us to wrap our hearts around the work, the play, the worship, and the service, and it is in the heart where the real bloody battles of life are wagged and where the well spring of life exists. (Proverbs 4:23)
So, how do we ready ourselves?
Read Proverbs every month
Find a good devotional, preferably on the Outpost can walk through together
Daily Prayer – Keep a journal Pray with and for your family
Fellowship