Home » Guest blogger: Jim Rubart

Guest blogger: Jim Rubart

Recently, a friend of mine, Jim Rubart, sent me a short piece he’d written. I liked it so much, I asked if I could borrow it to share with the Group. He agreed, so I’m pleased to present this nugget of inspiration for your edification today…

“Throw Caution To the Wind? Not Good Enough. We Must Crush It”
by Jim Rubart

Last summer I stood on the edge of a twenty-foot cliff overlooking the crystal waters of Lake Chelan, and willing my heart rate to subside to 160.

It wasn’t the fear of jumping. I’d already done that ten times at least.

It was the addition of a flip.

We’d been cliff-jumping for over an hour when my thrill-seeking buddy A.C. flipped from the cliff and sputtered to the surface with a laugh and a challenge.

I ignored it.

My eleven-year-old, Micah did not.

I went and stood beside Micah as he worked through the pros and cons of flipping. I wish I could say my attention was 100% on him and his choice, but I shifted between encouraging him and trying to make the voice inside shut up, the voice that kept saying, “If he does it, you have to do it.”

Micah’s flip was perfect. A silky smooth rotation, feet smashing into the azure water, his face beaming when he surfaced.

At that point I made a deal with God, not yet willing to accept my fate. I bargained that if someone came up and asked if I was going to flip, I’d do it. If not, I’d leave with a millstone of fear and regret hanging around my neck.

A minute later my wife approached.

And A.C.’s wife got a picture of my death-defying flip.

What’s your flip—the thing in your life you know you must do? Mend a relationship? Quit a job? Write that book?

Too often I live with caution as my intimate friend, when it is often my most insidious enemy.

The thing that came to mind as you read this? You need to do it.

In the moment following the one it takes to commit to that flip, you’ll see what freedom comes when caution is crushed.
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Next time, Jim will answer a few questions about his fiction and his take on the fast-growing Christian fiction industry. We’ll pick up with him then.

9 Responses to “Guest blogger: Jim Rubart”

  1. Elaina says:

    “In the moment following the one it takes to commit to that flip, you’ll see what freedom comes when caution is crushed.”
    I really needed to read this post this morning. Thanks for posting it.

  2. Phil W says:

    I like it. Thanks.

  3. Wahoooooooooooooooooooo!

  4. Okay … where is the photo of the flip??? I want to see it!
    Today, I have to flip out the rest of my manuscript and mail it to my editor tomorrow. It’s me and God, my hand in His, and we’re sailing today, reading to splash down!

  5. DLE says:

    Hmm.
    All well and good as long as you pull it off perfectly. If you don’t, well who’s going to be there with you to help clean up the mess?
    Because we Evangelicals have become so success-oriented, we’re gunshy when it comes to failure. Everyone’s your friend when you’re a success (when you jump and make the flip), but what happens when you fail?
    I’ve been amazed to see supposedly strong Christians do anything they can to avoid a person who crashed and burned. It’s even more ghastly when those same people encouraged that person to take the leap.
    Why is this?
    No one should be jumping off cliffs unless the people urging them on jump, too.

  6. Nicole says:

    Dan makes a good point.
    Can we take it one step further?
    Whose voice is it doing the urging? We understand having to take all out risks as a Christian–isn’t faith a risk at times?
    But let’s not kid ourselves about being immune to peer pressure–“Christian” peer pressure. In the church, in the community, one guy steps out in faith and instructs you to do the same. Your faith for his project is nowhere to be found because maybe God isn’t asking you to do the other guy’s thing, you know?
    I suspect Jim needed to do this flip for his freedom, and I’m not questioning his faith or his purpose here at all. God provided the impetus to spur him on and gave him the perfect flip. In fact, his lesson is excellent because we all have those areas with God’s instruction to us where we hold back and are afraid to crush that fear.

  7. Sometimes the CYA Christians get in the way of my unruly ways.
    I’m game for the flip, maybe even a double flip!

  8. Jim says:

    Did I flip because of “peer pressure”. Nope. The backstory is AC and I jumped off the same cliff a month and a half earlier–just the two of us. He flipped then too. And I desperately wanted to follow suit but didn’t. So I’d been carrying the desire to flip for six weeks by the time our families got up there.
    A long way of saying I agree with both Dan & Nicole. The only voice to follow is the Holy Spirit’s.

  9. Jim says:

    By the way, I did send Tricia the picture. :)

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