Dodging Myself

By Matt Johnson

Time for a confession. I am really bad at trusting in God. While he has proven Himself faithful over and over again to me, I don’t really trust him with anything. I always think that I must do something first in order for God to do His work. Once I get things in order, then God will be able to work his “magic.”

The latest example of my lack of faith was with the Dodgeball for Haiti tournament. God did some amazing things with the dodgeball tournament – I just had to get out of the way.

As many of you know, back on May 1st, Grace Community Church put together a high school dodgeball tournament to raise money for Haiti.

The idea for a dodgeball tournament came about after the Band WILLET performed at youth group. During their performance, they talked about the work their organization was doing in Haiti (www.willetmissions.org).

Pastor R came up to me the next Sunday and handed me the business card of Jeremy Willet (the lead singer). He said something like, “see if you can find some way for our church to help support their mission.”

Eric Miller and I got together one evening in late March to discuss how we could help raise money for Haiti. We decided a dodgeball tournament would be the way to go. Kids love dodgeball, and we could reach out to the schools to make this event much larger than Grace Community Church. We figured we would end up having more than 200 kids participate in the tournament.

God proved himself faithful throughout the process of planning the tournament. We were able to reserve space at Middletown High School. We had an awesome team of volunteers step forward to help put together the tournament. Businesses donated money and prizes for the tournament.

Everything was going great except for one part….no kids were signing up!

We promoted this tournament like crazy! We sent messages to every youth group in Frederick. Eric talked about it at youth group every Wednesday night. We sent messages to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) leaders of every high school in the area. We created a Facebook page. We created a website. We contacted all of the local newspapers and radio stations. We did everything we possibly could to get students to sign up for the tournament.

Yet four days before the tournament, we had 6 kids (1 team) signed up to play!

I was seriously stressed out (and depressed) about the tournament. I made a few phone calls and was considering calling it off. I kept saying to myself – “God, I’ve done my part, now it’s your turn to step up and do your part.”

It was at this time that I realized I had been trying to put together this tournament without God’s help. I never stopped to pray about the tournament. I never asked God for wisdom. Many others had been praying for this tournament, but I had not been.

Four days out from the tournament, I finally gave it over to Him. I tried to do it on my own and failed miserably. I began to pray that I would get out of His way and that He would work to make this tournament happen.

The next day (three days before the tournament) kids started to sign up. Slowly, I started to receive e-mails from kids staying they were going to play. The day before the tournament we figured we had about 60 kids sign up to play. I was ecstatic. We went from 6 kids to 60 almost over night!

But God had more in store….on the day of the tournament more kids showed up. We ended up having more than 80 kids come out to play.

The tournament was a huge success. The kids had a great time. One kid came up to me after the tournament and said, “When are you going to do this again? This was seriously the most fun I’ve had in years!”

At the end of the day, we raised $12,614 for Haiti relief efforts and more than 80 kids heard the Gospel. God’s hand was on the tournament – I just had to get my hands out of it.

How has God demonstrated his faithfulness to you?  Do you ever need to get out of the way?
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Here is a recap video of the tournament.  Enjoy!