Trailtramps

In My life there are several passions: My family : My God: My Life:
I say passions because what I love, I am dedicated to. There is no room or time in my life for mediocrity, & complacency. I accept of my self and expect of others nothing less than the best, and am drawn to those of similar drive and passion. I willingly pour myself out for the causes and people that are open vessels to me. What I could never do in my own life I get my greatest joy in helping others accomplish.
Royal Rangers is a life-giving ministry for me. It’s a place I find purpose greater than myself. It is the place I find open vessels. My calling is to deal in discipleship, I believe Salvation is not an event, but a lifestyle. Every year God has been gracious to give me a few small flames to fan; A reason to do what I am called, (and my life and my joy is my calling) to pour my life out for a few open vessels. There’s always a reason to hope that Royal Rangers (as it was designed) will go on; but it’s not just Royal Rangers I fear is loosing it’s grip, (it’s salt,) but true Christianity itself. The kind of Christianity that Johnny Barnes saw Royal Rangers as a natural extension of, and he was right! Johnny’s love for the creator and God’s creation was the perfect blend of teaching boys to love God by getting to know Him through the works of His hands.
Very few people understand my passion for God’s creation. They can’t comprehend the depth and spiritual closeness to God I get from feeling the dirt beneath my feet, the cold penetrating my flesh to the bone from a cold winter wind, or the warmth of the sun on my skin. They don’t get God and the work of His hands. They can’t feel Him in the rain and snow and wind. They can’t see His face in the night sky, the setting sun, and waves on the lakes. They’ve never sat in his lap on the top of His Mountains, and ridden His laughter in the rapids of a fast flowing river. I could fill volumes of how and where God has touched me in the greatest and simplest of experiences in His majesty. Just thinking of how much God has given us, stirs my heart to tears of joy, and sorrow at how His gifts are mistreated, just as His greatest gift is.
Royal Rangers is the only ministry specifically designed that gives me the opportunity to teach people how to touch the LIVING God, through touching and appreciating the work of His hands.
Our society has produced a generation that hasn’t got enough life to come alive. It boasts in its worship at the alter of apathy, it celebrates mediocracy, prizes boredom and laziness, and accepts failure as an acceptable replacement for success. It dares anyone to attempt to evoke a reaction, and revels at it’s own inability to be stirred. It actively seeks to destroy any who rise up and take life for all it’s worth and strive for personal fulfillment and achievement. I am driven to find even the smallest flame of life and count it my joy and duty to offer my shoulders to stand on and rise up out of the mire and into the wind. All one has to do is just “to want it”. I will not present myself to my Lord having lowered His standard low enough for the complacent to crawl over!
There is an urgency in my spirit, an urgency in my flesh. I need to be about being obedient to my calling. For every 1 thing that I have ever done in my ministry there are 10 things I should have done. I believe that God has ordained this work and that God will honor his workers that recognize their responsibility to use this ministry to build a remnant of boys and men that will carry His Holy standard into the future.
I believe more than ever that we need to give the boys a sense of accomplishment by challenging them to learn the things that I know in my life make me a better man than those that have never learned many of the fundamental things that are foundational to the Royal Rangers program. In this day, and even more in the coming days, men need to be real men, and Royal Rangers gives boys the opportunity to gain that level of confidence to be a man. The type of confidence it takes to be good (Godly) husbands and providers, good fathers, and good leaders. We live in a time that men are being emasculated. Real and confident men that stand for Godly principles are seen as a threat to society. Girls and women are having to step over the spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually dead bodies of boys and men slumped over their sports TV’s and Game consoles, to take hold of the reigns of society.
I believe more than ever that the simple fundamentals of pride in one self, reinforced by the real challenges built into the Royal Ranger program, and the reward for this real effort, with true value, is one of the best great hopes we have of instilling a Godly character into empty vessels. My ministry can have no greater purpose than to make the Royal Ranger motto, more than just words to these boys.
I’m sick to death seeing an entire generation of boys and girls, (save for a very, very few) who’s whole value system, entire existence, every thought, is completely and entirely focused on the superficiality of ones clothes, trinkets, & bling. Where being perceived by the mindless masses as non-compliant is an instant social death sentence. And God forbid if even one child dares to be a real person, the hounds of jealous inadequacy go into relentless attack. Right is wrong and wrong is right.
The death of the love of God in our society today is not primarily because people have turned against God, it’s because of a total lack of interest in God what so ever. The enemy of love is not hate. Hate takes thought, its a feeling, hate requires making a choice. No! The enemy of Love is Apathy; and the kids today are all Kings and Queens in the kingdom of Apathy. God is not dead by volition; He’s dead by omission.
We have to take God out of the world of irrelevance, and make Him absolutely relevant to every part of their life. We have to Challenge the boys to open their eyes. We have to hold them accountable for their own Christ life, or lack there of. We have to get into their faces, face to face, one on one, as often as we can connect, and make them look into some ones eyes and at least see the truth of where they are in their walk with God. We have to ask them simple personal questions like: Did you pray this week? Did you have any thought about Jesus this week? – What was it! Did you do anything for Jesus this week? What was it
*** May God Bless ***
John Chicoine