Drag Boat Review Magazine - Team RFC Straightline - A Prevailing Pen Prompts Investigation and Navigation

A Prevailing Pen Prompts Investigation and Navigation

At the races I’ve often observed crew chiefs writing in their small hand-held notebooks information about how they are tuning or adjusting certain aspects on their intricate racing machine. These little black books contain valuable data pertaining to how they will perform out on the racetrack.The handwritten notations allow a crew chief to know past settings, make any necessary changes, and identify what needs to be done on the ensuing run.

Have you ever written any notes in a little book? Are there ample words and actions written to satisfy what your heart knows about your existence? Would you like your life story to be something that others would enjoy reading? You get to read my honest penned words every month. Is your story about your earthly life or about your racing…hopefully it’s the love for your family while building for your eternal embracing.

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There’s always plenty to write about when it comes to covering a race. Racing gushes with cool stories, great people, thrilling finishes, harrowing incidents, and exciting events that stimulate the body, soul and spirit. It’s a rush to race, to watch, and to write about racing using a pencil or pen. It’s cool writing about the fast and fearless women and men…while remembering heaven’s call is for us to step out of hell’s fire and avoiding the devil’s lion’s den.

I’ve read and witnessed many incredible stories in motorsports, and I’ve shared some in my Sunday morning sermons and many in this monthly column. Who would have thought yours truly would someday be writing about drag racing after all those years of being a partying all-in avid fan? God offers us a true shot in the arm in unexpected ways during our life.

This column isn’t simply written about racing, this writing is a compilation of racing, rocking, relationships, and redemption. Racing machines are temporary, songs drift away through the years, friends come and go, and yes, even heaven and earth will pass away someday, but God’s penned Word is here to stay. Even though we don’t like to talk about it our human bodies are temporary too…remember God’s plan is to make us new!

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The message of this column is to bring good news about more than racing. “Not only do we have the words of God available to us in written form, but we also have Jesus Christ, the living Word, and both are ready to be spoken and lived through us today,” (Pete Brisco).

This “Straightline” column I’ve been writing for the Drag Boat Review Magazine—and for you and several hundred others—since January 1998 is written to let people read printed words about something they love. It would be a sad day if Beverly Stokes ever decided to lay down her pen and stop writing and publishing about drag boat racing.

In 1993 when the chemical company I had worked at for over twenty-seven years decided to close the doors on their Southern California plant—it was a great job where I could take off at any time to go to the races many times a year—came as a shock to all the employees. They had the decency and integrity to bring corporate executives from the home office in Conshohocken, PA to make the trip to Pomona, CA and personally tell everyone the news.

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Upon hearing this surprising news, thinking I was going to be a lifer there, I knew immediately to start praying and asking the Lord what was the next step? Can you relate it’s never too late? As the warehouse manager, we [I] had Christian radio on all day long Monday through Friday from 7:30 am till 5:00 pm. During the day between all the various duties, we could catch some of the shows when we were near enough to hear the radio, as there were many great Christian speakers and programs to glean valuable information from.

Shortly after the news of the plant closing in May 1993, knowing full well as a volunteer chaplain with Racers For Christ, and having plenty of racing events on my plate for the coming weeks, months, and hopefully many years, I heard Andy Stanley on the radio say if you need to hear from God, start back reading the four gospels again of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

This was great advice I took to heart, and after getting home one evening, I opened my Life Application Bible to the book of Matthew and began to read what he penned back in the first century. Also reading his personal profile, hoping this might give me some additional spiritual insight for the coming months and years. What got my attention was when Jesus called Matthew—a hated and despised tax collector to follow Him—he immediately left his tax booth and followed. Matthew became Christ’s new disciple, and he only took one thing from his old job as a tax collector—his pen: As he eventually penned the Gospel of Matthew.

Is your story about your earthly life or about your racing…hopefully it’s the love for your family while building for your eternal embracing.

When 1993 closed I was unemployed, but still heavily involved with RFC, as a Board Member, in my third year as the IHBA series chaplain, and serving at NHRA events too. 1994 dawned with some exciting new racing ministry opportunities right in front of me, like starting RFC in the NHRA Junior Dragster program in January and starting RFC at the NJBA races in August. Faith empowers us to keep trusting in God’s goodness regardless of the situation.

I was now employed with RFC—having lost my job—and the Lord spoke to my heart like He’d done many times in the past six years saying, remember Matthew? He only took his pen from his last job, and the pen you used daily at the chemical company would be the only thing you brought with you from your career there. You were no longer loading and unloading trucks, writing bills of lading, purchase orders, signing dock receipts, etc.

Those previous skills were no longer needed now being employed full-time in the RFC office and serving at many more racing events. Now a pen was going to be used in a different and eternal way. Writing reports, deposit slips, donation receipts, thank you notes, racing notations, and of course writing sermons by hand as we only had a word processor at home.

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When the IHBA asked me in April 1994 if I would write for their Liquid Quarter Mile Magazine, my response was a resounding yes and that’s when it struck me. The Lord said, what’s in your hand, Jim? The only thing that was brought over from the old job was my pen!

God was calling me to write about the drag racing scene. What a privilege to write about the untold number of friends we’ve met throughout the years and getting to minister to them at the races too, an opportunity to hone new skills in and for racing through a new adventure.

Former RFC President Ken Owen opened the door for me to serve in racing while gleaning valuable information from him, and now writing about the people in motorsports, and writing about relationships that would be near and dear to my heart in the coming years.

Our racing family continued to grow and these precious people were now a bigger part of our lives by getting to write about them: When looking back on these friends from the past thirty-seven years at the races with RFC—and the prior thirty years before RFC at the drag races—we’ve developed hundreds of relationships with friends all over in the drag boat and drag racing communities. Racing and racers—many of you who read these writings—have become so valuable to us in so many ways, it’s hard to put it into words without getting choked-up.

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Linda and I are blessed to attend a small church group on Monday nights with some really cool and truly diverse individuals, Al, Val, Kim, Genie, Lauren, and Rikki, have become friends to add to the growing list of friends God has brought into our lives over the years through life, racing, traveling, and through church.

Recently in the small group a new phrase came to light, relational equity. That term hit deep within my heart, thinking there’s something new to write about. Over the years, Linda and I have given much of our time, resources, energy, and our lives—loving every second of it—in developing relationships with scores of people.

Relational equity is like making your monthly mortgage payment. The more you pay on your home principle, the more equity you acquire. Therefore, when we humans pour our very lives into our friends, we’re investing in each other, be it racing information, financial information, physical information, mental information, and most importantly spiritual information, thus, we can attain more equity in these individual friendships.

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This relational equity is something of incredible value, maybe more valuable than home equity. Racers have tons of equity in their racing equipment, but that value can diminish as it gets older, used, blown up on the track, or worse. The equity of knowledge in the world of racing is something all racers desire, invest in, and pay dearly for. This wisdom equity and knowledge equity can be passed down to others that follow, developing their own equity in the years to come. The racing world benefits immensely from this kind of equity.

Life with Christ in heaven is like an eternal mortgage; therefore, we must keep paying daily, monthly, and yearly, so as not to break His heart by missing a payment in our relationship with Him. But remember, He’ll never foreclose on us. So just keep building that equity.

The history of the written Word, the Bible, is a poetic love story, thought of, designed, and implemented by God, and inscribed by the powerful and prevailing pen of forty inspired writers who penned sixty-six books on three different continents over a period of fifteen to sixteen hundred years, so please read the Scriptures and understand their eternal principles and incredible worth. Remember, standing before an open door never resulted in a single changed life—walking through an open door has changed the lives of millions!

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A person who can’t see things for how they really are is a bit like a prisoner in their own mind. Blinded to who God is, they’re robbed of all He wants to be and to do in their life, as He infuses your life with the authentic majesty of His-story: The majesty of knowing you are a child of God and a joint-heir with Christ. Thereby winning the only genuine and eternal race!

So, friends grab a pen. Be thankful you can literally write about the value of the personal equity that each one of us has in and for each other. My pen yearns to write more about Christ and write more about your role in His kingdom than He wants me to write about racing. But writing about racing gives me the opportunity to write about “you” and as “you” know, I am blessed to write about a redeemed life that is offered to each one of us…let’s all hop on God’s bus…without making a fuss…because following Christ builds heavenly equity that eventually becomes an eternal plus!

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