No Wake Zone: Wakeboarders Series

We are finishing up our series No Wake Zone and today is our fifth and final message in this series. We’ve entitled it Wakeboarding. We’re going to talk about that a little bit. On your way out this morning, I think these are really cool, we have a gift for you. You got up early, lost an hour of sleep but we’re going to give it back to you with a refrigerator magnet, because that’s what you came here for this morning. This magnet is meant to remind you of this series. So, we want one per family, if you could, take one of those. It’s just reminding us of the basic keys that we’ve talked about in this No Wake Zone series.

In week number one we talked about assessing our wake. All of us in life, we throw a wake and our wake is, really, the results that our life leaves behind. And, we’re one hundred percent responsible for our wake so it’s important from time to time to turn around, walk to the back of the boat, if you will, and take a look at the wake that you’re leaving, how is it affecting people in your life.

Then in week number two we begin to talk about how to build this no wake zone, because that’s what we want. We want a no wake zone home. I want no wake relationships around me. So, we spent the next three weeks talking about how to build a no wake zone. That’s what you’ll see on this magnet if you get one, just to remind you of the building blocks of a no wake zone.

Number one is authenticity, that’s what we looked at. You can’t have trust without truth. Authenticity is not just telling the truth but it is the courage to tell the truth, the courage to deal with hopes, fears and dreams, those kind of things that you have in your life. In week number two we talked about forgiveness. We said that forgiveness is a choice and it is a process. You’ll never have a no wake zone in your life without this building block of forgiveness. So, you can think about that. Last week we talked about selflessness, that’s how we build a no wake zone, because we get in the way. We throw a large wake when we’re selfish and that destroys relationships around us. So, we begin to build a no wake zone when we die to ourselves and we practice honor. Honor is literally blessing another person by giving them the worth that is theirs because they are a creation of our heavenly Father.

So today, we’re going to look at a whole different issue. We’re not building a no wake zone today; we’re talking about how to deal with high wakers. That’s a phrase you won’t see in Webster’s Dictionary. It’s just something that we’ve just come up with here at New Vision, a high waker. Who are high wakers?

Well, let’s think a little bit about them. We all have high wakers in our life. You can choose your friends. As it comes down to having some folks that you hang out with and develop friendships, you just won’t hang around a high waker very long, you’ll just move on to someone else. You can’t really pick your family so you’ll have high wakers in your family, or maybe folks that you work with or do business with that are high wakers, or you may go to school with them, or they may live in your neighborhood. One thing that we all have in common here today is that we have high wakers in our life. We have difficult people in our life that throw off a really high wake. Today we’re going to talk about how to deal with that.

We’ve entitled the message Wakeboarding. I borrowed my son Will’s wakeboard. He said, "You can take it as long as you tell them it’s mine." I don’t have a wakeboard. That would kind of freak you out if I did. Have you ever tried to ride one of these? Anybody tried to ride one of these things? Show of hands. I don’t know, two or three of you. It’s hard. It’s really hard. When somebody’s good on a wakeboard it’s the coolest thing. To watch them and they’re jumping and spinning around. After a while I’ll look at it and I’ll think that looks easy. So, I tried it. It’s not. It’s not easy at all and I looked foolish. We’re going to talk about how to deal with those.

It’s interesting, through the history of time, how people have dealt with high wakers. If you were a high waker, if you were a person who cheated in business or you were immoral or if you were a child who was continually rebellious to your parents, you know what they did in the Old Testament world? They just killed you. They stoned you. That’s how they dealt with high wakers. In the Old West, sort of similar, right? If you had a bad reputation, you threw off a high wake long enough, somebody took you outside in the middle of the street and they shot you. That’s how they dealt with high wakers there.