Armor of God

Welcome to God's Storytellers. I'm Pastor Dave. And I'm Brian. Now, if you like motorbikes, you're going to like Dave's story for us. When I was a little kid, my uncle was a professional motocross racer. And I can remember going to many races and watching him tear around the track. And I remember other people going, "Here comes Tim! Here comes Tim!" Because there was something he would do that not many of the other racers would do. He would launch himself off of the triples, which is 3 jumps in a row, Most people would go off the first one, land on the back of the second one, and then fly off the third one. But Tim would just hit the first one as fast as he could and clear all three and land on the downslope of the third jump. And people would cheer for Tim as he went around the track. Tim had a room full of trophies because he won a lot of races, because he took a lot of risks. I can remember watching Tim fall. I can remember watching one time as he fell on the opening corner, landed on top of his bike, and then every other motorcycle rider ran over him. But now when he mows the lawn, he wears a brace around his middle. But he— they tried to lift up their bike when they went over him, but still lots of bikes ran right over him. That was one of the risks he took. But the trophies that he would bring home, we'd look at his trophy room and at his trophies on the mantelpiece, and sometimes he would win things that weren't trophies. One time the prize for winning this race was a Honda XR75, which is a little motorcycle. My uncle raced 125s and 250s. A 75 was too small for my uncle, and he won. He won this little bike, and he brought it home, and he said, "Hey Davey, I can't really ride that, so you might as well ride it when you're here." And so every time I would go to Grandpa and Grandma's house, Uncle Tim lived with my grandparents because he was just a teenager, I would get to ride my little Honda XR75, or his, and I would tear around in it, and I would pretend that I was Uncle Tim. Except one thing, when Tim would go, "Vroom," I'd go, "Nee, nee, nee, nee, nee." And when Tim would He'd go around a corner and vroom, throw his back end out. I would pretend in my head I was doing that, but I'd be like, "Mrrr, nrr, nrr, vroom," around the corner. And Tim would go off jumps and he'd go, "Vroom, boom," and land. And I'd go, "Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom," to the top of the jump and then, "Vroom, vroom, vroom," down the other side. Until one day, I was in the garage. And I saw a box, and it was the racing box. Uncle Tim kept all of his gear in that box, and so I went over and I put on his armor, his, his plates that he put on, and I strapped them on, and I put on his big boots, and I put his big pants on, his racing pants. And his boots only came halfway up his leg, but on me they came all the way up past my knee. And I put his gloves on. I put on every bit of his racing armor that I could get on.