Get the Rocket Ready
Why Preparation Matters
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”
Winston Churchill
We spend a lot of time asking God for more. More opportunity. More influence. More responsibility. More success. Bigger platforms. Greater impact. But rarely do we pause long enough to ask whether our lives are actually prepared to sustain the very things we are praying for.
I heard it put this way:
“Get the rocket ready before you light the fuse.”
And as I’ve been sitting with this thought, I couldn’t help but think about the life of Jesus.
In the Gospel of Luke 2:52, Luke gives us a fascinating detail about Jesus before His public ministry ever begins.
“And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
That verse has always intrigued me because immediately after this moment, scripture goes silent.
From roughly age twelve until age thirty, we know almost nothing about the life of Jesus.
Eighteen years of hiddenness and preparation, during which the One who would eventually change the world was not preaching sermons, gathering disciples, or performing miracles.
Think about that for a second.
With only three years of public ministry, Jesus spent far longer preparing than performing.
This can be a challenge for us to emulate because we live in a culture obsessed with visibility. We celebrate the launch. We applaud the platform. We admire the success story. But very few people appreciate the slow, often quiet work required to build a life capable of sustaining those things.
We want what comes next while ignoring what needs to happen now.
But small issues on the ground become big issues in the air.
The discipline we keep postponing.
The sleep we keep sacrificing.
The unhealthy relationships we keep tolerating.
The emotional immaturity we keep excusing.
The spiritual disciplines we keep neglecting.
The habits we keep telling ourselves we’ll address later.
These things don’t disappear when life accelerates; they’re magnified.
Preparation is not about perfection; it’s about capacity.
It’s doing the work of becoming the kind of person who can handle what God places in your hands.
I’ve been learning this lesson personally as I’ve been planting Kingdom South.
From the very beginning, I felt deeply convicted that I did not want to build just another church experience. I wanted to help create a community centered around spiritual formation, a place where people are not merely inspired by the teachings of Jesus but challenged to actually live them out.
What I didn’t fully understand was what that kind of calling would demand from me personally.
You cannot consistently ask people to practice the teachings of Jesus while refusing to do that work yourself.
It has forced me to confront parts of my own life that were easier to ignore when ministry was mostly about communicating information well.
But a formation-focused church requires something different. It insists that the person delivering the message is also being shaped by it.
Not simply building the thing but building the person to build the thing.
Perhaps this is why one of the most important lessons we can learn from Jesus, especially in a culture of constant noise and endless visibility, is hidden in the eighteen-year silence.
So maybe this is your reminder, and mine.
Get the rocket ready before you light the fuse.
What I’m Reading:
This is the selection for my first Virtual Summer Book Club, which you still have time to register for.
What I’m Listening To:
This episode is titled “Explosive Trump Secrets Exposed in New Book.” It’s really good and not for the reason you may think. I’ve been intrigued by what people find so intriguing about Trump, and this episode helped me with that.
What KS Is Up To:
Sunday starts our summer series, KS at the Movies. It’s our attempt to copy Jesus’ illustrative genius by using movies as modern-day parables.
Week 1: Creed
I’m a boxing fan, so this was an easy choice for a teaching tool, especially since this year’s theme is Radical Warfare. What isn’t easy is learning that the enemy within you is much more powerful than the one around you.