Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship (10 page)

I was supposed to be on the boat an hour each time before it sailed, and I was always there early because I was determined to have the cleanest and most well-organized boat. I worked harder than anybody else because I had to prove to the captain that I had value. “Teach me, train me, help me grow in the profession! That’s my dream!” But I wasn’t a son. Those who were the sons would come in with their father at the last minute, and he would pour his life into them. It seemed to me that I did all the work and the sons got all the benefits!

This is where many Christians live. They see a select few upon whom God seems to pour out His greatest blessings. “Look what God has done in Jack’s life! He just pours out and blesses him. Jack must be one of His favorites. God will do it for others, but He will never do it for me.” That’s an orphan attitude.

My dead-end situation working as a mate on boats made me agitated and angry until one day I finally said, “I’ve had it!” and quit. I felt that nobody was ever going to teach me anything, so I gave up on my dream. I lost myself for awhile in the whole hippie and drug culture in Daytona Beach. After a few scrapes with the law, and after growing tired of people using me and then throwing me away when I was no longer useful to them, I decided to go back to fishing and paid a visit to a family friend in the fishing business.

“Captain Johnny,” I asked, “do you know of anybody who needs a good mate?”

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “Captain Kline. He has three vessels now—a brand-new 70-footer, a 55-footer, and a 45-footer. No one wants to work the 25-year-old 45-footer. He can’t keep a mate on her. Start there. As hard as you work, you won’t have any trouble working your way up.”

So I went to see Captain Kline, who hired me and put me to work as the mate on that old 45-foot boat, the
Snow White I
. While everybody else wanted to work on the other boats because they were newer and finer, I set out to prove myself to the Captain. I really slaved away on that boat and poured my life into it; and any day we weren’t at sea, I was there eight or ten hours trying to work my way to the top.

As a slave or servant, you feel you must work harder to succeed. You have to strive, outperform, and outdo everybody else just to prove that you have a right to be. But sons and daughters? On their day off, they’re usually not working hard trying to prove a point. They don’t have to come in early or stay late. Why should
they? They already own the boat anyway because Dad will one day turn everything over to them. They just sit in the wheelhouse and learn all the easy and fun parts of fishing—piloting the boat, navigation, finding the fish. Those with an orphan heart are left to do the dirty work.

Many Christians feel like a hired hand with no inheritance. An orphan has no expectation of comfort, provision, or promotion because he knows that the son will receive the inheritance. And so, even if the orphan works harder and harder, trying to earn his way, he usually winds up angry or apathetic.

Look again at the passage in Romans 8: “For
you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God”
(Rom. 8:15-16 NAS). Inheritance is for mature sons and daughters. Who will give a $1 million inheritance to a 10 year old and let him loose? There is no inheritance for children until they grow up and are willing to take responsibility for their parents’ mission.

Captain Kline had spent over 40 years at sea, including service on PT boats during World War II. After the war, he had moved to Ponce Inlet, Florida and gone into the fishing business, owning and operating the
Snow White
fleet, which eventually included three vessels. And before long, he had earned a reputation as one of the most respected and prosperous fishing boat captains in the industry.

Now, after 40 years at sea, Captain Kline wanted to get out of the business, but there was a problem—he had no son or someone he could trust to whom he could pass on his business, his legacy, and his name. Captain Kline and his wife had always dreamed of
having children, but it had never come to pass; and considering other people in the professional fishing community was really not an option, because generally they have more than their share of dysfunctional characters and alcoholics. Many are unsettled and routinely jump from boat to boat every few months. Drinking and brawling are commonplace, and when I first went to work for Captain Kline, my background was not much different … except for one matter—I was driven to succeed, to do everything I could to prove that I deserved a place at the top.

Although I was the newest and lowest of eight mates on the three boats in the fleet, I always arrived earlier than any of the others and usually stayed later. My determination paid off quickly. Within a couple of months after I began working on the
Snow White I
, Captain Kline said to me, “This old boat looks better than it has in ten years!” He continued watching me and sometime later said, “Jack, you appear to be one of the best mates I have ever seen. I’ve never had a man as conscientious as you.” I always kept the cleanest and most well-organized boat and was always the first to arrive and the last to leave. When Captain Kline fired his first mate on the new 70-foot boat, the
Snow White III
, he promoted me to that position ahead of all the others. The other mates—spiritual orphans like me—were mad, of course, because they all wanted that spot. Orphans are always looking for the high place, the place where they are recognized and affirmed. And because they have no inheritance, they feel the need to scrape, scramble, and fight for everything they want.

Then one day Captain Kline said to me, “Jack, you know I have no son to take over the business, and after 40 years at sea, I’ve had enough. Stick with me, Jack, and I’ll teach you everything I know. I’ll train you to be a captain and when you’re ready, I’ll turn the whole business over to you. Just hang with me and all this will be yours.”

I could hardly believe what he was telling me. My dream was coming true! I was going to be a fishing boat captain! All I had to do was stay close to Captain Kline for a couple of years until I learned everything he could teach me, and then he would turn everything over to me. I would be the son he had never had and this would be my inheritance.

“Don’t worry, Captain Kline,” I said. “I’ll stick with you.” He then began to teach me everything about the boat. In the mornings, he would take me into the engine room and teach me how to listen to every sound those engines made, how to notice every flaw, how to determine if a seal needed to be replaced, simply by listening for a certain drip in a particular area of the engine. He would teach me how to know when a part was about to break down. In fact, I came to know those two big, turbo-charged V12 Detroit engines so well that I could have maintained them in my sleep. And within six months, Captain Kline no longer felt the need to personally go down in the engine room. He would simply come aboard and ask me, “Did you check the engines out?” because he
trusted
me. This was part of my inheritance.

Captain Kline even took me into the wheelhouse where only
sons
entered in! He taught me how to operate the boat, how to pilot and steer. He taught me navigation. He taught me how to use the fish finder, not only how to locate fish but also how to identify fish by the shapes of their schools. “This is a school of amberjack; this is a school of bait fish; this is what red snapper looks like; this is grouper; here is a school of king mackerel. Here is a rock ledge; notice where the fish are hanging. You’re going to have to anchor the boat and allow for the wind and current; you don’t want to drop the lines until the boat is sitting right on this little spot.” Within a year, I was running his boat. The only thing Captain Kline had to do was sit back in his bunk while I—his
son
—took the boat out to sea to find the fish. And at the end of the day, I took it back in.

This was Captain Kline’s legacy … and my inheritance. For two years, I made myself completely available to Captain Kline. Anything he needed, I was right there. It was easy; anybody could have had a spirit of sonship with someone as tender and gentle as Captain Kline was as a father to me.

Don’t get me wrong; Captain Kline was a hard, tough man. He had a drinking problem stemming from his service in the war, where he witnessed much combat, blood, and death. A transfer five days earlier is the only thing that kept him from being killed with the rest of his PT boat crew when a direct hit destroyed the vessel. Like most others in the fishing industry, Captain Kline spent a lot of time in the waterfront bars. He was quite a scrapper and never one to back down from a fight. In fact, he often instigated them. When I began training under him, he often took me into the bars with him where he would seek out the biggest, toughest-looking guy in the place, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “My name is Al Kline, I’m 5 foot 9, and I can whip your anytime.”

Then he would push me in front of him! I learned real quickly how to think and talk on my feet!

Yet despite his tough demeanor, Captain Kline was always gentle and kind toward me. I was the son he had never had. Never once did he ever demean, criticize, or tear me down.

I remember the first time he told me to dock the boat. “Jack,” he said, “you’ve got to pull it up, spin it around 180 degrees, line it up between those two pilings, and give it reverse throttle before you drift out of alignment.”

Operating a boat at sea is one thing; docking it into a narrow slip against a three-knot current with the wind blowing is another. Add to that the close proximity of dozens of other boats and an
audience of 60 tourists on deck, and you can understand how terrified I was. “I can’t do it, Captain Kline. I can’t do it!” I was scared to death.

Captain Kline walked over, put his hand on my shoulder, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Don’t worry, Jack. I’m right here behind you. You can do this. I believe in you, Jack.”

When a father believes in you, you’ll try anything. I did exactly what he told me to do. I pulled in, turned 180 degrees, lined up with the slip, threw the throttles into reverse … and took out the pilings. I hadn’t been quick enough and had drifted out of position before reversing the throttle. As soon as it happened I ducked, expecting the barrage of abusive words and rage over my failure, such as I would have gotten at home. But they never came. Captain Kline just stood there with his hand on my shoulder and said softly, “That’s okay, Jack. I’ll take care of the pilings. Pull it out and let’s try it again.”

“I can’t do it, Captain Kline. I can’t do it.” I was almost in tears. On the deck below some of the tourists were cursing and screaming, “What’s the matter with that idiot kid up there in the wheel-house?”

“You can do it, Jack,” Captain Kline assured me. “In 40 years at sea I’ve never seen anyone as conscientious as you. I’ve never seen anyone who learns as quickly as you do. You can do this. You’re going to be the best. Pull it on out. I believe in you.”

So I pulled the boat out. Captain Kline refused to touch the wheel or the throttle. I moved upstream a little ways and then came back around. I lined the boat up just as before and gave it reverse throttle. This time the boat backed neatly into the slip. I risked failure but succeeded because I had a “father” who believed in me. And I started believing in myself. From that day through the 2,000 days of captaining fishing boats that followed, I never had another docking accident. That doesn’t mean I never made any
more mistakes. Captain Kline was one of the greatest men I have ever known and I would have done anything for him—anything to please him.

One day, when we had no charters, Captain Kline was two decks below in the engine room changing the fuel filters while I was in the wheelhouse polishing the brass when I decided to push the throttle levers forward out of their neutral position into wide open so that I could polish the chrome on and around the throttles more easily. That was all fine and good except that when I finished polishing the controls, I forgot to return the throttles to neutral.

Having finished in the wheelhouse, I joined Captain Kline below deck in the engine room where he had finished replacing the fuel filters and was ready to crank the engines to test for leaks. There was a start button near the engines and Captain Kline pressed it. Unlike modern cars, which will not start with the transmission in gear, boat engines do not have such a safeguard. As soon as Captain Kline pressed that start button, that turbocharged V12 engine roared to life
wide open!
The boat jumped forward, popping dock lines left and right, and started to take out part of the dock. Captain Kline screamed, “Who put the boat in gear? Who put the boat in gear?”

I shot out of the engine room and up two decks to the wheel-house. By then, only one dock line was still holding, and if it broke, the boat would take out a dozen or so private yachts beyond. Frantically, I jerked the throttles down into neutral, and as the boat settled down, Captain Kline burst into the wheelhouse right behind me, still screaming, “Who put the boat in gear? Who put the boat in gear?”

At that moment, if my orphan heart could have blamed anybody else, I would have, but he and I were the only ones on board. The boat was drifting out, held by one dock line, the dock had sustained severe damage, and I had almost destroyed many thousands
of dollars worth of yachts. I hung my head in shame and humiliation at my failure. Then, in my greatest moment of failure and embarrassment, Captain Kline started laughing, a deep belly laugh.

I looked up in amazement. With a big smile on his face, Captain Kline said, “I bet you’ll never do
that
again!”

He didn’t yell at me! He didn’t ridicule me! He didn’t condemn me! Instead, he showed me that it was okay to fail every now and then in the process of learning. He also assured me that he would pay for repairing the dock. Even in my moment of greatest failure, Captain Kline gave me the gift of honor. That’s what a father does.