The Team at Rod Laver Arena  'Melbourne Youth Alive Exo Day 06'

 

WE DO NOT SHARE A NEW MESSAGE, BUT ONE THAT HAS BEEN PASSED ON BY THE EYE WITNESSES JESUS CHOSE TO TELL HIS STORY,

THIS HISTORIC MESSAGE IS FOUND IN THE BIBLE.

The message in its simplest form tells that Jesus is the WAY the TRUTH and the LIFE. The only way to God is through faith in Jesus!  

Hi my name is Ben Bowen and I am part of the Christian freestyle moto x team (Crossing The Gap), and this is a little bit about me and why I do what I do.

I spent my teenage years growing up in Lakes Entrance, which is in East Gippsland Victoria. Life for me there was full of action with access to bush, beach, and lakes I was in my element. I managed to fit working as an electrical apprentice in around nearly every sport offered in the area. At nineteen I had finished my apprenticeship and was working harder than ever, milking cows morning and night 5 days a week and also working for a local electrical contractor between milking.

In 1999 I found myself leading the C Grade Open Victorian Motocross series, and decided to move away from Lakes to focus more on racing and not on working, which was cutting into riding time. So I moved in with a mate, his family owned a dairy farm in Gormandale (Victoria). I got a job in the forest industry planting trees. This seemed to be as good as it could get, planting trees would keep me fit and allow me to make enough money to race my bike. I worked out that if I started work early and worked hard I could be cutting laps on my bike by just after lunch on the track my mate and I had made on his farm. All the riding that year paid off, I won the Vic Titles and the Gippsland Centre series in my class.                    

An other cool thing about moving to Gormandale was having some Christian mates my own age living right there and their families were Christians too, I had grown up in a Christian home with a younger sister, younger brother and parents that loved me, but I had never really had close Christian mates my age so this was awesome. Not only did we ride, hunt, and muck around together we also went to church and started to study the bible together.

The year 2000 was busy, I married a local girl, we travelled chasing tree planting work and motocross events. My plan was to get good and be able to coach kids one day. I rode ok and by the end of the year managed to advance to A grade this was very exiting and I trained hard over the summer to be ready to race 2001 in the top class.

The engine on my bike blew twice just before the season started and I could not really afford to fix it again in a hurry so I hung up my boots for a while.

With life changing and more commitments I started to look into different paths of work that would pay the bills and still create some form of excitement, I loved working in the bush and before long God had brought along the opportunity for me to learn how to climb and limb trees to collect the seed. This took place only months before the 2003 bushfires in North Victoria and Southern N.S.W. The fires created a huge amount of work for us because most of the area burnt needed to be re-seeded. We moved to Mansfield and I spent most of my days for the next three years climbing 50 metre high trees in some of the most beautiful mountain country in the world. This job also created an opportunity for some of the boys back home to come and work.

 For the last 12 months we were in Mansfield Craig Edgar came to work for us.

While working together we came up with the idea that we might be able to use our motorbikes to share the truth about Jesus, and encourage young people who have been brought up in Christian homes to continue in the Faith and the need to share the message of Jesus with their friends.

On 31/12/2004 New Years Eve Crossing The Gap put on its first show and the dream of using our bikes to tell people about Jesus had become a reality.

When I look back over the last few years I am reminded that God can do anything, some of the venues we have been able to ride at prove that if it is in Gods plan it can happen. I thank God often that I am able to use something that I enjoy, like jumping motorbikes to tell people about him.

  Another passion in my life has been studying the bible for what it really says and not what I would like it to say. Being a Christian is to believe in Jesus Christ for who He says He is. Jesus claims to be equal with God, and also claims to be the Saviour of the world. Only through putting our faith in this one man Jesus can a person be accepted into heaven. With so much opposition to the simple truth of this message around these days I often find myself challenged and going back to the bible for answers. Some things are very clear in the bible and I make these a core or a home base that I can cling to or run back to when the challenges seem to get too hard. “My home base” as I like to call it- is THE CROSS or what was accomplished at the cross when Jesus died in my place. The bible teaches that Jesus lived and died as a sacrifice for my sin, not only my sin, but the sins of every one that has ever lived. Jesus didn’t stay dead either but rose again two days latter. God teaches through His word the bible that if we will believe in our heart and confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord we will receive a gift from God, and this gift is eternal life with Him. I have also learned that this gift is given through grace (which means undeserved favour) so its not because I deserve it, or because I can maintain a standard that pleases God, but because God has chosen to save (give eternal life, not hold sin against) anyone who will put their trust in His Son Jesus.

 This message that sinners are saved by grace is good news for me, for I am reminded every day by what I think and do that I am a sinner and that I cannot live to a standard that pleases a perfect and righteous God. I also find in the bible if my faith is in Jesus, then God covers me with his own righteousness making me acceptable to Him in every way. To know that I can enter into heaven when the time comes simply by believing that Jesus died for me is an offer I can’t refuse.

For the rest of my life I want to be telling people that Jesus came willingly to die a death He did not disserve. And that He will make right with God all who will accept that He died in their place. Before Jesus returned to heaven he said “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” Jesus is coming back and will take to heaven everyone who will believe in Him. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to die without accepting that God loved me so much that he sent His Son to die in my place. I don’t think that God could have demonstrated His love in a more convincing way. God is giving me the chance while I am still alive to decide whether or not I will believe in Jesus as my saviour, once I die there is no more opportunity to accept this gift of eternal life only the chance to explain to Him why I did not. I don’t know when my last breath on earth will be, so the best thing to do is live each day knowing that with my faith in Jesus Christ I am ready to meet my maker.  

For the time being I will try to share this message of hope through Crossing The Gap and see where the God I trust in takes me from here.

Now that you have read some of my story, why not take the time to think about yours, have you ever accepted the gift of eternal life offered in Jesus Christ? If not why not it is FREE.