Gifted Was Cool In Elementary School

Be With Jesus! Be Bold! Be Obedient!

For the last year and half, I’ve been making my way through the Bible Recap. I’m in Acts.

Hey, Storms, isn’t that supposed to only take a year?

Yeah! So! What’s your point?

I’ve never been a fast reader. I graduated high school with a 2.3 GPA because I hated reading. I mean I hated it! Like, I got through high school without reading a single book that I was supposed to read. Not one!

I vividly remember sitting in Mrs. Cottingham’s class praying she wouldn’t call on me.

In fact, while most people were appalled watching Kamala Harris try to explain things without a teleprompter, meandering into circular diatribes, or what some people described as “word salads,” I actually watched those videos of her with a ton of compassion and empathy.

I’ve been right where you are, lady! Just keep talking and hope something sticks. It’s all you can do!

That was me in high school trying to fool everyone into believing I knew what the Lord Of The Flies was all about! I can still remember borrowing Cliff’s Notes from my friends and feverishly flipping through them in the cafeteria at lunch, so I’d have some idea what was going on; so I could sound somewhat informed. But to this day, I can’t tell you who Frodo is or why he liked flies so much!

And it wasn’t just high school. Just last January, I set a Goodreads goal for myself to read fifteen books in 2024. With just a little over a month to go, do you know how far I’ve gotten?

I’ve completed three books - two of them on Audible and the other one, I technically started in 2023 for a class I was taking. Get the picture?

Now, my mom is probably going to read this, and I know that if she were sitting here next to me, she’d say, “But you’re gifted! Tell them you’re gifted!” That’s true! But, she would also tell you, as you’re laughing at my baby picture, “He had a fever and cold that day!”

Always trying to make me look good, mom! Thanks! And really, it’s not your fault!

So, as I was saying, I was gifted-tested in elementary school and it turns out whatever criteria they use to determine if a kid is intellectually superior to all the other kids, that was me.

I always had my suspicions I got in because they had a quota system and I went to elementary school in Bithlo (I was the best they had to offer) or because my mom was a teacher and she slipped one of her guidance counselor friends a twenty. But for whatever reason I was given the title, “Gifted”!

In elementary school it was cool. Not cool by Bithlo - we have Stomper truck competitions before school standards - but cool by I get to do something you don’t get to do standards. I can remember getting pulled out of class once a week, put on a bus with like three other kids, and driven to another elementary school to be in a room with a bunch of other kids deemed smarter than everyone else at their respective schools. And I remember playing a lot of Oregon Trail with those kids. In fact, that’s all I remember about being gifted in elementary and middle school. Lots of Oregon Trail. Oh, and the TRS80s we played on.

Fast forward to high school. Now, we had moved to Winter Park (that’s important) and I’m registering for classes at Lake Howell High School. Wouldn’t you know that in high school, rather than getting pulled out of class for smart kid time, they had entire classes devoted to us? Like, we could take all our core classes and never have to associate with the riff raff at all! Amazing!!!

So I did it. I filled out my paper registration form and put gifted English and gifted Biology on it, and then I searched that registration book for hours looking for the gifted Algebra class. I saw gifted Geometry, gifted Algebra 2, gifted Calculus, but no gifted Algebra. Hmmm. That’s weird! It never crossed my mind the reason they didn’t have gifted Algebra was because this was a school of Winter Park gifted kids who took Algebra in middle school and I was a Bithlo gifted kid who didn’t know how to read.

Ok, I’ve gotten way off my topic of Jesus and boldness and obedience, but I just need you to know I lasted one year in those stinking gifted classes and not a strong year for me grade-wise. I also want you to know that while I was the dumbest of all 8 kids in those gifted classes, I did get to know Brian Acton who went on to create WhatsApp and sell it to Facebook for billions. I bet he’d even know my name if you asked him!

Oh yeah! Chris Storms, that kid in my gifted classes Freshman year who always seemed to never know what was going on, but liked to talk about how good he was at Oregon Trail! I know him!

Anyway, the point of all that is to say, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, and that’s ok, because I’m in good company!

As I’ve been reading through Acts, I see Peter and the other disciples and I remember what they were like in the Gospels. Jesus was constantly correcting them, being frustrated by them, and sometimes even rebuking them. And then, when he was arrested and put on trial and ultimately hung on a cross, they were nowhere to be found! His best friends, a ragtag group of misfits, completely deserted him and went into hiding!

But then something happened. Jesus rose from the dead! It really happened. How do I know it happened? Because that whole group of ragtag, misfit, cowards, instantly transformed into a bold, courageous, outspoken group of ragtag misfits! It’s honestly the greatest argument for the truth of the Gospel. And we should take note! If the resurrection changed everything for them, it should change everything for us too.

In Acts we read about the religious leaders’ response to Peter and John healing a beggar who couldn’t walk and Peter proclaiming the resurrection in the temple while the man who was paralyzed 5 minutes ago was jumping and dancing around. The religious leaders were so upset about it, they had Peter and John thrown into prison until the next morning.

When the sun rose the next day, they took Peter and John out of their cells and brought them before the religious leaders, where Peter again boldly proclaimed Jesus, saying “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12)

Whoa! Seriously, they’ve healed a man in front of everyone, they’ve preached Jesus in the temple, they’ve been arrested, and now Peter is preaching Jesus right in the faces of the religious leaders! There’s no other explanation for this boldness but the truth of the resurrection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit! It’s all true!

But, then we read the response of the religious leaders.

“Now when they [the religious leaders] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized they had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13)

I love this verse, because as you’ve already read, I’m an uneducated, common man! And, the amazing thing is, for those of us who are following Jesus, who have surrendered our lives to him, it doesn’t matter how educated or common we are. We all have the same Holy Spirit Peter and John had.

BUT, do we have the same BOLDNESS?

AND, do people recognize we’ve been with JESUS?

That’s what I want! I even have it written in my Bible from some other time I was reading through Acts.

I also don’t have gifted handwriting!

What does it mean to be with Jesus for us today? Obviously, Peter and John had been with Jesus in normal bodily form and in resurrection bodily form and the religious leaders could tell. For us, it looks different, but Jesus is just as real. He’s sitting at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, and we can be with him through the Holy Spirit. We can talk to him. We can listen to him in the silence. We can listen to him through his Word.

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”
John 10:27

Later in Acts, Chapter 8, we read about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. The part I want to highlight is verses 29-30, “And the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over and join this chariot [the one the eunuch was riding in].’ So Phillip ran to him and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you’re reading?’”

Phillip then shares Jesus with him and the Ethiopian ends up believing and getting baptized right there, all because Phillip was obedient. And don’t miss his exuberance in his obedience. Did you catch it? The Spirit spoke and he ran!

I’m gonna close this out by sharing a testimony with you; a video of a real life, current example of being with Jesus, being bold, and being obedient!

This week, my friend Shea, a Junior at UCF, shared a story with me. Like Peter, she felt the prompting of the Spirit and she acted! She said I could share this with y’all! Let it inspire you like it did me!

A couple notes:

1. I really did graduate with a 2.3 GPA and I had 4 PE classes my Senior year to bring it up to that! But, I never cheated on anything. Not once! Maybe I should have!

2. Going to school in Bithlo in the 80s was something else, for sure. In fact, there was one time we took an overnight field trip to Ft. Christmas and this happened! 😳