By: Denny-

The winner of this year’s Top Dawg award is . . . . . . . . I felt like I could have done a back flip when they called my name. The year was 2014. I was driving for a company called Bay & Bay Transfer based in Burnsville, Minnesota. I worked out of the Mason City, Iowa bulk tanker division hauling powder cement from the Lehigh and Holcim cement plants there to highway paving projects and ready-mix plants in Iowa and Minnesota. I started driving for them in 2007. Bay & Bay has a van and reefer division, but the bulk tank division employed over 75 drivers. Some were long haul, but I was a short haul driver and returned home every day. Anyway, Top Dawg was the highest and most prestigious annual award given by Bay & Bay. In order to be a contender for the Top Dawg award there were five criteria that had to be met, and the award would go to the driver who scored the highest. The winner would get decals on each side of his truck, a T-shirt, a personalized hat, and a nice wall plaque all saying, “Top Dawg 2014”. However, the best part was a two week all-expense paid trip anywhere in the world. I was surprised when they told me I was one of the five finalists a week earlier, because it wasn’t even a goal that I had set out to accomplish. I’ve always believed in just giving my best to whoever I drove for, regardless and separate from any awards. The awards banquet and ceremony took place at a hotel convention center in Minneapolis and included all the wives. Before they announced the Top Dawg award there were other prizes given. All the drivers’ names were put in a bucket and names were drawn for various cash gifts, dinners for two, jackets, and other smaller prizes.  From a separate bucket, one name was drawn out also for an all-expense paid trip. Lastly, they had us five Top Dawg finalists come forward to the stage. When they announced that I had won Top Dawg, I gave my wife a thumbs up as if to say we’re going on a trip. Little did I know that they had changed the rules. They decided to put the five finalist names in a hat and drew out one to get the trip. It wasn’t mine, but happened to be the same guy whose name had just been drawn out of the bucket for the previous trip. So basically all I got was a hat and a plaque. No decals on my truck, no T-shirt and no trip. I, along with my dispatcher and many of the other drivers, were very upset about the whole deal. Afterward, I pulled the terminal manager aside and asked him why he changed the rules. He said he just wanted it to be fair so that each of the top five finalists had a chance to get the trip. I felt like telling him they had their chance and didn’t earn it by scoring higher than me. What’s the point of getting the title without the full reward. Was it fair for me to be awarded Top Dawg only to see one of the Runners Up get two trips simply by having his name drawn out of a hat? When my dispatcher called me with my load on Monday, I told him I wasn’t sure I wanted to work for a company that acted like this. He must have talked to the terminal manager because he tried calling me several times. I stayed home for two days and never answered my phone because I had nothing further to say to him. Finally, the owner of Bay & Bay called and apologized and asked me not to quit. He said he was sending me a check for $4000. It wasn’t as much as the trip, but I told him it was the principle of the whole thing and about the ridiculous nonsense of trying to be fair to everyone. I stayed driving for them for another three years, but it was never the same. I didn’t change my work ethic and still gave 100%, but it left me with a sense that my best wasn’t good enough. That was so long ago, and I’ve gotten over the hurt and rarely even think about it. Though my best didn’t earn me a trip, it was good enough for God, and that’s what counts and matters most to me.

I think that whole experience made me aware and realize how subtly the doctrine of “Fairness” is a part of all this new Woke religion that has infiltrated our society. Why strive to be your best and successful if you know the rewards can randomly be taken and given to those who have not earned it or put forth the same effort. That will kill self-worth, ambition, and entrepreneurship quicker than anything. Our government dictates that you must hire based on D. E. I. (diversity, equity, inclusion) not on who is the most qualified, because we must be fair! Public schools are graduating kids who have not put forth the effort to learn basic skills. And why should they, when they can earn $15 to $20 an hour minimum wage, doing menial jobs. Students take out loans for college, but it’s not fair that they should have to pay them off. Let’s be fair and just forgive their debt. Confused little Johnny wants to be a girl, use their bathroom, and play in their sports. We must be fair and let him/her/it do so, otherwise face a lawsuit or be stamped with another derogatory label by the radical lefties. And now, millions of foreigners have entered our country illegally, but we must be fair and provide them with jobs, money, cell phones, free housing, medical care, education, and whatever else they have not earned especially and including the right to vote. Meanwhile, many of our own deserving citizens, including brave veterans and seniors are homeless or live in poverty. All of this fairness B.S. is nothing more than Marxist ideology and communistic socialism originating from the pit of hell. Every election cycle the Democrats open their playbook and drag out the same old worn-out mantra that they’ve used for decades saying, “The rich aren’t paying their fair share.” How much is a fair share, and who are the rich anyway? Aren’t they the ones who have worked hard using their talents, resources, knowledge, and God-given freedoms that has made us a great nation. They are the ones who started small businesses and grew them into large companies and factories that employ millions of people. They are the ones who seized the same opportunity we all have to become more than waifs and serfs who depend solely on government handouts. Who and what gives these pompous political bureaucratic windbags the right to say who is rich anyway. They claim to identify with and represent the poor and middle class, yet most of them have never worked hard enough their entire lives to produce even a thimble full of sweat. They themselves have become rich and acquired more than their fair share on the backs of all those who work hard and pay taxes. They own multiple houses, take lavish vacations, and have portfolios worth millions. They proclaim to be the purveyors of fairness, but all they’ve ever accomplished is division, envy, and class warfare. They lie, deceive, steal, and change the rules at will to maintain and satisfy their greed for power and control. They falsely accuse their opponents of what they themselves do. Those who dare challenge them and their hypocrisy will pay a high price, because they use the courts to unjustly persecute, prosecute, punish, and imprison innocent patriots. I say it’s time to drain the swamp from the top down and that they all be held accountable and fired November 5^th at the voting booth.

Discovering Jesus in Everyday Life is the subtitle I’ve chosen for my blog. I think we often overlook those opportunities to discover Him by not taking the time to recognize them in the moment. Likewise, though they be “unfair”,  we allow the pain of past circumstances and disappointments to prevent us from truly discovering Jesus in them. Much of that is because we don’t understand or discern the workings of God which only comes by knowing Him through His word, the Bible. Discovering Jesus is to know what pleases Him and what doesn’t. Anything contrary to scriptural truth does not. Also, as written in Hebrews 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. The rewards you will or won’t receive are in direct proportion to your faith and diligent seeking. God doesn’t operate in the realm of fairness as society so often defines it. He is righteous and just, showing favoritism to no one. Neither does God change His rules to accommodate anyone, whether they think He is fair or not. Malachi 3:6 For I am the Lord, I do not change. There is a distinct difference between the gift of grace leading to salvation and earned rewards for serving Jesus. The rewards you receive from Him are not a result of an angel drawing your name randomly out of a golden bucket or hat. Salvation is obtained by accepting Jesus Christ as the only one who can give us right standing without sin before God the Father. He accomplished this by living a sinless life, then taking our sins upon Himself and dying on the cross in our place. It was a sacrificial act of grace freely given, and all your good works cannot earn it. In other words, your best will never be good enough to open Heaven’s door to you. Acts 4:12 Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Everyone who has been saved will be rewarded when they stand before God according to what they did in this life with their giftings and the call of God that He has entrusted to them. Jesus used the parable of the talents to explain this in Matthew 25:14-30. Those who have rejected Jesus and the free gift of salvation in this life will also have their reward, and it won’t be anything to do a back flip over.

Friend, if you have not yet discovered Jesus, it may be that you are looking for Him in the wrong places. Look for Him in the struggles, disappointments, and unfairness of life when you feel like giving up, are discouraged, alone, and feel that life has ripped you off. I can honestly say from experience it was in those hard times that when I truly called out to Him, He showed up. Actually, He was always there just waiting for me to ask for His help. God gets wrongly blamed for much of what we call and consider as unfair. However, instead of rejecting Him, try to see it as an opportunity to discover Jesus and learn who He is as well as who He is not.