The Community Before
If you were a devotee of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution when it came to American shores in 2004, you probably had your name on a waiting list for it. And if you were truly devout, you had boxes of aftermarket performance parts already stacked up in your garage months before the Evo was even on the market.
How is this possible? Simple: The Evo earned its role as the darling of the Japanese aftermarket tuning community years before it was offered in America. Beginning with the original Lancer GSR Evolution, a turbocharged 1997cc four-cylinder known as the 4G63 provided 246 hp and 227 lb-ft of torque to all four wheels. Starting in 2004, Americans could finally get a taste of this winning recipe in the Evo VII. Finally, you could experience this potent little box, now with 282 horsepower and 294 ft-lbs of torque. Or you could replace nearly everything in/on/under the 4G63 except the block itself and wind up with 600 or 800 horses. Or more.
Thanks to the momentum from the car’s sales in Japan, you could start this customization immediately. You could buy a replacement intercooler before the car was even in your driveway. Aftermarket tuning companies based in America benefited from this too, building on a foundation of knowledge from Japanese companies to then take customized Evos to new heights.
The Bible has a lot to say about building off of a previously established foundation. Hebrews 11 recounts some of the most inspiring examples of faithfulness to God – in the lives of 10 people, from Abel to Rahab – and expressly emphasizes that these are just small stones within the massive foundation of faithful believers:
“And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated – the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.” (Hebrews 11:32-38)
Here, the encouragement of inspirational success stories of faith meets the sobering reminder of God’s provision when that faith is severely tested. It’s all part of the foundation of faithful believers that modern Christ-followers can rest on and build on.
This foundation is reason alone to be thankful. The Bible is not a new release. As a divinely selected collection of written accounts and prophecies of God’s people, it dates back millennia, telling a story that goes back to the very beginning. So even if you’ve recently discovered it for the first time, you aren’t expected to analyze and interpret it as if for the first time. You get the blessing of thousands of years of scholarship explaining God’s truth, applying God’s law, and living in God’s grace.
You aren’t the first person to contemplate how to “rejoice always” after a death in the family, or how to “live peaceably with all” in a seemingly divided nation, or “make disciples” when you yourself don’t feel like much of a disciple. God was with each person before you who struggled with these things, and he blessed their work and testimony to be invaluable tools to you as he walks with you today.
Look again at this list of heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11. It comes after 10 chapters explaining the divinity of Jesus to a people well-versed in the lineage of these patriarchs. Yet the author is not adding Jesus to the family tree. Instead, the new life given by Jesus’ death and resurrection is added to the patriarchs, each twig on each branch of the family tree, and all the men and women of the Old Testament who believed in his eventual arrival. They were ready, and they were ready to use their examples of faith – and failure – to serve as a foundation for generations of believers, including some who are just now finding themselves ready to wonder just who Jesus was and what he was about.
When the Evo finally came to America, many performance parts were ready. Except for the ones that couldn’t be developed until the exact tune of the 4G63, modified for American emissions regulations, was known. Early tuners could use universal air/fuel ratio controllers, turbo timers and boost regulators, and tunable piggyback computer management systems. But if you wanted a plug-and-play tune, you could either wait until someone did the work and introduced it to the market, or dig in and add your lived experience and knowledge to the growing foundation of Evo followers.
