Our Need for Adventure

"There is no substitute for exploring, crossing over into the unknown to see what's there. And that goes for all exploring; the physical, the intellectual and even the spiritual. Often they are all combined." 
Peter Jenkins, author of Walk Across America.

My First Skydiving Experience 
I'll admit I was scared as I hung from the strut of a Cessna 182 airplane, the wind blasting 70+ mph in my face, waiting for the nod from my skydiving instructor to let go and begin my 3,500 ft solo descent to the ground. Of course, my hope was that it would be a slow and gentle descent, but there was no guarantee. As I released my grip I was citing these words: For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it (1). (click on the link below, or http://youtu.be/lCddpdOOL58, to witness my first skydive!).

Risk or Resignation
What did Jesus mean when he spoke about the necessity of losing our lives for his sake? I think it means that following him will require letting go of that which seems necessary, in order to find that which is vital (for example, finding our calling or individual purpose for being here). Jim Elliott, the famous missionary who was killed in South America by the natives he was evangelizing, put it this way: He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. This "letting go" requires trusting God, following his call, and stepping out into the unknown. Alternatively, we can play it safe and avoid that risk. In my opinion, too many people have done that, with the result being what Thoreau described as the mass of men [leading] lives of quiet desperation.

This path seems to invite one to explore the wonders
of the Pacific Ocean! Shore Acres State Park, Oregon.

Gracious uncertainty - the mark of the spiritual life
In Genesis 1, God created the world...which included a lot of spectacularly wild and unexplored places...he then called it all good and told us to "Take charge and be responsible for them" (2).  This challenge was to be conducted in tandem with God, which required that we trust his goodness and leading. Following God means that he may ask us to step into the unknown, out of our comfort zone, in order to accomplish that which we were created to do. Oswald Chambers said that To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation (3).

Walking along the Oregon Coast north of Florence. There
is something mesmerizing, almost eternal about the ocean
waves.

Into the Unknown
When I let go of that airplane that day in 2004, it was symbolic of my desire to let go of everything that hinders...[and to] run with perseverance the race marked out for [me], fixing [my] eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith (4).

Moving into the unknown doesn't have to mean jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Relationship with God means that he will prompt you to move in the direction he is calling you. Our ability to hear his call may require a break in our routine, to get away from the noise and distraction of daily life for awhile. Perhaps this could mean traveling to a new place to explore unknown nooks and crannies. Or perhaps simply moving out of your comfort zone.

Howard Macey said The spiritual life cannot be made suburban...it is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed. My prayer is that you and I will find our place in this frontier and learn to rejoice in all that it means.

Footnotes:

The Magic of Christmas- After Christmas

My doctor sure knows how to decorate his landscape for
Christmas! We had to stop and gaze awhile.

Angels are in Flight.
It's the magic of the night.
Enya, The Magic of the Night

Christmas Day (2012) is over. Many folks suffer effects from After-Christmas Blues, Post-Christmas Blahs, etc. But how can the thrill of Christmas that was felt just a few days ago have vanished so quickly?

The Thrill of Hope, A Weary World Rejoices
I recall lamenting my after-Christmas blues to a Christian friend more than 30 years ago and I've never forgotten his startling answer. "The thrill doesn't have to go away", he said, "For me, every day is like Christmas". I have contemplated the meaning of his statement occasionally over the years (usually right after Christmas), and to me it means this:

Because of what Christmas represents...God becoming human through the birth of Jesus...God can now reside in our hearts every day and every night! (1,2) We can carry within us continuously that "thrill of hope"  mentioned in the song O Holy Night, that "Deeper Magic" referred to in The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis).

Not that we will always FEEL that thrill, or that we will always be happy, but it can give us a genuine sense of peace...a peace that only true hope can bring. After all, Jesus was called the "Prince of Peace" (3)! The Good News is that this thrill, hope, and peace is available to anyone asks for it! 

The Magic of the Night
I love this song by Enya, and even after Christmas Day it brings me joy to listen to it. If you haven't heard it, or if you have heard it and would like to listen again, I've posted it in the link below (if you can't see the link, click here: http://youtu.be/zp3eL3nRfSo). For some reason it won't play on mobile devices, as of this posting.

 Question: What does my friend's comment about carrying Christmas with oneself every day mean to you?

Footnotes:

Chance Encounter with a Tidepool Sculpin?

Just for a moment I was back at school, and felt that old familiar pain. And as I turned to make my way back home, The snow turned into rain --
Dan Fogelberg, Same Old Lang Syne.

Tidepool Sculpin. Photo by Stuart Wilson (used with permission).

In late June I spent several hours in solitude along the Oregon Coast, in the late afternoon & early evening. It was a wondrous time, filled with the beauty of God's creation. As I walked I sensed his presence, like he was intentionally delighting in showing me the intricacies of his handiwork. I saw many birds such as gulls, cormorants, and ducks, including three species I had never seen before. I also saw sea anemones, clams, mussels, and starfish, all while hearing the surf crash against the line of rocks just offshore (50 yards or so out from the beach, pictured below), sometimes with a very powerful clap.

There were many tide pools at this beach, and I stopped by one to study it. While I was peering into the water I noticed a barely discernible, ghostlike movement on the bottom - almost like the floor of the tide pool itself was moving. Upon closer inspection I noticed the movement was small fish, which I later identified as tidepool sculpins (pictured above). I stayed there studying their patterns for a long time because I wanted to be able to identify them later. All at once, I realized one of them seemed to be studying me! It was looking at me, and slowly, incrementally was moving closer to me, somewhat under the cover of some sparse leaves of sea weed. There seemed to be a kind of playfulness in its behavior, and that it was as curious of me as I was of it. This went on for quite some time. It was an absolutely beautiful experience and I knew God was romancing me, speaking to me through it.

Seal Rock State Park, Oregon, where I spent an
incredible June afternoon and evening!

Learning about an artist through their work
John Eldredge, in a chapter entitled "Is Jesus Really Playful?" (Beautiful Outlaw), noted that we can learn a lot about an artist by observing their work...that the personality of the artist leaks through their work. God included. In speaking of how the playfulness of their family dog made them laugh, Eldredge stated:

"[Our dog's playfulness] makes us laugh every time. And no one taught him to do this. He came that way. God created him so. It might seem an odd place to begin a search for Jesus, but this is very close to where John begins his Gospel: Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:3)...[Jesus] reveals himself through nature, as the Scriptures testify. This will open up wonders for you about the personality of Jesus - look at his works of art."

Chance Encounter?? Not a Chance!!
I can't stress enough how my interpretation of such seemingly "chance" encounters as with the tidepool sculpin has changed from my college biology days; I have written in other posts about how the naturalist, secular view, so prevalent at American universities, dimmed the meaning and wonder I had previously felt about our world. Even after that wonder was dimmed I would have been fascinated, but underlying it all would have been a nagging sense (emanating from secularism) that such an encounter was only a random accident and consequently, without real meaning.

Now I know there isn't a chance that my encounter with the tidepool sculpin was by chance! It was orchestrated by God, and all I had to do was take time and solitude to listen to Him and look for things that He wanted to show me!

As I turned to make my way back home that evening, my heart wasn't filled with pain that this brief glimpse of beauty was over and that I had to return to the grind of daily living. Rather, my heart was filled with joy and praise to the God who lives in me and is always with me! This is a glimpse of relationship with God, which we so often hear about but sometimes find so elusive, even to those of us who want it.

...seek, and you will find... (Matt 7:7)

The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; (Psalms 24:1)

Happy Graduation! You are Loved!!

 Brandon Heath Your Love (one of the most popular Christian songs of 2011).

To all of you who are or who know someone who is graduating, congratulations!! As a person who was in school for a long time (I was still in graduate school at my 20th high school class reunion...although not for the entire 20 years), I know how good if feels to complete a degree.

I once heard a (horrible) graduation keynote address, the gist of which was...you are on your own now, out in the cold, sink or swim...   I want to offer you more encouragement than that.

You are not on your own!! And if you feel like you are, you don't need to keep feeling that way!!

The only way to have a life of meaning and purpose is to walk through it with God.

Questions? Listen to the song on youtube above (for those who receive this via email, click here: http://youtu.be/yfc9y7X3zog), read some of my other blog posts, email me, or ask God to show you that you are not alone.

Your love, O LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Psalm 36:5

Love never fails. 1 Corinthians 13:8

Your Original Glory

"I daresay we've heard a bit about 'original sin', but not nearly enough about 'original glory', which comes before sin and is deeper to our nature"      John Eldredge

The truest part of us isn't our sin or
our struggle, it is our redemption.

Stairway to Paradise, by Thomas Kinkade. When I saw this
painting I was deeply moved. To me it is a vision of what is to
come. Walking up the stairs and into the beautiful light beyond...

I was born an original sinner, I was born in original sin... So went the lyrics of the pop song "Missionary Man" by the Eurythmics in the 80's. For most of my adult life even as a Christian I identified myself as a "sinner". Granted, I believed I was saved by grace, but I didn't really understand grace. To me, grace was an old lady at church whose name was "Grace", and she was kinda scary to me as a kid!

The Heart is Desperately Wicked

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, wrote the prophet Jeremiah (1). Look around at all of the heinous happenings in our world brought on by mankind and it is easy to believe. Even Jesus said: ...how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks (2). I grew up in the church but somehow I remained pinned down by my belief that even though I was saved by grace, I was at my core still a sinner ("snow-covered dung", if you will). Perhaps this conviction was subconscious, but nevertheless it kept me from experiencing the freedom, joy, LIFE in Christ that seemed to be promised in the Scriptures.

A few years ago I read Waking the Dead by John Eldredge, and he took this crippling belief head on (This book rocked my world!). To say that our hearts are wicked even after coming to Christ is untrue and unbiblical, Eldredge said, [this belief] is a religious fog of poison gas from the pit of hell.

I Will Give You a New Heart

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. (3). Jesus came to give us "heart surgery", so to speak. To remove our "wicked heart" and replace it with a noble and good heart. Does that sound almost like heresy or blasphemy? Many of my friends in the church seem uncomfortable with it (unfortunately). But I believe that this is part of what makes the Gospel such very good news. And without understanding that as Christians we have good hearts, we will never live the victorious, powerful lives that Christ intends for us. The truest part of you isn't your sin!

Consider this: Your story didn't start with sin and it does not end with sin.

When God created man and woman, we are told that he looked on them and called them good (4). Have you ever considered that when God created you, he endowed you with a glory unique to you that is good? (5,6) I had never thought of that. That is your "original glory".

Our story didn't begin with sin!

Obviously we live in a fallen world and thus, have been marred with sin (hence, 'original sin'). And without accepting Christ and repenting of our sins, we remain marred. But Jesus told us that he came "to seek and to save what was lost" (7). He came to restore our hearts. "God made him who had no sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (8). In Christ we have been transformed, even as we are being transformed (9). We've been given a new, good heart; he is restoring our original glory (10)!

Our story doesn't end with sin!

Let all of this sink in for a moment. Does it change anything or cause a hope or thrill to rise from deep within you? If you are a Christian, you have much more to rejoice about than you ever imagined. If you aren't a Christian, why miss out on such an offer? He extends it to everyone! (11)

Footnotes:

Leap of Faith

"It is often implied that belief in Christ requires a leap of faith."

The stereotypical televangelists haven't done much to encourage us that there is more to Christianity than simply having faith in faith itself.

Is believing in God just mysticism, deprived of content and contrary to rationality?  Must the intellect and knowledge be set aside in order to believe in God, making our faith irrational? Was our faith simply invented, as the atheist Sir Julian Huxley said, because man functions better if he acts as though God is there (even if he isn't)? I don't think so.

Optimistic Humanism - A True Leap of Faith

I recently read the book The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer. (1) He argued that since the Enlightenment, when leading thinkers argued that feelings (things only true for me but which we can't be certain of, such as love, beauty, religion, prayer, etc., things they assumed irrational) should be separated from the physical world, or facts (things true for everyone, assumed to be logical and rational). This is secularism, a modern religious belief that grew out of the pride of human achievement, marginalizes God, and masquerades as science or reality. The culture of our universities in the U.S. is infiltrated with this belief.

The problem with secular humanism is that there can be no true meaning or purpose found in the impersonal, physical world alone. How can there be if man has simply risen by chance out of the primordial soup and one day will disappear back into nothingness? There is only one way, and that is to create one's own meaning and purpose...by making an irrational leap of faith! Optimistic humanism is, then, unadulterated faith despite its claims to rationality and reality. In the end, however, humanism (aka, rationalism) can only lead to despair because those things that make us human - hope of purpose and significance, love, morality, beauty, spirituality, indeed, our personalities - are by the humanists own definition irrational. Those things also rose by chance from the impersonal and are ultimately unfulfillable; they are meaningless.

However, if God exists and we are made in his image, we can have real meaning and we can have real knowledge through what God has communicated to us.

Christianity: The Most Rational of All

Christianity is realistic because it says if there is no truth, there is also no hope. It is prepared to face the consequences of being proved false and say with Paul: If you find the body of Christ, the discussion is finished; let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die (2). In Christianity the value of faith depends upon the object towards which the faith is directed: To the Christ who in history died upon the cross once for all, finished the work of atonement, and on the third day rose again in space and time.

This makes Christian faith open to discussion and verification. When Paul was asked whether Jesus was raised from the dead, he gave a completely non-mystical and nonreligious answer in the 21st century sense: "There are almost 500 living witnesses; go ask them!" (3) This is the faith that involves the whole man, including his reason; it does not ask for a belief into the void. (4)

Perhaps C.S. Lewis put it best:  "Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair."

Footnotes:

Beauty For Ashes

...he will give a crown of beauty for ashes. Isaiah 61:3

Burning the tallgrass prairie in NE Kansas

in the spring, which leads to new growth

the rest of the season!

My engagement was over.  And like the YouTube clip of the "Destruction of the USS Enterprise" in my last post (Coming to the End of Myself), my life felt shattered. My "destruction" wasn't visibly spectacular like the Enterprise as it blazed through the atmosphere towards Earth, but emotionally it seemed like it. I felt alone and sad. Such was my life in August 2002, and I didn't bounce back quickly either (as some of my friends know).

But God was using this situation to break several of my dysfunctional habits. Or as John Eldredge describes it in Wild at Heart, God was shattering my false self. One thing God destroyed was my belief that I was inferior. Although I felt incredibly inferior right after the breakup (I felt rejected, after all), God taught me that I was valued by him, and in Christ I was inferior to no one. Learning this was not just through an intellectual analysis of the Scriptures, although they certainly speak of our incredible value to God. My learning this was also at the heart level, through personal revelation from God (through a sort of vision). He didn't speak audibly but his communication with me was so personal and real that I now have no doubt of my worth to him. Although I sometimes still struggle with feeling inferior, I know in my deepest heart that I am not inferior but rather a child of the King of kings!

This Sunday is Easter (Resurrection) Sunday. As Christians, we believe that Jesus was literally resurrected from the dead (1). Think of it, power over death! This fills me with incredible wonder!! Because of Christ's resurrection, we know and are promised that we too will one day be resurrected (2). And if Jesus has power over death, he can certainly bring clarity and healing to the mess that we make of our lives! He can make all things new! (3) The Scriptures tell us that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (4) And although the process won't be completed until we arrive in heaven, we don't have to wait till then for the healing and restoration to begin.

But before God can begin our restoration, our old life has to be dealt with. Watchman Nee put it this way: God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man, but by crucifying him; not by helping him do anything but by removing him from the scene (5).  Or as Paul, the former Christian slayer himself said My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (6).

In August 2002 my life seemed to be ashes, emotionally almost without hope. But God can work good through all things to those who love him (7), and he used that tragedy to bring new life to me. I now know my worth in Jesus. And in 2007 I married a beautiful woman, and we are very happy!

Happy Easter!!

Footnotes: