An Unexpected Journey

 

        "A very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There's no hurry, we have all the day before us!" Then Bilbo sad down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill.

       "Very pretty!" said Gandalf. "But I have no time to blow smoke-rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone."

       "I should think so - in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and I have no use for adventures. Nasty, disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anybody sees in them," said our Mr. Baggins, and stuck one thumb behind his braces, and blew out another even bigger smoke ring.       --The Hobbit, page 13 

 

The beauty, the genius, the near universal appeal of Tolkien's writings are summed up in this man of great imagination's ability to recreate in a world of fantasy the very truths that permeate our own Reality - though we know them not by the names with which he has named them. Indeed, he has haunted us with visions of the Truth that have more vivid clarity than that with which we approach our own lives, and if we have the heart to listen, we are certain to find ourselves in the silly, self-indulgent creatures with which he has populated 'The Shire'.

 

John Eldredge has said that three ultimate longings found in the heart of a man are for "an adventure to live, a battle to fight, and a beauty to rescue."  Women too, he contends, long for the same thing, with an added relational angle - it is for "and adventure to share"  that their hearts equally ache and yearn. 

 

A thirst for adventure, set deep within the hearts of us all.  A key ingredient in bringing our hearts fully alive, our lives fully awake, our waking full of purpose, our purpose full of joy.

 

So why is Adventure the last thing we seek in the way we choose to live our lives? Why have we settled into our own self-indulgent routine of comfort and avoidance of anything that might be classified as 'nasty', 'disturbing' or 'uncomfortable'?  What sort of an evil enchantment has been cast over us that we, 'a stem of that victorious stock' which dared to create the Universe, and then gave His life in a daring raid to rescue it,  should yet ourselves, choosing against our own hearts, choose the monotonous boredom of safety over against the daring of a truly great Adventure?  What Power holds sway over us to teach us to lie to ourselves so?  To gratify the appetites of our stomach at the expense of the longings of our heart, the very nature of what we were created to be?

 

What madness is this? Have we forgotten who we are? If comfort, security, and being well-fed are the greatest pursuits a Man can aspire to, why is it that there is more depression here in our comfortable Western "Shire" than in any other corner of the globe?

 

"As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love...Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick."                       -- The Hobbit, page 22

 

"And wear a sword instead of a walking-stick."

 

Oh, how that speaks to our deepest hearts! Can you feel something welling up inside of you even now - a longing to break out of the monotony of the life-long habit and culture of self-preservation and fling yourself headlong into a Great Adventure?  To leave hearth and home and your provincial little sphere of knowledge and strike out into the Wide World on a journey full of risk and mystery?

 

'But think of the danger!'  whispers that same cold voice that has chained us to our lives of quiet desperation for this many years.

 

         "So Thorin went on: 'We shall soon before the break of day start on our long journey, a journey from which some of us, or perhaps all of us may never return.'

         ....Poor Bilbo couldn't take it any longer. At 'may never return' he began to feel a shriek coming up inside, and very soon it burst out like the whistle of an engine coming out of a tunnel...the poor hobbit could be seen kneeling on the hearth-rug, shaking like a jelly that was melting..."                                          -- The Hobbit, page 23

 

Who can deny it? With bold and unblushing strokes, Tolkien has painted us well, and captured the inner struggle that we all face.  We are, above all else driven by Fear - and so accustomed to its ability to seep into every thought, consideration, venture for the future - that we don't even recognize it for the work of the Devil that it is.

 

                           "God is love...there is no fear in love..."  I John 4:16,18

 

The horns of a dilemma indeed. The voice of fear is the voice of a Liar, and yet we have been trained all too well to listen to it as the voice of wisdom, the voice of reason.  We desire more; we fear the cost will be to high.  

 

What then, shall we do?

 

(to be continued...)

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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While it's still called Today

"But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail, to the ruin of all.  Yet hope remains while all the Company is true..."

Sometimes the most astounding and distressing thing about our lives as Christians is the lack of a sense that there is really any pressure connected with how we move forward into whatever lies before us in the Story that we have fallen into.

Naturally, who would want the pressure?  Our lives are already awash with anxiety, panic, the tyranny of the urgent.  Those bills have to be paid NOW or they're going to shut off our electricity or repossess our car. If the grass isn't mowed THIS weekend, it'll be too tall to get through it with that lawnmower that's put in good service, but has seen better days.  If we don't get that project in the mail TODAY we are going to have some very angry clients, maybe jeapordize the whole business.  If I don't come up with an incredibly romantic date SOON, that relationship might be headed for the rocks.

And so it goes...

There's no question that we understand the need to "git 'er done".  Whether it's human nature or not, it's certainly the spirit of this Age.  In almost every area of our lives, choices come with consequences.

So what are we doing wandering through our spiritual journey like it's one big invitation to spend an afternoon at the mall, or the zoo, or the beach?

Sure, Grace is a pretty big deal in Christianity. There's plenty of it to be had, and most of us don't mind standing in line as often as it takes to get all that we need and then some.

I get that.

But even though it is "grace that leads me home", and grace that carries us so often along the Way, there are still other components to our creation as image bearers, made in the likeness of God. Even in the midst of our addiction to grace, we never fully extinguish our longing to have something expected of us.

John Eldredge writes "Oh how we long for this - for a great endeavor that draws upon our every faculty, a great 'life's work' that we could throw ourselves into".

And your heart says, "Yes."  That sentiment is not the sort of thing a preacher has to exort you to do your best (with the help of your accountability group) to manufacture.

 It's just there.

 It's in you.

Your soul leaps at the suggestion.

I think it's safe to say that we were made to feel that way.

So who do you know that treats the next 24 hours in their relationship with God, with Jesus, and with the whole Unseen Realm like it is something more than a walk in the park, a pasttime, a hobby for the 'good' people of the world, the last thing on their list of what really needs to get attended to NOW? 

This is why cultivating an 'epic' mindset is so vitally important. Because, to some degree, the Quest does stand upon the edge of a knife.  Ground is being won or lost right now, today, that has HUGE implications on the Journey ahead -- both for you and for those that need you.

"Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all..."

May we all inject our spiritual lives with some of that sense of importance and urgency...

"Come in, man! Come in and know me better"

(- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

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Ultimately the Christian world is divided into only two groups: those who believe that this invitation is at the core of the heart of God (and therefore all human existence), and those who do not.

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Or did you even know about the first group?

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We believe a great many things about God, but, for the most part, topping the list is not the belief that He is offering Himself to us in an open, present, engaged, knowable way. If there is anything that is deeply (if unconsciously) believed about the God of all Creation, it is that He is unsearchable, that He is unknowable. "His ways are not our ways" we are constantly reminded, and after all, "Who can understand the mind of God?" Not that we needed any theological support for this feeling that God is, well, hiding from us.


How different would your take on Life be if you thought the One who designed the whole shebang...well...wanted you to find Him? To know Him? Intimately, like a friend, or like the kind of Daddy you wish you had but never really did?

It was during the Christmas holidays (not surprisingly) that during some time alone in prayer, I felt this phrase from the Dickens classic leap to mind: "Come in man! Come in and know me better!" If you are a fan of the George C. Scott film version, you will have the same mental picture I had of the Ghost of Christmas Present, in all is warmth and jocularity, practically laughing out his lines as he summoned the terrified Ebenezer Scrooge into his presence.

Sure, I could have conjured up the words out of my own memory cells. Maybe I did. But, oh, the thrill in that moment of thinking that this was what God was saying!  Really, Father? You really want me to throw open the door and come closer? You wont snuff out the light and disappear into the darkness like elves caught unawares in the forest at night? Could I dare believe it?

Do you?

In the midst of all the hustle and clamor of your life, what have you come to believe - not in theory, but deep in the unspoken places of your heart - about God's attitude towards intimacy...towards drawing close and becoming increasingly knowable...towards sharing Himself with you?

Oh, I know a lot of people who are growing in their theoretical knowledge about God. 

But who do I know that is living out this invitation to "come in and know Him better?"

Who do you know that's living like that?

It's arguable, you know, that if this Christian thing is remotely accurate, then the whole purpose of our existence is to know God. Personally.  Intimately.  Increasingly.  The fact that this is just about the last thing happening in most people's lives is one more VERY BIG claim for the worldview that fuels the Warrior's Path:  quite simply that spiritual warfare is the context of our Story; that, like it or not, we are at War.   Assailed.  Besieged.  Opposed at all costs from discovering all that God is offering.

"Come in man!" (Said with cheery welcome and abundant mirth, you'll remember!)  "Come in and know me better!"

Or, as Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him..."

When I think about all the lies about God that I have come to believe in...

The Will to Rise

"Rise and Rise Again

Until Lambs become Lions"

- (from "Robin Hood", 2010)

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A new year.

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A new beginning.

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A new chance to fight a little tougher, hang in there a little longer, rise a little higher, become more like the person we've always wanted to be.

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No, this isn't just some kind of self-help mumbo-jumbo meant to psyche you up for a challenge that you are destined to lose.

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Yes, God does play a crucial role in this whole "becoming something more" thing we call growing into the image of Christ, growing into restored humanity.

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But come on - you're the one living your life: all the theological arguments aside about what part God plays and what part humans play, you know what happens when you let yourself slip into complacency...when you stop chasing this thing called holiness...when you stop fighting for abundant life and intimacy with the Father and power through the Spirit.

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You know what happens.

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Not much.

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There just aren't a whole lot of 'free passes' in the Christian Life. Most mornings God is not going to leave a message for you in your email inbox, so if you run straight into checking your mail and all the rush of the day, He's probably going to let you. It's not that He doesn't care. It just seems to be the rules that govern this particular fairy tale that we have fallen into. There's just a whole lot that's up to us.

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More than we are comfortable admitting, for the most part.

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"Creation seems to be delegation through and through. God, it appears, does nothing on His own that He could possibly delegate to His creatures..."

(C.S. Lewis)

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"Without God we cannot. Without Man, He will not." (Augustine)

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Again, this isn't about 'theology'. This is about what happens when you try it. Spend an hour a day getting alone and quiet and attempting to access the presence of God, and you are likely to find Him...with varying levels of success, admittedly. But spend your whole day on the run from one thing to the next with no time for God and, well...we both know how that works out. It's like the whole supernatural reality can fade into non-existence, begin to feel like a farce and a fantasy.

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So what are we to do? Regardless of the unseen theological mechanisms at work behind the scenes, here at the level of our experience we can't deny that so much appears to basically be up to us. What will we do next? What will we do with this year? With this day? With this moment?? Will we develop a Warrior's spirit? A dogged refusal to stay down in the mud, no matter how many times we've fallen flat on our faces? A unyielding commitment to our own transformation - to the long and brutal training that it may require to turn us from lambs to lions?

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We'll be honest with you: if 2011 felt like you spent more time with your face in the mud than on your feet, you are not alone. We're right with you on this one. No worries that we think anybody who feels like its a fight just to keep moving forward is some sort of failure who just needs to understand their 'victory in Christ Jesus'. No, we know it's not that easy.

Will you walk with us through the year ahead?

image credit

Keep Fighting

“After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again…
The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.”

C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity.

October 1, 2011 – 5:59AM; 49 degrees; Littleton, Colorado.

It’s dark out and I (David) can still see stars above as I sit wrapped in my sleeping bag out on the deck. Mornings are always chilly at 6,000 ft. and a 40 degree swing during the day is not
unusual here at the base of the Rocky Mountain foothills. There is just the faintest hint of light on
the eastern horizon and everything is quiet and still.

There’s no other way to say it. Yesterday was a disaster. I failed in almost every respect. A mere five days in to our new 90 day challenge and I allowed myself to be crushed by the Enemy. It started with giving into sexual temptation online, which is by far my greatest and most consistent struggle. Then it spiraled out of control from there. I barely managed a double digit point total for the day which is far below our target goal. I went to bed last night dejected and discouraged.

But thank God for his beautiful design where each morning you can start anew. I woke before my alarm with the above quote from C.S. Lewis in my mind - “pick yourself up, and try again.”

So I’m out on the deck on this Saturday morning while most are still sleeping. Just spending time with our Father. Dwelling on His beauty, thanking Him for His forgiveness, and appreciating who He is. I make a conscious decision to forgive myself for the failures of yesterday. The Enemy will try to use our failures and sin as a club to fill us with guilt and shame and convince us to stop fighting. However, I have repented and God has forgiven me and doesn’t even remember my failures of yesterday. So I choose to do the same. I spend 90 minutes with Him, praying, reading I Peter 1, interceding for family and friends and reading a chapter from one of my favorite Brennan Manning books, The Rabbi’s Heartbeat.

I am struck by these words from Manning:

“The Christian commitment is not an abstraction. It is a concrete, visible, courageous, and formidable way of being in the world forged by daily choices consistent with inner truth. A commitment that is not visible in humble service, suffering discipleship, and creative love is an illusion.”

And I am reminded, once again, how important the disciplines are and how important this 90 day challenge is.

I finish my morning time with the Lord and get an enjoyment of beauty point by listening to the fifth movement of Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony while I enjoy the sunrise. Absolutely gorgeous. (6 points; sunrise, time with God (2), intercession, reading, enjoyment of beauty.)

I then take a 25 minute hike before breakfast and get a cardio point. (1 point; cardio.)

The aspens are at the height of their golden beauty in the high mountains and I decide to take my Mom on a color drive. We’re off!

Returning from a few hours enjoying bright yellow aspens among the evergreens with a deep Colorado blue sky in the background, I head to the gym to work out and do a session of kickboxing. (2 points; gym workout, physical warrior training.)

Then, I meet up with my brother-in-law and train him for 45 minutes (he has asked me to help him lose weight and get in shape and he is doing great. Down almost 15 pounds already!) (1 point; random act of generosity (time).)

In the evening after supper I spend some time praying with my Mom who is battling a terrible shingles infection in her eye. She has rather constant nerve pain around her eye and we keep praying for a healing breakthrough. (3 points; battling for someone in prayer.)

By the end of the day I have compiled seven additional points. (7 points; sexual
purity, eating with discipline, vow of poverty, vow of silence, working on
ministry tasks.)

After the disappointment of yesterday, I began the day resolved to fight even harder and had my most successful day yet on the new program – 20 points.

We would love to hear how you are progressing with the new challenge and hope that when you fail, and you will, that you will pick yourself up, set your face like flint, and try again.

Out the Door - the journey begins again

Although the Warrior's Path blog has always been larger than any one (0r two) person's private lives, we thought it might be helpful to walk with you all in a little more intimate way through the "WP90X" challenge of spiritual disciplines that we have undertaken to accomplish between now and Christmas Day:

I awoke on day 1 around 6:30, with plenty of time to catch the sunrise...if only there had been a sunrise. It was a grey morning, and the darkness lingered. I stood by the window for a while staring into the gloom, then wrapped up in a blanket on the couch. It had been a late night and a broken sleep, and the discipline of rising early to be alone with the Lord has always been my greatest weakness. I struggled through 30 minutes of trying to settle in and focus my heart and thoughts on God, but when you are out of practice it can be so hard to slow down the cyclone of thoughts that rush at you as soon as your feet hit the floor. I didn't feel a whole lot of fruit to my prayer attempts, but sometimes setting disciplines in place and committing to "showing up" is all we can hope for. We all know that you "reap what you sow"; but unlike the generations who went before us, we don't have the agricultural experience to know how much hard work goes into sowing...and how much time it takes before you can enjoy the reaping. Once the discipline of "showing up" to be with God takes hold, we will have opened wide the door for Him to "show up" in the days and years ahead. (3 points: sunrise, time with God)

A little after noon I headed out for the nearest chance I had at catching a "beauty point". It was a thirty minute drive to the park, the sky was still overcast, the clouds were misting a light rain across the countryside, and there was (as there always is) a litany of reasons why I ought to "get busy". But the Warrior challenge drove me out there - out of my way, out of my schedule - in search of something that would stir my soul. My car, as always when I am focused, was my chapel, and the conversation with God that had begun in the morning resumed once again in earnest. (1 point - time with God)

The rain cleared out, but the air was wet and the wind was in the trees. It was a lonely, brooding sort of beauty that I found in my favorite part of the park, a small peninsula where you look down from a height past tall tree trunks to the water below, and then beyond it to the dense treeline on the island beyond. I found myself delightfully alone. I walked. I prayed. I stood. I read from Eldredge's book "Walking with God". I listened to some great soundtrack music to help revive my deep longings for more of God, more of Life, more of all that we have once tasted but lost somewhere along the way. (4 points - beauty, time with God, intercession for others, reading)

On the way home I stopped by a store and bought a gift for my wife - something she didn't need or didn't expect. (1 point: random act of kindness or generosity)

Next I swung by my dad's house, where I have all my workout equipment set up in his garage. (You might think he'd like to be parking his car in there at some point, but the old wooden garage door is far too heavy for him to lift, so there isn't much use bothering about whether he would like to park his car in there or not.) It was Spartan 300 day, and I was feeling naseous just at the thought of the workout I had in store. As it turned out, the workout was too much for me on this day, and I was so exhausted I chose to bail out on the last excercise when I saw that there was no way I was going to finish in under 3o minutes. (Yes, you fitness gurus: I know full well that the famed "300" test used in preperation for filming the movie "300" wasn't really fitness training, but a one-time test/challenge given at the end of four months of training. But I like it, and I use it once a week anyway.) (2 points: weightlifting workout and cardio workout)

Several of the points take a whole day to achieve: remaining sexually pure, eating with discipline (all the way til bedtime!), observing a vow of poverty, or silence, etc. (total of 6 points today)

All in all, it was a great day of disciplines - 17 points. Most importantly, it was a day of deliberately seeking time with the Lord - on multiple ocassions - and in the end that is the ultimate priorty. A good day.

And yet...

...it was only the beginning...

How was your score??

WP90"X"

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"Just once in his life,

A Man has his Time.

And that time is Now

I'm comin' Alive...

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I can make it,

I know I can

You broke the Boy in me

But you wont break the Man!"

-Theme from St. Elmo's Fire

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Brothers and Sisters,

We don't know how many of you have ever taken a look at the "Warrior Disciplines Training Chart" that we have posted here on the website (see the navigation bar above, or just click here). The "disciplines" chart is something that we developed a couple of years ago as an expression of the great gap between the way we were living our lives at the time and our personal vision of what qualities would typify our daily lives if we were living as "mighty men of God".

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Yes, we had some pretty bold visions. But then, the goal of this whole shin-dig we're living is to be like Jesus...so having some pretty high standards of the kind of Man you want to become seems resonable, even when highly improbable, if not humanly impossible. Confusing, we know. Quixotic even, to be perfectly honest. But true nonetheless.

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The goal may feel out of reach.

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But it's still the goal.

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"He will be infinitely merciful our repeated failures; I know no promise that He will accept a deliberate compromise." - C.S. Lewis

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In the intervening years since setting out to conform our personal lives more closely to the blueprint of the kind of men we wanted to be, we have found "The Chart" to be an indispensible tool in our spiritual journey.

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The next stage of that Journey begins todoay (Monday, September 26th).

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And we're inviting you to come along.

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We're calling it "90 days to Freedom". Consider it the ultimate Advent season. If you count down 90 days beginning from today you will arrive at the high holy day of Christmas Eve, the night when angels sang of the Great King's disguised appearance on center stage of the Rebel Planet called Earth. And so, in the King's Name, for the next 90 days leading up to Christmas, we will be endeavoring to live the disciplined lives of spiritual warriors, keeping track daily of our successes, and, yes, our failures too.

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It won't be easy. Even aiming for a 10 point daily average (you'll understand when you look at the chart and read the instructions) is setting the bar extremely high. The flesh quails at the very thought of it. It's one thing to walk in obedience to God and in the disciplines of a healthy body, mind and spirit when you are in the mood. It's another thing altogether to stick doggedly to that same Path when you are in the mood to be heading down a slightly different, slightly easier Road. But that is why, after all, they are called disciplines.

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Are you in?