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Into The Unknown By John Eldredge
John Eldredge
Jul 6, 2005
"Kingdom principles with a biblical worldview serving the marketplace"
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Into the Unknown
By John Eldredge
www.ransomedheart.com
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?
Where would we be today if Abraham had carefully weighed the pros and cons of
God's invitation and decided that he'd rather hang on to his medical benefits,
three weeks paid vacation and retirement plan in Ur? What would have happened
if Moses had listened to his mother's advice to "never play with matches" and
lived a careful, cautious life steering clear of all burning bushes? You
wouldn't have the gospel if Paul had concluded that the life of a Pharisee,
while not everything a man dreams for; was at least predictable and certainly
more stable than following a voice he herd on the Damascus road. After all,
people hear voices all the time and who really knows whether it's God or just
one's imagination. Where would we be if Jesus was not fierce and wild and
romantic to the core? Come to think of i t, we wouldn't be at all if God hadn't
taken that enormous risk of us in the first place.
Most men spend the energy of their lives trying to eliminate risk, or squeezing
it down to a more manageable size. Their children hear "no" far more than they
hear "yes"; their employees feel chained up and their wives are equally bound.
If it works, if a man succeeds in securing his life against all risk, he'll
wind up in a cocoon of self-protection and wonder all the while why he's
suffocating. If it doesn't work, he curses God, redoubles his efforts and his
blood pressure. when you look at the structure of the false self men tend to
create, it always revolves around two themes: seizing upon some sort of
competence and rejecting anything that cannot be controlled. As David Whyte
says, 'The price of our vitality is the sum of all our fears.'
For murdering his brother, God sentences Cain to the life of a restless
wanderer, five verses later Cain is building a city (Genesis. 4:12, 17). That
sort of commitment-the refusal to trust God and the reach for control-runs deep
in every man. Whyte talks about the difference between the false self's desire
"to have power over experience, to control all events and consequences, and the
soul's wish to have power through experience, no matter what that may be." You
literally sacrifice your soul and your true power when you insist on
controlling things, like the guy Jesus talked about who thought he finally
pulled it all off, built himself some really nice barns and died the same
night. "What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his
own soul?" (Mark 8:36 NKJV). You can lose you r soul, by the way, long before
you die.
Too many men forsake their dreams because they aren't willing to risk, or fear
they aren't up to the challenge, or are never told that those desires deep in
their heart are good. But the soul of a man, isn't made for controlling things,
he's made for adventure. Something in us remembers, however faintly, that when
God set man on the earth he gave us an incredible mission-a charter to explore,
build, conquer; and care for all creation. It was a blank page waiting to be
written, a clean canvas waiting to be painted. Well, sir, God never revoked
that charter. It's still there, waiting for a man to seize it.
If you had permission to do what you really want to do, what would you do?
Don't ask how, that will cut your desire off at the knees. How is never the
right question, how is a faithless question. It means "unless I can see my way
clearly I won't believe it, won't venture forth." When the angel told Zechariah
that his ancient wife would bear him a son named John, Zechariah asked how and
was struck dumb for it. How is God's department. He is asking you what is
written in your heart? What makes you come alive? If you could do what you've
always wanted to do, what would it be? You see, a man's calling is written on
his true heart, and he discovers it when he enters the frontier of his deep
desires. To paraphrase Bailie, don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask
yourself what makes you come alive be cause what the world needs are men who
have come alive.
The invitation in the book shop, I must note, was given to me some years into
my Christian life when the transformation of my character was at a point that I
could hear it without running off and doing something stupid. I've met men
who've used advice like it as permission to leave their wife and run off with
their secretary. They are deceived about what it is they really want, what they
are made for. There is a design God has woven into the fabric of this world,
and if we violate it we cannot hope to find life. Because our hearts have
strayed so far from home, he's given us the Law as a sort of handrail to help
us back from the precipice. But the goal of Christian discipleship is the
transformed heart, we move from a boy who needs the Law to the man who is able
to live by the Spirit of the law. " My counsel is this: Live freely, animated
and motivated by God's Spirit. Then you won't feed the compulsions of
selfishness... Legalism is helpless in bringing this about, it only gets in the
way" (Galatians 5 v 16, 23 The Message).
A man's life becomes an adventure, the whole thing takes on a transcendent
purpose when he releases control in exchange for the recovery of the dreams in
his heart. Sometimes those dreams are buried deep and it takes some unearthing
to get to them. We pay attention to our desire. Often the clues are in our
past, in those moments when we found ourselves loving what we were doing. The
details and circumstances change as we grow; but the themes remain the same.
To recover his heart's desire a man needs to get away from the noise and
distraction of his daily life for time with his own soul. He needs to head into
the wilderness, to silence and solitude. Alone with himself, he allows whatever
is there to come to the surface. Sometimes it is grief for so much lost time.
There, beneath the grief, are desires long forsaken. Sometimes it even starts
with temptation, when a man thinks that what will really make him come alive is
something unholy. At that point he should ask himself, "what is the desire
beneath this desire? What is it I'm wanting that I think I'll find there!"
However the desire begins to surface, we pick up that trail when we allow a cry
to rise from the depths of our soul, a cry, as Whyte says, "for a kind of
forgotten courage, one difficult to hear, demanding not a raise, but another
life."
INTO THE UNKNOWN
"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban," said Howard Macey. "It is always
frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains
untamed." The greatest obstacle to realising our dreams is the false self's
hatred of mystery. That's a problem, you see, because mystery is essential to
adventure. More than that, mystery is the heart of the universe and the God who
made it. The most important aspects of any man's world-his relationship with
his God and with the people in his life, his calling, the spiritual battles
he'll face-every one of them is fraught with mystery. But that is not a bad
thing, it is a joyful, rich part of reality and essential to our soul's thirst
for adventure.
As Oswald chambers says:
Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look
upon uncertainty as a bad thing.. Certainty is the mark of the common-sense
life; gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. 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. (My Utmost for His Highest).
There are no formulas with God. Period. So there are no formulas for the man
who follows him. God is a Person, not a doctrine. He operates not like a
system-not even a theological system-but with all the originality of a truly
free and alive person. 'The realm of God is dangerous," says Archbishop Anthony
Bloom. "You must enter into it and not just seek information about it." Take
Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. The Israelites are staged to make their first
military strike into the promised land and there's a lot hanging on this moment
- the morale of the troops, their confidence in Joshua, not to mention their
reputation that will precede them to every other enemy that awaits. This is
their D-Day, so to speak, and word is going to get around. How does God get the
whole thing off to a good start? He has them march around the city blowing
trumpets for a week; on the seventh day he has them do it seven times and then
give a big holler. It works marvellously, of course. And you know what? It
never happens again. Israel never uses that tactic again.
There's Gideon and his army reduced from thirty-two thousand to three-hundred.
What's their plan of attack? Torches and water pots. It also works splendidly
and it also never happens again. You recall Jesus healing the blind, he never
does it the same way twice. I hope you're getting the idea because the church
has really been taken in by the world on this one. The Modem Era hated mystery,
we desperately wanted a means of controlling our own lives and we seemed to
find the ultimate Tower of Babble in the scientific method. Don't get me wrong,
science has given us many wonderful advances in sanitation, medicine,
transportation. But we've tried to use those methods to tame the wildness of
the spiritual frontier. We take the latest marketing methods, the newest
business management fad, and we apply it to ministry. The problem with modern
Christianity's obsession with principles is that it removes any real
conversation with God. Find the principle, apply the principle -what do you
need God for? So Oswald Chambers warns us, "Never make a principle out of your
experience, let God be as original with other people as he is with you."
Originality and creativity are essential to person-hood and to masculine
strength. The adventure begins and our real strength is released when we no
longer rely on formulas. God is an immensely creative Person and he wants his
sons to live that way too. There is a great picture of this in Raiders of the
Lost Ark, of all places. Of course Indiana Jones is a swashbuckling hero who
can handle ancient history, beautiful women, and a forty-five with ease. But
the real test of the man comes when all his resources have failed. He's finally
found the famous ark, but the Germans have stolen it from him and loaded it
onto a truck. They're about to drive off with his dreams under heavy Nazi
military protection. Jones and his two companions are watching helplessly as
victory slips through their fingers. But < st1:place w:st="on">Indiana is not
finished, oh no, the game has just begun.
He says to his friends:
Jones: Get back to Cairo. Get us some transport to England... boat, plane,
anything. Meet me at Omars. Be ready for me. I'm going after that truck.
SAULACK: How?
Jones: I don't know... I'm making this up as I go.
I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me
A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me, and i shrank from its disillusionment; sorrow knocked
at my door, but I was afraid
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
(Edgar Lee Masters)
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Frangipane, Francis (Author )
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