I’ma Burn This Jungle to the Ground Finale

Why questions can be hard questions to answer.

As I kept looking at what was going on in my life, I started to feel an awareness that I had not yet known.  I had been doing all of these Christian things, leading other believers, and submitting to Jesus for years.  I talked about this life being a spiritual war and I talked about Angels and Demons.  I had not spent any time thinking about the implications of this ideology.

It was almost as though I talked about these things like a peace time military talks about war.  There are great examples and references to war.  There is an intimate understanding of war and the stuff that goes along with it.  There is no knowledge of the taste, smell, and sound of war.

I continued to sit and think.

This is why I believe Jesus allowed my life to spiral out of control like He did.

Jesus says at one point that the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few.  He commands His disciples to pray unto the Lord of the harvest to thrust out laborers.  I am a laborer.  I want to be a leader of laborers.  Jesus knows that His Kingdom advances.  In that language, the language of an advancing Kingdom, there are strong implications.  There is a King.  There is a Kingdom.  The Kingdom advances into new territory.  This territory must be held by an enemy.  Jesus wants men who labor to be prepared to lead other laborers into a hard environment as He advances against His enemies.

These leaders need to be seasoned.  I remember the calm and peace that would come over me when I knew that the team leaders in my platoon were seasoned combat veterans.  They were intimate with the hardships, tactics, logistics, and mission of the war in which we were engaged.  They knew the pain of loss and the exuberant joy of mission success.  They knew the sting of missing family and the innate passion to get back home.  I knew that they had felt everything I was going through, had the same fears, had the same misgivings.  I also knew that they had found a way to survive and that built a lot of trust.

I think this is what Jesus was looking for in Peter.  He knew He was going to thrust Peter to the front line of the advancing kingdom and he wanted Peter to lead well and fight hard.  It worked too.  Peter was sifted.  He was broken to a point of abandoning Jesus, abandoning his only friends, and running away from what he had come to believe.  He made his exit and went back to fishing.

After a short conversation with Jesus, Peter felt encouraged, took up the task, and left his nets for the last time.

I endured such despair.  I quit the mission.  I told everybody around me to move on.

As I started putting these pieces in place, I got in touch with a friend named Mike.  Mike had helped me walk through some hard times in the past, so I trusted him.  He got me in touch with a group of counsellors in Colorado and, for 2 weeks, I got some help.  We talked about my family history, my marriage, combat, and ministry.

After these trips I felt like a new man.  I felt grace in my life like I had never felt before.  I felt as though Jesus really had chosen me to lead.  I felt a deep peace in the midst of the parts still falling down around me.

I firmly believe that Jesus has invited me to labor with Him for the long haul.  I believe that Jesus has asked me to lead others as they labor with Him.  I believe Jesus has chosen for me to fulfill a specific role in the Kingdom.  I believe He let me struggle and flounder in order to season me.

I believe I met Jesus.

Before this encounter He was the most significant character in a story.  He was the point upon which an entire religion pivots.  He was something to study and talk about.  He was what Christians try so hard to represent well.

After this encounter I became a significant part of His story.  He is no longer the point upon which my religion pivots, He is my friend, my encourager, and coach.  I do not study and talk about Him, I spend my time with Him in study and conversation.  I do not have to try to represent Him well.

I simply have to follow Him and tell the truth about who He is, what He has done, and represent my story with integrity…  even the ugly and hard bits.

And what about the things in which I had been misled, or misguided, or misunderstood?  Well… I’m still working on those.  I have taken a step back from a lot of the dogma which I used to believe.  I have taken a step toward simply knowing Jesus.

I can already see a massive change in my life because of this new paradigm.  My political views have changed a lot.  The way I grade whether or not a ministry is successful has changed.  I have become very sensitive to the hippy, liberal, college age critics of Christianity.  I hear them saying things that have now started resonating deep within me.  I no longer feel as though their rhetoric is an attack on me or the Church.  It is a passionate plea for me to be like Jesus, as I get to know Him, instead of the dogma that goes along with Christianity.

Hopefully this demonstrates the difference…

Before this ordeal I spent a lot of time thinking about the points of Theology which were presented by Jesus in His various discourses. I completely missed His heart.

Jesus reads a scroll at one point in His life that says,

The Spirit of the Lord is on Me,
because He has anointed Me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent Me
to proclaim freedom to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He finished reading this and sat down making the point that this passage is talking about Him.

I have found myself being deeply moved to see captives set free.  I spend more time trying to figure out how to free slaves than I spend strengthening the points of an argument.

Jesus escalated force to beast mode in order to set me free.

I am no longer motivated to argue the points of Christianity.

I am excited to sacrifice my desires in order to see grace, love, and freedom come to those who are oppressed and enslaved.

I guess you could say that I am no longer so concerned about representing the religion of Christianity…

I just want to be like Jesus.

So here I am…  Standing on the beach having just broken through the jungle.  I guess it is time to learn how to swim or fly above the waves!