In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day

I just finished reading a book called “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day”, written by Mark Batterson.  Mark is the lead pastor at

National
Community
Church in
Washington DC, which meets in movie theaters at metro stops.

The book was one of the most inspiring books I’ve read in a long time, so I wanted to share some of the points that I found the most interesting.

The premise of the book comes from an obscure story in II Samuel about a warrior named Benaiah, who chases a lion into a pit and kills it.  Mark points out that the most amazing thing about the story is not just that he killed a lion, but that he chased it.  Most people don’t chase lions.  They run the other way.  But Benaiah chased the lion into a pit (in snowy conditions, which would have made for an even bigger advantage for the lion), and he killed it, against all odds.

After killing it, Benaiah gets the job as King David’s bodyguard and the commander of his army.

Mark makes the point that we can look at Benaiah’s story as a metaphor for the Christian life.  Benaiah took a huge risk by chasing that lion, but he leveraged it into a position that made him the second-most powerful man in the country.  God calls us all to take some pretty big risks in life.  If we don’t take Him up on them and we just play it safe, we’re limiting God’s power to take us further in life.  But if we trust in God and take those risks, he can take us further than we ever thought possible.

I’d like to share some quotes from the book that I found really interesting:

“I think the church has fixated on the sins of commission for far too long. We have a long list of don’ts.  Think of it as holiness by subtraction. We think holiness is the byproduct of subracting something from our lives that shouldn’t be there. And holiness certainly involves subtraction. But I think God is more concerned about sins of omission–those things we could have and should have done.  It’s holiness by multiplication.  Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Those who simply run away from sin are half-Christians. Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what’s wrong. We’re called to chase lions.”

“Too often our prayers revolve around asking God to reduce the odds in our lives. We want everything in our favor. But maybe God wants to stack the odds against us so we can experience a miracle of divine proportions. Maybe faith is trusting God no matter how impossible the odds are. Maybe our impossible situations are opportunities to experience a new dimension of God’s glory.”

“The more we grow, the bigger God should get.  And the bigger God gets, the smaller our lions (problems) will become.”

“In his Letters to Malcolm, C.S. Lewis said ‘If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where would I be now?’  Lewis went so far as to say that someday we’ll be more grateful for our prayers that didn’t get answered than the ones that did. The reason for this is simple: Many of our prayers are misguided. We pray for comfort instead of character. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through. We pray for no pain, when the result would be no gain. We pray that God will keep us out of pits and away from lions. But if God answered our prayer, it would rob us of our greatest opportunities. Many of our prayers would short-circuit God’s plans and purposes for our lives if He answered them. Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking Him what He wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances.”

“We want control, but the decision to follow Christ is a relinquishment of control. Following Christ is letting Jesus take the wheel…But faith involves a loss of control. And with the loss of control comes uncertainty…And faith is the willingness and readiness to embrace those uncertainties.”

“Everyone’s path is littered with the debris of dysfunction and disappointment. We’ve all been misjudged or misled. And we will be many more times before our lives are over. But God is in the business of using those experiences to prepare us for future opportunities.”

“As I look back over my life, the greatest breakthroughs have happened while I’ve been in prayer mode. Prayer is an opportunity incubator. When I’m not in prayer mode, I have good ideas.  But when I’m in prayer mode I have God ideas.  And I’d rather have one God idea than a thousand good ideas.”

“In the long run, opportunity costs are always more damaging that actual costs. Far too many people think of righteousness in terms of actual costs instead of opportunity costs. We mistakenly think of righteousness as doing nothing wrong when, in fact, righteousness is doing something right. Righteousness isn’t just running away from sin. Righteousness is chasing lions.”

Mark Batterson runs a great website/blog called Evotional.com.  You can also find podcasts of his sermons here:

http://theaterchurch.com/media/podcast

My Testimony

When I was a kid, I remember having a discussion with my twin brother about Heaven.  We ended up coming to the conclusion that most people would go to Heaven, as long as they didn’t do anything really bad, like killing someone.  We didn’t have any evidence for this view, other than the fact that it “seemed logical”.

Unfortunately for some people, their entire spiritual experience seems to be based on what sounds right to them.  Fortunately for me (and my brother too), I discovered that I didn’t have to figure out the meaning of life on my own.  I found out that God had revealed his divine plan to us through the Bible.

I started going to church with my family (not because I was really interested in spiritual matters at the time, but more because I couldn’t get out of it).  I started to learn that getting into Heaven wasn’t quite as simple as “not killing someone”.  I was already guilty before God even if I had sinned just once, because the Bible says that the penalty of sin is death. 

Fortunately, I also learned that God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to die for my sins, and all I needed to do was accept that gift and repent of my sins, and I would get eternal life in Heaven. Of course that gift wasn’t quite as exciting to a 12-year-old boy as, say, a bike or a skateboard, but I prayed to God and accepted His gift because I knew that it was better to go to Heaven than to Hell.

At the time, I thought that repenting of my sins just meant that I asked God for forgiveness, and then I could just keep doing whatever I wanted.  I continued to live a life that was full of sin, and it kept me from being fully blessed by God. I didn’t realize that true repentance means to turn away from my sins completely, and start living for God, rather than for my own pleasure.  It only took me 15 years or so to learn this.

For a while, I would pray that God would help me get rid of the sin in my life, but I knew deep down that I didn’t really want to give up my sin.  It was too much fun.  I really wanted to have it both ways: serve God, but still be able to sin.  But, it wasn’t long before I realized that the pleasures of sin were starting to become more important to me than serving God.

Soon after I graduated from college, I started allowing God to become less of a priority.  My daily Bible reading turned into my once-or-twice-a-month Bible reading.  I went to church maybe a dozen times in 5 years.  It’s no wonder that more and more sin began to creep into my life.  I started drinking too much.  Before I knew it, I was battling depression and anxiety, and my life was spiraling out of control.

I was living in Keene, New Hampshire, without any friends closeby, and working at a job that I was ceasing to enjoy (partly because I was alone and depressed), when God started working a miracle in my life.  My friend and I were running an Internet business, in addition to our regular jobs, and God allowed it to take off.  Pretty soon I was able to quit my job and work solely on my Internet business.  I moved to Lynchburg, Virginia to be closer to friends, and to start my new life.

Except I wasn’t quite ready for success.

As I started working on my new business, I quickly realized that the money would continue to roll in even if I didn’t spend much time working.  Before long, I was bored.  I started drinking more.  I bought a plasma TV and a new stereo system, and I would spend a lot of time in my room, watching TV, surfing the Internet and drinking.  I would go weeks without doing any actual work.

Finally, God started to tug at my heart.  I realized I was getting nowhere in life, even if I was making a lot of money from my business.  I felt like I needed another change of scenery, and I ended up moving to Raleigh, North Carolina, because I took an Internet quiz that determined that Raleigh was the best place for me.

Within a few months, I met my girlfriend and we found a great church and started going almost every Sunday.  Slowly, I started to realize that the pleasures of my sin can’t even come close to the pleasure of living out God’s will for my life.  Or to use the words of Ravi Zacharius: “The intimacy God gives you is so beautiful and pure, no seduction the world has to offer will ever come close.”
These days, I create websites to help Christians connect with each other, and to spread the word of the Gospel. I started Fellowshipping.ORG in April 2006 to help people get connected with other people in their church and around the world.  I started ShareMyTestimony.org in October 2006, to allow people to share their testimony with the world online.
This story is also posted at ShareMyTestimony.org.  Please check out the site if you’d like to share your testimony with the world, or just to be inspired by reading how God has worked in the lives of others.

In Search of Pure Pleasure

I just discovered Podcasting last week.  Not only did I find out that I can subscribe to an Indie Music feed and get cool new music sent to my computer every couple days, but I also found that I can subscribe to the feeds of some of the best churches and preachers in the country.  Now I can listen to (and even watch) messages from the coolest, most progressive churches and pastors out there. And the best thing about it is that it’s all free.

I haven’t even had a chance to listen to everything I downloaded yet, but I wanted to summarize one of the messages that I listened to, which I found very informative and enjoyable.  The message was given by Ravi Zacharias, a brilliant lecturer who has spoken in colleges and universities all over the world (notably Harvard, Princeton and Oxford).  The message was titled “What is Worthwhile Under the Sun.”  It is based mostly on the book of Ecclesiastes, which was written by King Solomon.

He started with this quote by GK Chesterton:
Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure; when you’ve exhausted that last dream, and you find it has left you rather barren or empty.

He goes on to summarize part of Ecclesiastes where Solomon tries everything he can think of in search of pleasure, and after accomplishing everything he has set out to do, comes to the conclusion that everything is meaningless “under the sun”. “Under the sun” is a phrase that means “outside of God”.

Ravi then gives 3 principles about how we can legitimately pursue pleasure while still pleasing God:

Principal 1: Anything that refreshes you without distracting you from, diminishing or destroying your final goal is a legitimate pleasure. (This means that you must figure out what your final goal, or life purpose is.  I advise that you take some time to do this if you haven’t already.  Your life purpose may change over time, but it’s important to always know which direction your headed.)

Principal 2: Any pleasure that jeopardizes the sacred right of another is an illicit pleasure.

Principal 3: Any pleasure, however good, if not kept in balance, will distort reality or destroy appetite.

Ravi’s thoughts on pure pleasure: Pure pleasure brings you within the reach of God’s voice. God has given us an enormous wealth of grand pleasure to legitimately enjoy.

Ravi ends his message with the following quote, which I want to print twice, because I found it so powerful:

The intimacy God gives you is so beautiful and pure, no seduction the world has to offer will ever come close.

Again: The intimacy God gives you is so beautiful and pure, no seduction the world has to offer will ever come close.

If you’re interested in hearing the actual message, or listening to any of Ravi’s podcasts, point your RSS reader or iTunes here:
http://www.rzim.org/includes/rss/lmptPodcastRSS.php