Spring Up Oh Well!

Water is a major theme of life, an essence of adventure.

I think of the many episodes of Man Versus Wild where British survivor man Bear Grylls is in a situation that involves water. Often times Bear is jumping off a boat or out of helicopter into the ocean where he must risk his life swimming to land. When he isn't battling the wild seas, he is looking for water to drink since it is the most important commodity when surviving in the wild. Then there are other times where Bear sits in a spot and admires a commanding waterfall or a view of the never ending horizon over the ocean.

Water is a common theme in the bible as well. Water is used to describe chaos. It is used to describe peace. It is used to describe regret and danger. It is used to describe redemption and gladness. Jesus often used water to give people an image of what it looks like to believe and trust in him. Jesus calmed storms. He walked on water. He made vain attempts of fishing abundantly fruitful. Jesus took the dark attributes of the sea and made it good; nay, better than good. He made it miraculous, life giving, and nurturing.

There was this one time where Jesus approached a socially unapproachable woman at a well. She was a woman who lived as a reject who looked for love in all the wrong places. Jesus asks for a drink from the well. Her identity given to her by the world caused her to react in grief. Who would notice her? Who would dare speak to her? Jesus then offers her a drink, but not just any sort of drink. He offers her a drink from a well that will leave her thirsting no more, a drink that will forever satisfy, that will eternally fulfill.

There's a hymn I have been loving a lot lately. It's called River of Life. It's a bit of a cheesy one quite honestly. Hear me out, I didn't know it was so cheesy when I came across it. Phil Wickham does a version of it that's not cheesy, so that's what I think of when I hear this hymn playing through my head. Despite musical preference, the lyrics paint a beautiful picture of the drink from a different sort of well that Jesus offers the world - to you and me.

I've got a river of life flowing out of me!

Makes the lame to walk, and the blind to see.

Opens prison doors, sets the captives free!

I've got a river of life flowing out of me!

Spring up, O well, within my soul!

Spring up, O well, and make me whole!

Spring up, O well, and give to me

That life abundantly.

There's another story about a man named Isaac, who, one day, was lead by God to a land called Gerar. A group of people called the Philistines lived there and envied Isaac. Isaac was loved by God and was therefore richly blessed. Since the the men of Gerar envied Isaac and all he had, the king of the Philistines, Abimelech, commanded Isaac to leave. Isaac then wandered on into the Valley of Gerar. Long before this, Isaac's father, Abraham had made wells throughout the land. Since the death of Abraham, the Philistines had filled the wells up with earth so that they may not be used. Isaac, when wandering through the Valley, began to come across these wells, and he dug them up again so that they might be restored. The story can seem pretty bland, and it honestly continues on blandly. 

Yet it has me thinking. How many of us have wells that are filled with earth keeping us from their waters? The world, filled with sin, held captive by Satan, does not want us to experience the adventure, the life abundant Jesus offers us. He doesn't want us to sit and enjoy the views of the endless horizon over the ocean. He doesn't want us to bask in the presence of commanding waterfalls. Sin causes us to wander this world as unloved rejects who are daily dumped into a chaotic ocean, who must travel all day every day looking for just a drink of some water. Our wells get filled up with earth. 

If only we would daily dig up our wells and experience life to the fullest. We sit at the edge of a well dwelling in self pity - a pity the world tells us to sit in - when there is water that will cause us to never thirst again lying under the dirt waiting to be dug up. 

Are your wells flowing or are they filled with dirt? Are you identifying yourself as rejected or as beloved. 

The enemy wants to fill our wells with muck and grime, and the crazy thing is that he uses us to fill our own wells. He whispers lies and slander into our ears, and we choose to pick up handful after handful of dirt to put in our well. 

We cannot make life abundant. Jesus does that, but we can choose to dig up our well or to fill up our well. Do you sit with Jesus and let him whisper his love to you? Or do you sit with the world and let it whisper its hate to you?

An adventurous life is a life daring to live as though it means something. It is to live as though it is loved. It is to live as though there is something to live for. 

Dig up your wells, and receive a life abundant. 

The Way of a Real Tale

"Yes, that's so," said Sam. "And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I supposed it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way, as you put it. I wonder what sort of tale we've fallen into." I wonder," replied Frodo. "But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale."

Growing up, in high school, I would meet often with my youth pastor. It was, and still is, a very meaningful relationship to me. We'd talk about what was going on, what God was doing, how I was being a typical teenager, and he would passionately share the things God was teaching him.
I always felt inspired and deeply encouraged by those conversations.

Youth group was on Wednesday nights, and during the segment where my youth pastor would share, he'd often share of the same passions we talked about at coffee earlier that week. He had the same vibrant vigor as when he shared with me over hot cups of coffee.

Occasionally, he would also preach on Sundays in church. Lo and behold, he would share the same message pretty much we had heard at youth group!

It could be easy to assume that sharing the same message over and over to different audiences is an easier route. It would be much like the conference speaker who travels throughout the week intentionally giving the same themed message. That's what they have rehearsed to do.

Yet I realized it was perhaps a different case for my mentor and friend.

In getting to know him over the years, I learned that when God lead him to be passionate about something, he let that theme drive every possible area of his life.
He did not repeat himself out of laziness, but he was compelled to let the present chapter of his story drive the adventure of his life as a natural current and flow. These were the things God caused into his heart and soul, and it flooded every conversation, sermon, and thought.

I love that brief conversation between Sam and Frodo.

An adventure is not something we create or fabricate, its something we are already in. God is always speaking to us; he is always forming and laying out our tales for us.

I have shared much, in my previous posts, of the call we all have been presented with to shift our lenses to view our lives as full and saturated adventures. Yet let me tell you something else I have been learning.

Even if you do stubbornly do not shift your eyes onto the wondrous story-writing of our Creator, your messy adventure is still happening - you're just going to miss the beauty, whim, and life of it. Frodo and Sam are right. The greatest adventures, the ones with the most meaning, are not the ones you choose, they are the ones you fall into.

We can choose to accept that fact and then to let that permeate every ounce of our being.

Now that I am a youth pastor as well, it's easy sometimes to simply find a topic on God and the structure it in a way that is easily teachable to the students I serve. Now that is not a bad thing. Any truth about God is a good thing to be shared.

Yet God is already tuning my heart and soul, all of our hearts and souls, to a more magnificent song. Why don't we talk about that? Why don't we share honestly the fear that is upon us? Why don't we share the heavenly whispers around us? Why don't we share the mysterious and the encouraging and the heart-aching. God is speaking to us. If we seek to see our tales as they are, in light of the truth of the Gospel, then we, I, will have a more honest and captivating relationship to offer.

How I long to see that fill every small space of my life: not just in the ministry I serve, not just the church. EVERYWHERE.

Let's share the sort of tales we are finding ourselves falling into.

Adventure is Out There!

Adventure is out there!

The well known line from the endearing Pixar movie, UP. 

Adventure really is, in fact, out there. The movie UP, I think, paints a beautiful picture of what adventure is and should be.

It's not necessarily the sights or wonders a house suspended by balloons can bring that creates adventure. God knows my fear of heights will keep me from ever being involved with such a thing.

The adventure is driven by the blend of characters who experience the fear and wonder of traveling to unknown locations. These characters are all different in nature and whim, but they are all the same in that they need one another.

When I paint a picture of life with people in my head, it is orderly, colored in well, and clean looking. I like the idea of having people in my life who fit well with me, who are similar to me, and who have my best interest in mind (aka people who serve my own selfish need).

Yet a life of adventure driven by a community with others is far from being clean cut.

When I consider the best stories, the characters paint a beautiful picture. It is not a picture of perfection and order, though. Rather it is a picture that would resemble an abstract artist's flinging of the paint brush at a canvas from a distance. Lines would be all over the place, colors blending, a single image unclear.

When you involve real human beings in your life, you'll find no person fits your life the way you want them to. You'll find that their pain makes your life messy and weird, and you'll find your own pain making a mess of their lives. You'll also find your joys lighting up someone else's face, and another's joys filling holes in your heart you somehow couldn't fill yourself.

You'll find a truer adventure.

God created humans to live courageously and outrageously.

He created them to do it together. Somehow, I think, in the infinite grace and knowledge of our Creator, it was made intentional that humans interacting with each other would create a natural chaos and disorder.

No law, will, or self help book can make relationships happen perfectly.

Adventure is not a seeking of the perfect. It is a seeking of that which is beyond our selves ending with a God who died on a cross (outrageously). And guess what? When you invite that one friend to coffee and ask them how their life is, you have taken the plunge into the world that does not revolve around you.

There must be more than my own anxieties, fears, and desires.

There is. It lies in every person that lives with me, around me, and as far away from me as possible.

Invite people into your life. Let them know you and find adventure in you. Even more, discover others and the adventure they have to offer.

Bring Yosemite Home.

Bring Yosemite Home

I have lately been made wrought by the winds and waves of a life engraved by a fallen world.  

It's interesting that a desire for the mountains, rivers, a sleeping bag, a kayak, a beard, and coffee in a french press for the morning has been grappling my soul in response to this deep weathering. 

Even just typing those words out give me the man shivers. 

man shiv·ers
/man ˈSHivərs/

noun

        when an interaction with a person, place, or thing stirs a person of the male gender into a desirous state of adventure, beard-growing, and traveling by trail or river. 

It seems that no matter the man, there is an innate desire within him to have adventure, a sense of wilderness, and an awareness of something greater than himself. I recently found this when I went to Yosemite for the first time. What an incredible place. "Incredible" hardly does the valley of green trees, mellow fields, and harsh pure-rock mountains justice. But why use a more complicated word to fail to describe this place?

I was amazed that it took me twenty-two years, all of which were contained by the state of California for the most part, to visit a place like Yosemite. It's almost sad that it took me that long. Yet there's part of me that is thankful it took me this long - God knows adolescent Trevor would have not appreciated the beautiful landscape. Twenty-two year old me, though, man, wow. 

As I visited many sites, climbed under a waterfall, and hiked to another waterfall I found a natural ease to an ever thinking mind. I found that my innate desire, that desire that gives me the man shivers, satisfied beyond words.

My mind had space to think as much as it needed. I was active and my body simply felt right. The sounds of the many streams and falls and the brush of the mountain breeze on my bit of facial hair soothed my heart which ached of transition and people-pleasing.

As I sailed upon the vast free see of thought in Yosemite, I drifted across a significant thought.

How can I bring Yosemite home? 

When I was there, I longed to bring all the exquisiteness of the California mountain country home with me?

Now, there is no realistic way to do that is there? Maybe I could bring some friends back with me. Perhaps I could bring some of the students I work with. 

Oh to share the beauty of God that is more than able to share it self - creation. 

And then I realized - are not human beings God's most glorious creations? Are we not "very good". Yosemite blew me away, but it is not every day I am blown away by the creation all around me in the small city of Walnut Creek. Yosemite is with me always. I am surrounded by people more beautiful than the mountains, beards, or coffee of the wilderness. 

Disclaimer: I think there will always be something that only nature can fulfill for me; the city life is truly not for me....

Let me honest by saying I don't actually see people this way. People do not ease my heart and mind like Yosemite did. My innate desire for adventure is not quickly filled by the presence of other flesh-dwellers. Yet, there must be a way to see people so as to bring Yosemite home.

There must be a way to encourage and lead others to see human beings more beautiful than mountains, oceans, and fields. 

There must be a way to bring Yosemite home, with all its godliness, majesty, and surpassing peace. 

How to do this, I have not a clue. I will, in fact, continue pursuing to fulfill my man shivers. But I will also pray and keep my eyes open for the picture of the sun setting behind half dome that dwells in every living beloved child of God. 

Yeah I saw the sun set behind half dome and it was incredible. 

The Schizophrenic

I want to see my life as an adventure (if you have not picked up on that already).

I've found that to live an adventurous life you must do something like the following:

Change your lens, let that lens shape your reality, choose to exist in that reality, and respond in active ways. 

It may sound like the actions of a schizophrenic to choose a reality to live into. Yet truly we all live this way already. Every person who has ever lived has chosen a reality to buy into whether it is definitively something or not. 

The overall reality we ought to buy into is the reality of a God who loves his handy work, mankind, so much that he would miraculous become a man only to die on a cross that mankind might be in perfect relationship with himself again. 

The story of God and how he has pursued us since the dawn of creation is an incredible adventure. To buy into that and to follow Jesus is to choose an adventurous life. Let us open our eyes and see that. Let us look at what we already have before us in our lives, and choose to see each thing, moment, and relationship as an opportunity to experience a resonant life. 

I think this shift I babble on about can be initiated by simply recognizing the value of our lives on earth in light of the fact they end. Every story comes to an end. Every song has its resolve. Every journey has a destination. 

I love what the Psalmist writes in Psalm 39:4-6:

Show me, LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. 

You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you.

Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure. 

Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom; in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth without knowing whose it will finally be. 

The Psalmist had the audacity to ask God to remind him how fleeting his life was! It was not out of a depression he asks this. He asks that he might be motivated to live more fully than those around him. People live like "phantoms" making a more secure life that is never securely theirs in the end anyways. 

Let us ask God that question. As we put our eye up to the looking glass, let us courageous see how short life is and fill it with dense beauty and fullness. 

Choose Existing

I recently (re)met someone from the church I am serving at named Tom. Tom is a professional artist and is one deservedly so. About two weeks ago, the High School Director, Tim, and myself visited his home to pick up a couch that we wanted to use in the youth room. Once the truck was loaded up, we went inside and chatted a bit. Tom showed us the painting he was working on - it was a painting of some famous player, I don't remember which. 

Tom has a really unique way of painting. He does all (or at least all of the work I've seen thus far) in a stained glass sort of style that presents an abstract image of something or someone recognizable. With his paintings, you can't really tell who or what is being painted until it's done. 

Tom told us there is a trick to be able to see his paintings in a more obvious way. If you take a camera, and look at the painting through it's lens, the image becomes quite clear. Tim took his phone out, went to his camera application, and, what do you know, there we saw the baseball player (whose name I forget) staring back at us. 

Life is so similar to Tom's paintings. Our lives are constructed with different pieces, different shapes, that all together form a singular image on a canvas. If you look at the canvas of your life it's easy to become disengaged, apathetic, and lost because the image is not always so clear. You see the shapes and colors, get lost in the details, and then, in your own way, lose sight of your bigger purposes in life. Yet if you use just a simple tool, a lens other than yourself, the image can become so clear. 

This lens I believe to be Jesus. When you take him for who he is and what he says, he provides a lens that can beautifully draw a magnificent out of your life. Every random piece becomes purposeful; every color intentional. 

To see you life as an adventure, you need to accurately view Jesus as he is meant to be viewed, and you need to accurately listen to Jesus as he is meant to be listened to. There is no perfect methodology to this, but digging through the scriptures to see the character of God is an easy place to start. Life becomes so much more adventurous when you realize how great and grand and big God is, and then choose to respond to it. 

Our response is our putting our eye up to the looking glass. It's us choosing to take that lens and put it to use. There will only be something mysteriously beautiful on the other side. 

The other day I was hanging out with a few of my Middle School students, drawing with chalk all over this old circular wooden picnic table. It was a really fun and relaxing time. When another church staff came over to check it out, I asked him to take a picture of all we had done so far. Then I asked him to text those photos to me (see my camera on my phone has been busted for a while, so I need to ask for help taking spontaneous photos sometimes).

As he was getting the text message ready, he muttered the words, "choose existing." He said it again with a little more awe and enthusiasm, "Choose Existing!" He showed his phone to me. He was at a sub-menu where he could decide to either "take a new photo" or "choose existing photo". He found the "choose existing" option quite profound and went on to sit and ponder those words. I did the same. It's amazing the secret ways God shares profound things through the world.

Choose Existing.

When we take the lens of Christ we are presented with the same challenge: CHOOSE TO EXIST. Choose to pursue grasping the bigger picture of your life. Choose to engage in the artful framework that makes up all you are. Choose to embark on the beautiful adventure that will lead to true existing. 

It's way to easy for us to live muddled only existing biologically. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances that do this. They live in their own head without awe, without purpose, and put off the sense that they are hardly engaged in the grand work God is performing through the world. They are hardly aware of the fact God is constantly inviting them into something that actually gives eternal life. 

I don't want to be another disengaged soul wandering the earth claiming to know Jesus! I want to be heavily saturated in the beauty of grace mercy and the coming kingdom. I want to take the lens to my own life and live the adventure it could truly be. 

My Life is an Adventure

I love writing.

I love it a lot. Sometimes I even feel I am good at it. Although, for the most part, I am sure it's my own imagination.

Writing gives me life. That's a way to describe the interactions, the events, the environments, the thoughts we have. There are those that are life-giving and there are those that are life-taking.

I've found that most of my life's greatest joys and frustrations could be boiled down to either of those two categories. When something, someplace, some person, has a negative effect on me, it's tempting to seek and talk about why. This leads to rambling, and this sort of rambling leads to judgment. Judgement leads to further rambling; further judgement. When something is positive, when I have an amazing conversation, when I feel a God sent peace, words never do it justice.

Life-giving

Life-draining

There are those things that kill the very essence of who I am, and there are those things that enhance it. I find myself rambling, myself inadequately describing and notating, because I am not fully who I am yet. I am not fully aware even of who I am in this current moment.

Because there is this great mysterious God, we can expect a great mystery to be deeply ingrained in ourselves. We are made in his image. His likeness is fused in our being. And there is no better word to call it than mystery.

It's a mystery how we are like God, how I am like God. It's a mystery that God would ever make anything like him in any way. It's an amazing thing I am like him in any way.

Some words to describe our God: Amazing, infinite, boundless, powerful, beautiful, wonderful maker, massive, loving. It's incredibly mysterious to me that there is some trace of those things in me. As a human young man grown and nurtured in a broken world, it's easy to ignore that fact. It's easy to accept my
level-of-life and live mundanely.

Yet the truth is life is not mundane. As much as it pains me to say, I am not mundane. Life is full of well... life itself.

Do we live for life or do we settle in places, situations, relationships where we live only to have life taken from us?

That which gives us life drives us. It propels us forward unto the mystery that surrounds God, the adventure that lies in exploring what has never been explored before.

God has been explored before. It is not done. It is not finished. For you have not finished exploring. There is no one like you. There is exploration to be had about the wonders of God like the one before you, before me.

When I seek the fullness of the mystery of God in my life, I am pursuing something that has never been truly pursued before. I am walking a path that has never been walked by someone else, for there is no one else who is me.

We ought to explore life. We ought to explore the unique ways God has designed us. No one else can discover that but yourself or myself. I have a story. I have a story being told, unfinished, that is not told for anyone else.

I have a journey that no one else has!

Frodo, carrying the ring to Mordor; nothing like my life. Walter Mitty, traveling the world in search of a photo; nothing like my life. Carl, flying to South America in house by means of balloons; nothing like my life.

Nothing like my life; not because my life is less valuable, but because my life is one of a kind.

And that is why I write today. That is why I write now. That is my goal.

To see the unique adventure I walk, which is often seemingly mundane, but is truly as mysterious as the God created me.

We are all on an adventure. We only need to see our lives that way.