Refuel

There is a story which I have heard several times in my life, a story about two dogs. I don’t know where it came from. Maybe it never happened, but here is how I heard it. Once upon a time, an old Indian chief was talking to one of the younger men in his tribe. This young man was in the midst of undergoing the rites and rituals that comprised the process of becoming a man and subsequently a warrior in the tribe. As the chief talked with the young man, it became evident that the process was causing a struggle within him. The young man talked about struggling with his fears and insecurities, his doubts about his ability to complete all of the rites and rituals all the while wanting strongly to complete them and become a man. Finally, he said, “It is like I have two dogs fighting within me, one that wants to move forward and one that doesn’t and I don’t know which one will win.” The old chief was silent for a moment and then quietly said, “I suppose that will depend on which one you choose to feed the most.”

Fact or figment of someone’s imagination? Who knows? What I do know is that I resonate with that story because it is my story. In me rages a battle, an all-out fight. On the one hand, I want the life that was meant for me, the life God has always intended. I want to laugh and run, to delight in every aspect of life, my work, my play, my solitude, my connection, my chastity, my sex, my everything, just as I was meant to. Yet, there is another part of me that longs to hide from this life. There is a dark side to me, a side that wants to cherish insecurity, nurse bitterness and anger, use people and promote myself. There is a part of me that wants nothing more than to laugh at others and to use play and work as an escape.

I have wrestled with these two competing parts of myself for as long as I can remember. As I have traveled the journey of faith, I have come to recognize them as two competing lives, the life that God has for me and the life I have for myself. I have also come to recognize that these lives are firmly rooted in ways of being. The life of God cannot be separated from life with God, while my life, well. . .I can get that pretty much on my own. Here is what I find most intriguing in my own journey: More and more, I want the life God has for me, but I am discovering that desire does not always translate into the desired end.

Here is what I mean. While I want the life God has for me, that life is only found in living with God. It is within the context of a with-God life that God’s life is found. That is where the trouble comes. You see, I resist that with-God life. Maybe resist is too strong of a word. The reality is probably closer to distraction. I get distracted. Life itself seems to pull me away from a with-God life. It isn’t one thing. It is everything. It is the phone calls, the emails, traffic, bills, television, sports, music, and people. It all somehow combines, creating a gravitational pull that I can’t seem to resist, drawing me into its clutches, away from life with God. I don’t want it to win, but it does.

I am coming to recognize that it wins because I feed it the most. I have a choice about many of these things, choices about their content and context, choices about my daily rhythms, choices about what is important. Most of the time I simply let others make these choices for me. I choose not to choose. It is easier to let others press their expectations and values upon me. In so doing, I feed the wrong life. But if I chose differently, could I feed the right one? Could I order my life in such a way that it actually fed and supported the life I am coming to desire? I think it is possible. No. I know it is possible. It isn’t about possible, it is about choice. Which life will it be? It is the one I choose to feed.

A fellow traveler,

Blake

What’s my next step?

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of handing off faith in your family.

Feeding a with-God life: A with-God life is not something we experience naturally, but we can support it by surrounding ourselves with images, experiences, and environments that point us back to God. This week, as a family, consider chatting about your family rhythms and experiences. Evaluate them, asking whether these rhythms and experiences point your family to or away from God and life with him. If you hit upon something that does not point to God, chat about replacing it with something that does. Try some of these replacements over a set period of time and chat further as a family about how, if at all, these new experiences or rhythms are helping your family live with God.

We encourage you to consider engaging in the following as a way of deepening your own faith.

Feeding a with-God life: We support a choice to move toward life with God by choosing to orient our lives in such a way that they point us to God. This involves evaluating every experience, environment, and relationship, asking if they point us to God or away from God. Do they remind us of his character and awaken a desire for him? This week, consider keeping a journal of your daily activities. On one side of your journal, write down where you went, what you did, and what you saw. On the other side, evaluate these entries, asking if they pointed you to or away from God. If something points you away from God, spend some time pondering what item you might put in its place. At the end of the week, pick two or three of these items and seek to put them into practice over a period of time, perhaps a month, and evaluate the results. In what ways, if any, has your desire for God and life with him grown?