The Game of Life: Get Out of the Boat
The Game of Life
06.15.05
Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat
This evotional continues The Game of Life series. Last week’s stop was Graduation Day: Enjoy the Journey. Next week’s stop is Night School: Keep Asking Questions. This week’s stop is Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat.
Get Out of the Boat
In Matthew 14, the disciples are rowing across the Sea of Galilee and Jesus walks on water and catches up with them in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake. For what it’s worth, Jesus has a habit of showing up when we least expect him! The disciples have no category for this experience. When was the last time you saw someone walk on water? I love Peter’s reaction: “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said, “Come.”
Matthew 14:29 says, “Then Peter got down out of the boat and sunk to the bottom.” That’s what it should say, but that isn’t what it says! It says, “Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on water, and came toward Jesus.” This has to be one of the most improbable sentences in the Bible. Peter walks on water.
Then Peter has one of those moments where what he is doing dawns on him, almost like a tightrope walker who looks down. “When he saw the wind, he was afraid.” And Peter began to sink. He stopped focusing on Jesus and started focusing on the wind and the waves and he began to sink. I’ve said it a thousand times, but it’s worth saying again: your focus determines your reality. Nothing has changed in 2,000 years. If we take our focus off of Jesus and focus on our circumstances we begin to sink.
Peter gets a bum rap. He’s the disciple who sank. But here's what I think: I think sinking is better than sitting. It’s easy to criticize Peter from the comfortable confines of the boat, but I love what Teddy Roosevelt said. “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.”
Here’s what I think: sinking is better than sitting. When everything is said and done, I think our greatest regrets will be the risks we didn’t take. We won’t regret sinking. We will regret sitting. Goethe said, “Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.”
Sure, Peter sank. But how many of us have walked on water? The other eleven disciples were playing it safe. They were playing not to lose. But Peter was playing to win. We have a core value: playing it safe is risky. Or to put it in the context of this story: if you never get out of the boat you’ll never walk on water. It's that simple.
I can hear the disciples reminiscing about their experiences with Jesus years later. And I can hear Peter saying, “Remember that night Jesus came walking on water and he called me out of the boat and I actually walked on water. That was awesome.” And the other eleven disciples nod their heads, but inside they’re kicking themselves because they had an opportunity to walk on water, but they stayed in the boat.
I don't know, but walking on water would be a pretty cool thing to have on your resumé of experiences. If you’re ever at a boring party or a conversation comes to a dead stop, just say, “Hey, I walked on water once.” What a great conversation piece. You’d be the life of the party!
Walking on water was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and like all once-in-a-lifetime experiences, it required a risk. No risk = no reward. If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat. I wonder if the other eleven disciples lived in regret? They could have walked on water, but they stayed in the boat.
So here’s the deal: two thousand years after Peter got out of the boat and walked on water, Jesus is still saying “come.” He is still inviting us to get out of the boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake and walk to Him on the water. And we have a choice. We can stay in the boat and drown in regret. Or we can get out of the boat and walk on water!
Inaction Regrets
This week I read a fascinating book by Dr. Neal Roese titled If Only. He makes an interesting distinction between two kinds of regret: regrets of action and regrets of inaction. A regret of action is doing something you wish you hadn’t done. In theological terms it’s a sin of commission. A regret of inaction is not doing something that you wish you had. In theological terms it is a sin of omission.
Let me put some skin on it.
Our stop this week is Tour Europe. Ironically, one of the regrets of inaction happened has to do with a European tour. Every year, My European History teacher, Mr. Rossiter, took a group of students to Europe and I was signed up to go on that trip as a Junior in High School. I loved history and Mr. Rossiter was one of my favorite teachers. We were planning on touring England, France, and Germany. I couldn’t wait to go, but as we approached the deadline I had to pull out of the trip because we couldn’t afford it as a family. This is a little embarrassing, but I actually teared up when I told Mr. Rossiter that I couldn’t go. One of my dreams is to tour Europe because I didn’t get to do it when I was in High School. It is one of my regrets of inaction.
Another regret of inaction happened as a freshman in High School. My life revolved around sports when I was a kid. I ended up playing basketball in High School and College, but football was my first love. Right before my freshman year of High School I got sick and I had to be hospitalized so I missed tryouts. One of my most vivid memories was a phone call when I got home. The football coach, Mr. Nussbaum, called and asked me to play. I didn’t even know he knew who I was. I still don’t know why, but I said “no.” I hated going to football games in High School because I regretted that decision. I actually got depressed each fall because I regretted not trying out. It didn’t help when I discovered that my back-up in pee wee football ended up playing in the NFL.
Let me share one more.
A few years ago we took a missions trip to Jamaica. We helped build a Teen Challenge Center for people with drug and alcohol addictions. Then we stayed a few extra days to enjoy the beaches. We were staying near Montego Bay, but I read about cliff jumping in Negril. I wanted to jump off a cliff, but we found some excuses not to go. It was too far away and we were too tired. I still remember that plane ride home. I remember thinking, “I might never get back here.” I still regret not jumping off those cliffs. In fact, one of my dreams is to do a cliff baptism. Talk about baptism by immersion! I felt like I forfeited a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
In the big scheme of things, I don’t think those regrets of inaction are life shattering things. But they haunt me. I wish I could have gone on that tour of Europe. I wish I would have played football. And I should have gone cliff jumping. Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda.
So what do you do with regrets?
Here’s my advice. Don’t wallow in self-pity! Learn from them. Henry David Thoreau offered timeless advice: “Make the most of your regrets: never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”
That’s not a bad description of repentance. It isn’t just feeling bad about what we did or didn’t do. It is learning from it and changing because of it. For what it’s worth, every time I have the opportunity to experience something new, I think about the cliffs of Negril. And that regret of inaction inspires me to carpe diem—seize the day!
Now let me make an observation.
I think we fixate on sins of commission—don’t do this and don’t do that. I call it holiness by subtraction. We think holiness is the byproduct of subtracting 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. That’s the point of Matthew 25:45: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and do nothing right. Success is doing the best we can with what we have where we are. It is making the most of every opportunity. It is seeing and seizing God-given opportunities! I like the way John Maxwell put it: “Potential is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.”
I’m absolutely convinced that our greatest regrets in life will be regrets of inaction. That conviction is backed up by the research of two Cornell sociologists named Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec. Their research found that time is a key factor in what we regret.
Over the short term, we tend to regret our actions. But over the long haul, we tend to regret inactions. They did a study and found that over the course of an average week, action regrets outnumber inaction regrets 53% to 47%. But when people look at their lives as a whole, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets 84% to 16%.
In other words, most of us regret sins of commission in the short-term. But it’s the sins of omission that will haunt us at the end of our lives.
Adrenaline
In my estimation, Matthew 19 is one of the saddest stories in the Bible. The “rich young ruler” asks Jesus a question in Matthew 19:16: “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” He was asking the right questions. Jesus told him to keep the commandments and he said he’d kept the commandments since he was a child. Then he asks a question that reveals that something was still missing in his life: “What do I still lack?”
Let me make two obvious observations about this rich young ruler. First of all, he was rich. I don’t know how he acquired his wealth, but he wasn’t just wealthy. Scripture says he had “great wealth.” Secondly, he was young. I think it’s safe to assume that he was a twenty-something. Now here’s my point. I know lots of twenty-somethings who consciously or subconsciously think that if they made a million dollars while they were in their twenties that they’d be loving life. But let me state the obvious: no amount of money can offset relational or emotional or spiritual poverty. Money creates as many problems as it solves. Money doesn’t resolve relational problems. Deposits in your bank account can’t compensate for emotional withdrawals. And Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his own soul?”
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with money. Money is a blessing if it’s used the right way. But the “love of money” is the “root of evil.” What that means is this: money is a means. When money becomes an end, in and of itself, then the blessing becomes a curse. Enough is never enough. When money becomes an end, it creates more problems than it solves!
I’ll never forget worshipping at a church in Ethiopia. I didn’t understand a word that was sung because the service was in Amharic, but I’ve never seen more joy-full worship. I couldn’t help but think about how poor these people were materially. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, but that didn’t keep the people from worshipping God with an intensity I’ve rarely seen in America. I couldn’t help but wonder if there is an inverse relationship between material wealth and spiritual intensity. They were incredibly poor in terms of possessions. But rarely have I experienced that kind of richness in worship!
Evidently, something was lacking in the rich young ruler’s life. He asks Jesus: “What do I still lack?” Something was missing and I’ll tell you exactly what it was: what was lacking was spiritual adventure. This man had religion. He was good at do’s and don’ts. But there wasn’t any excitement. There wasn’t any adventure. He was lacking that rush of adrenaline that can only come when you get out of the boat and walk to Jesus! In the words of Helen Keller, “Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing!”
When was the last time you felt that rush of adrenaline?
One of my favorite verses is Matthew 8:20. Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Here’s my translation: when you follow Jesus you never know where you’re going to end up. You never know what a day may bring! Following Jesus is the ultimate adventure! Jesus was saying, “I can’t promise where we’ll stay tonight, but I can promise you lots of surprises!”
Accumulate Experiences
Jesus issued a challenged to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:21: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
I think you can read this challenge two ways. From one perspective, Jesus was asking this man to sacrifice everything! He told him to give everything away! But from another perspective, he offered this twenty-something the opportunity of the lifetime. He offered him an apprenticeship with the Son of God.
What dollar value would you put on that kind of experience? You’ve got to admit that an internship with the Son of God looks awfully good on a resumé!
Most people would give anything to get close to greatness. What golfer wouldn’t love to caddie for Tiger Woods for eighteen holes? What movie buff wouldn’t love to be Steven Spielberg’s sidekick during production of a blockbuster? What entrepreneur wouldn’t love an opportunity to be Donald Trump’s apprentice?
I live in the internship capital of the world. It’s all about getting experience in the right places with the right people. It’s about building your resumé. I daresay that no one in the history of humankind has been offered a better internship opportunity than this rich young ruler. And he said “no!”
Can I zoom out and point something out?
Jesus took a group of uneducated fishermen and turned them into history makers and world changers. In a day and age when the average person never traveled outside a thirty-mile radius of their home, Jesus told them to “go into all the world.” This was fifteen hundred years before the age of exploration! Talk about adventure!
These fishermen who grew up and lived their whole lives within a stones throw of the Sea of Galilee traveled all over the ancient world and turned the world upside down! According to Eusebius, the second century historian, Peter went to Italy. John ended up in Asia. James the son of Zebedee ended up in Spain. And even “doubting” Thomas got out of the boat and ventured to India.
Not only that, think about all that they experienced during their internship. They had box seats to every sermon Jesus preached and every miracle Jesus performed. They were with him night and day. They literally got to “share an office” with the Son of God.
The disciples were poor in terms of material possessions, but they accumulated a wealth of experience. I think this Rich Young Ruler had it backwards. He forfeited a wealth of experience because he was more concerned about accumulating possessions. Now let me cut to the chase. The Game of Life isn’t about accumulating material possessions. Your greatest possession isn’t your bank account. It’s the experiences you accumulate when you get out of the boat and follow Jesus. The Game of Life is about accumulating experiences and those experiences become our priceless possessions.
I’ll never forget May 27, 2005. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. A team of twelve NCCers drove from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to the Awash National Park in the Rift Valley. I’ll never forget sitting on top of a land rover with the African sun beating down on me and the wind blowing in my face. With the mountains as a backdrop, we did a game drive and saw animals I’ve never even seen in a zoo! Toward the end of the afternoon, we took a pit stop at a small café that overlooked the Awash River gorge. It was a breathtaking view, in part, because the cliff was a two hundred foot drop-off. As I was taking it all in I sensed The Spirit of God whispering to my Spirit: “Look at what I made.” I can only describe what I felt this way: God was enjoying the fact that I was enjoying His creation.
That night we built a bonfire and camped out with the baboons and lions. We actually had an armed guard keeping watch during the night. I’ll never forget how that day ended for me. I blogged about everything that happened that day because I wanted to capture those memories. Then I wrote these words: don’t accumulate possessions; accumulate experiences! By the way, I’m sure the armed guard was wondering what that iridescent glow was in our tent!
Then I turned off my computer and started thanking God for absolutely everything that happened that day! I thanked him for the camels and baboons and warthogs. I named all the animals I had seen. I thanked him for the waterfall and mountains. I thanked him for my teammates. I even thanked him for the armed shepherds carrying AK-47s who wanted money for the pictures we took of their cattle! Then I feel asleep.
Not a day way to end the day!
Here is the mistake most of us make as we play the game of life: we accumulate the wrong things! We’re just like the rich young ruler. We’re literally trapped by what we hold on to. We forfeit God-given opportunities because we’re playing not to lose.
Dr. Roese hits the nail on the head: “When we look back at our lives as a whole, we are most haunted by things left undone—romantic opportunities untried, career changes unexplored, friendships left untended.”
No Sacrifices
There is an old poem that said it so poignantly:
Only one life will soon be past
Only what’s done for Christ will last
Look at how this story of the rich young ruler ends. Peter sees this twenty-something hang on to everything he has and he says to Jesus: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” There is a twinge of second-guessing in Peter’s voice.
Jesus said in Matthew 19:28, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”
Translation: we get to have our cake and eat it too!
I have a conviction: I don’t believe anyone has ever sacrificed anything for God. Here’s why. You always get back more than you gave up! So here’s my question: if you always get back more than you gave up have you sacrificed anything at all? Martyred missionary, Jim Elliott, said it best: “He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Here is an amazing promise for every Christ follower: you can’t lose! You can take it to the bank!
06.15.05
Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat
This evotional continues The Game of Life series. Last week’s stop was Graduation Day: Enjoy the Journey. Next week’s stop is Night School: Keep Asking Questions. This week’s stop is Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat.
Get Out of the Boat
In Matthew 14, the disciples are rowing across the Sea of Galilee and Jesus walks on water and catches up with them in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake. For what it’s worth, Jesus has a habit of showing up when we least expect him! The disciples have no category for this experience. When was the last time you saw someone walk on water? I love Peter’s reaction: “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water.” Jesus said, “Come.”
Matthew 14:29 says, “Then Peter got down out of the boat and sunk to the bottom.” That’s what it should say, but that isn’t what it says! It says, “Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on water, and came toward Jesus.” This has to be one of the most improbable sentences in the Bible. Peter walks on water.
Then Peter has one of those moments where what he is doing dawns on him, almost like a tightrope walker who looks down. “When he saw the wind, he was afraid.” And Peter began to sink. He stopped focusing on Jesus and started focusing on the wind and the waves and he began to sink. I’ve said it a thousand times, but it’s worth saying again: your focus determines your reality. Nothing has changed in 2,000 years. If we take our focus off of Jesus and focus on our circumstances we begin to sink.
Peter gets a bum rap. He’s the disciple who sank. But here's what I think: I think sinking is better than sitting. It’s easy to criticize Peter from the comfortable confines of the boat, but I love what Teddy Roosevelt said. “It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat.”
Here’s what I think: sinking is better than sitting. When everything is said and done, I think our greatest regrets will be the risks we didn’t take. We won’t regret sinking. We will regret sitting. Goethe said, “Hell begins the day God grants you the vision to see all that you could have done, should have done, and would have done, but did not do.”
Sure, Peter sank. But how many of us have walked on water? The other eleven disciples were playing it safe. They were playing not to lose. But Peter was playing to win. We have a core value: playing it safe is risky. Or to put it in the context of this story: if you never get out of the boat you’ll never walk on water. It's that simple.
I can hear the disciples reminiscing about their experiences with Jesus years later. And I can hear Peter saying, “Remember that night Jesus came walking on water and he called me out of the boat and I actually walked on water. That was awesome.” And the other eleven disciples nod their heads, but inside they’re kicking themselves because they had an opportunity to walk on water, but they stayed in the boat.
I don't know, but walking on water would be a pretty cool thing to have on your resumé of experiences. If you’re ever at a boring party or a conversation comes to a dead stop, just say, “Hey, I walked on water once.” What a great conversation piece. You’d be the life of the party!
Walking on water was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and like all once-in-a-lifetime experiences, it required a risk. No risk = no reward. If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat. I wonder if the other eleven disciples lived in regret? They could have walked on water, but they stayed in the boat.
So here’s the deal: two thousand years after Peter got out of the boat and walked on water, Jesus is still saying “come.” He is still inviting us to get out of the boat in the middle of the night in the middle of the lake and walk to Him on the water. And we have a choice. We can stay in the boat and drown in regret. Or we can get out of the boat and walk on water!
Inaction Regrets
This week I read a fascinating book by Dr. Neal Roese titled If Only. He makes an interesting distinction between two kinds of regret: regrets of action and regrets of inaction. A regret of action is doing something you wish you hadn’t done. In theological terms it’s a sin of commission. A regret of inaction is not doing something that you wish you had. In theological terms it is a sin of omission.
Let me put some skin on it.
Our stop this week is Tour Europe. Ironically, one of the regrets of inaction happened has to do with a European tour. Every year, My European History teacher, Mr. Rossiter, took a group of students to Europe and I was signed up to go on that trip as a Junior in High School. I loved history and Mr. Rossiter was one of my favorite teachers. We were planning on touring England, France, and Germany. I couldn’t wait to go, but as we approached the deadline I had to pull out of the trip because we couldn’t afford it as a family. This is a little embarrassing, but I actually teared up when I told Mr. Rossiter that I couldn’t go. One of my dreams is to tour Europe because I didn’t get to do it when I was in High School. It is one of my regrets of inaction.
Another regret of inaction happened as a freshman in High School. My life revolved around sports when I was a kid. I ended up playing basketball in High School and College, but football was my first love. Right before my freshman year of High School I got sick and I had to be hospitalized so I missed tryouts. One of my most vivid memories was a phone call when I got home. The football coach, Mr. Nussbaum, called and asked me to play. I didn’t even know he knew who I was. I still don’t know why, but I said “no.” I hated going to football games in High School because I regretted that decision. I actually got depressed each fall because I regretted not trying out. It didn’t help when I discovered that my back-up in pee wee football ended up playing in the NFL.
Let me share one more.
A few years ago we took a missions trip to Jamaica. We helped build a Teen Challenge Center for people with drug and alcohol addictions. Then we stayed a few extra days to enjoy the beaches. We were staying near Montego Bay, but I read about cliff jumping in Negril. I wanted to jump off a cliff, but we found some excuses not to go. It was too far away and we were too tired. I still remember that plane ride home. I remember thinking, “I might never get back here.” I still regret not jumping off those cliffs. In fact, one of my dreams is to do a cliff baptism. Talk about baptism by immersion! I felt like I forfeited a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
In the big scheme of things, I don’t think those regrets of inaction are life shattering things. But they haunt me. I wish I could have gone on that tour of Europe. I wish I would have played football. And I should have gone cliff jumping. Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda.
So what do you do with regrets?
Here’s my advice. Don’t wallow in self-pity! Learn from them. Henry David Thoreau offered timeless advice: “Make the most of your regrets: never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”
That’s not a bad description of repentance. It isn’t just feeling bad about what we did or didn’t do. It is learning from it and changing because of it. For what it’s worth, every time I have the opportunity to experience something new, I think about the cliffs of Negril. And that regret of inaction inspires me to carpe diem—seize the day!
Now let me make an observation.
I think we fixate on sins of commission—don’t do this and don’t do that. I call it holiness by subtraction. We think holiness is the byproduct of subtracting 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. That’s the point of Matthew 25:45: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Goodness is not the absence of badness. You can do nothing wrong and do nothing right. Success is doing the best we can with what we have where we are. It is making the most of every opportunity. It is seeing and seizing God-given opportunities! I like the way John Maxwell put it: “Potential is God’s gift to us. What we do with it is our gift to God.”
I’m absolutely convinced that our greatest regrets in life will be regrets of inaction. That conviction is backed up by the research of two Cornell sociologists named Tom Gilovich and Vicki Medvec. Their research found that time is a key factor in what we regret.
Over the short term, we tend to regret our actions. But over the long haul, we tend to regret inactions. They did a study and found that over the course of an average week, action regrets outnumber inaction regrets 53% to 47%. But when people look at their lives as a whole, inaction regrets outnumber action regrets 84% to 16%.
In other words, most of us regret sins of commission in the short-term. But it’s the sins of omission that will haunt us at the end of our lives.
Adrenaline
In my estimation, Matthew 19 is one of the saddest stories in the Bible. The “rich young ruler” asks Jesus a question in Matthew 19:16: “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” He was asking the right questions. Jesus told him to keep the commandments and he said he’d kept the commandments since he was a child. Then he asks a question that reveals that something was still missing in his life: “What do I still lack?”
Let me make two obvious observations about this rich young ruler. First of all, he was rich. I don’t know how he acquired his wealth, but he wasn’t just wealthy. Scripture says he had “great wealth.” Secondly, he was young. I think it’s safe to assume that he was a twenty-something. Now here’s my point. I know lots of twenty-somethings who consciously or subconsciously think that if they made a million dollars while they were in their twenties that they’d be loving life. But let me state the obvious: no amount of money can offset relational or emotional or spiritual poverty. Money creates as many problems as it solves. Money doesn’t resolve relational problems. Deposits in your bank account can’t compensate for emotional withdrawals. And Jesus said, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his own soul?”
Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with money. Money is a blessing if it’s used the right way. But the “love of money” is the “root of evil.” What that means is this: money is a means. When money becomes an end, in and of itself, then the blessing becomes a curse. Enough is never enough. When money becomes an end, it creates more problems than it solves!
I’ll never forget worshipping at a church in Ethiopia. I didn’t understand a word that was sung because the service was in Amharic, but I’ve never seen more joy-full worship. I couldn’t help but think about how poor these people were materially. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, but that didn’t keep the people from worshipping God with an intensity I’ve rarely seen in America. I couldn’t help but wonder if there is an inverse relationship between material wealth and spiritual intensity. They were incredibly poor in terms of possessions. But rarely have I experienced that kind of richness in worship!
Evidently, something was lacking in the rich young ruler’s life. He asks Jesus: “What do I still lack?” Something was missing and I’ll tell you exactly what it was: what was lacking was spiritual adventure. This man had religion. He was good at do’s and don’ts. But there wasn’t any excitement. There wasn’t any adventure. He was lacking that rush of adrenaline that can only come when you get out of the boat and walk to Jesus! In the words of Helen Keller, “Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing!”
When was the last time you felt that rush of adrenaline?
One of my favorite verses is Matthew 8:20. Jesus said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Here’s my translation: when you follow Jesus you never know where you’re going to end up. You never know what a day may bring! Following Jesus is the ultimate adventure! Jesus was saying, “I can’t promise where we’ll stay tonight, but I can promise you lots of surprises!”
Accumulate Experiences
Jesus issued a challenged to the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:21: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
I think you can read this challenge two ways. From one perspective, Jesus was asking this man to sacrifice everything! He told him to give everything away! But from another perspective, he offered this twenty-something the opportunity of the lifetime. He offered him an apprenticeship with the Son of God.
What dollar value would you put on that kind of experience? You’ve got to admit that an internship with the Son of God looks awfully good on a resumé!
Most people would give anything to get close to greatness. What golfer wouldn’t love to caddie for Tiger Woods for eighteen holes? What movie buff wouldn’t love to be Steven Spielberg’s sidekick during production of a blockbuster? What entrepreneur wouldn’t love an opportunity to be Donald Trump’s apprentice?
I live in the internship capital of the world. It’s all about getting experience in the right places with the right people. It’s about building your resumé. I daresay that no one in the history of humankind has been offered a better internship opportunity than this rich young ruler. And he said “no!”
Can I zoom out and point something out?
Jesus took a group of uneducated fishermen and turned them into history makers and world changers. In a day and age when the average person never traveled outside a thirty-mile radius of their home, Jesus told them to “go into all the world.” This was fifteen hundred years before the age of exploration! Talk about adventure!
These fishermen who grew up and lived their whole lives within a stones throw of the Sea of Galilee traveled all over the ancient world and turned the world upside down! According to Eusebius, the second century historian, Peter went to Italy. John ended up in Asia. James the son of Zebedee ended up in Spain. And even “doubting” Thomas got out of the boat and ventured to India.
Not only that, think about all that they experienced during their internship. They had box seats to every sermon Jesus preached and every miracle Jesus performed. They were with him night and day. They literally got to “share an office” with the Son of God.
The disciples were poor in terms of material possessions, but they accumulated a wealth of experience. I think this Rich Young Ruler had it backwards. He forfeited a wealth of experience because he was more concerned about accumulating possessions. Now let me cut to the chase. The Game of Life isn’t about accumulating material possessions. Your greatest possession isn’t your bank account. It’s the experiences you accumulate when you get out of the boat and follow Jesus. The Game of Life is about accumulating experiences and those experiences become our priceless possessions.
I’ll never forget May 27, 2005. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences. A team of twelve NCCers drove from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to the Awash National Park in the Rift Valley. I’ll never forget sitting on top of a land rover with the African sun beating down on me and the wind blowing in my face. With the mountains as a backdrop, we did a game drive and saw animals I’ve never even seen in a zoo! Toward the end of the afternoon, we took a pit stop at a small café that overlooked the Awash River gorge. It was a breathtaking view, in part, because the cliff was a two hundred foot drop-off. As I was taking it all in I sensed The Spirit of God whispering to my Spirit: “Look at what I made.” I can only describe what I felt this way: God was enjoying the fact that I was enjoying His creation.
That night we built a bonfire and camped out with the baboons and lions. We actually had an armed guard keeping watch during the night. I’ll never forget how that day ended for me. I blogged about everything that happened that day because I wanted to capture those memories. Then I wrote these words: don’t accumulate possessions; accumulate experiences! By the way, I’m sure the armed guard was wondering what that iridescent glow was in our tent!
Then I turned off my computer and started thanking God for absolutely everything that happened that day! I thanked him for the camels and baboons and warthogs. I named all the animals I had seen. I thanked him for the waterfall and mountains. I thanked him for my teammates. I even thanked him for the armed shepherds carrying AK-47s who wanted money for the pictures we took of their cattle! Then I feel asleep.
Not a day way to end the day!
Here is the mistake most of us make as we play the game of life: we accumulate the wrong things! We’re just like the rich young ruler. We’re literally trapped by what we hold on to. We forfeit God-given opportunities because we’re playing not to lose.
Dr. Roese hits the nail on the head: “When we look back at our lives as a whole, we are most haunted by things left undone—romantic opportunities untried, career changes unexplored, friendships left untended.”
No Sacrifices
There is an old poem that said it so poignantly:
Only one life will soon be past
Only what’s done for Christ will last
Look at how this story of the rich young ruler ends. Peter sees this twenty-something hang on to everything he has and he says to Jesus: “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?” There is a twinge of second-guessing in Peter’s voice.
Jesus said in Matthew 19:28, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”
Translation: we get to have our cake and eat it too!
I have a conviction: I don’t believe anyone has ever sacrificed anything for God. Here’s why. You always get back more than you gave up! So here’s my question: if you always get back more than you gave up have you sacrificed anything at all? Martyred missionary, Jim Elliott, said it best: “He is no fool who loses what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Here is an amazing promise for every Christ follower: you can’t lose! You can take it to the bank!
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