We win... but not yet...

This came as a letter from a dear friend of mine...

This week one of our local television stations did a special report on the last surviving soldier from the group that raised the flag over Iwo Jima in World War II. The story told of the extreme bravery and risk it took to get to the top of the mountain that was full of tunnels occupied by the Japanese soldiers.

Most all of us view that photo as symbolic of the end of the battle, the victory is won and the flag goes up to declare it. This is only partly true. The soldiers were able to raise the flag but the battle for Iwo Jima raged on for another 30 days, and thousands of lives were lost in those thirty days. Even though the US soldiers outnumbered the Japanese soldiers by almost three to one, the fighting was fierce and almost 7,000 US Marines lost their lives, out of about 70,000 on the front. The Japanese soldiers knew they faced defeat, outnumbered and effectively cut off from reinforcements. They were instructed to kill ten Marines before they were killed themselves.

It struck me that there is a huge correlation with our spiritual battle today. Christ’s death on Calvary raised the flag of victory, declaring the end. To this day however the enemy is fighting. Knowing they face defeat, they are taking out as many as they can.

Victory is already ours...but not yet.

Longing Awakened

I awoke this morning with a deep longing for the things of God and to be with this Lover so true. I love Him. I love His kingdom, and I am taken in wholly by His pursuit. Jesus is doing in me what Antoine de Saint-Exupery once talked about: "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

Half-dead I awaken
from a restless slumber,
from a stiff, still, dead-sea sleep,
into a longing like a fierce wild wind
that carries me
off on some dangerous course.
The storm to fill these sails
and full-force propels
this heart also rages the ocean plain
of too-long-waiting waves
that have forgotten themselves
under the dry spell
of the hot sun,
now stretching into a weathered agony.
Come, north wind! And blow, south wind!
Bring the scent of some scandalous rain
and burst open the sky
stretched tight
to break forth in glorious might
upon this lean and weary one.
Let this hunger for the deep
and endless immensity of the sea
glut in me
the virile tides
until, dead from living,
I arrive.
©2005, Brian Fidler

Incidentally, I wrote this shortly before I found out that a dear friend was killed in a car crash that very morning. This is for you, Burton, a man who did, indeed, finally arrive. So close to home is the evidence that this life is to be lived as a holy longing "like some fierce wild wind," and that the storm kicked up by such deep-hearted desire by both ourselves and our Creator whose image we bare will both propel us Homeward and wash away everything else we could ever hope to hold. In the words of Dougie MacLean, "And the lightning strikes and the wind cuts cold through the sailor's bones through the sailor's soul, till there's nothing left that he can hold, except a rolling ocean..."

Heroic Intimacy

Overflowing with the generosity that comes from the abundance of real love, [God] creates us to share in the joy of this heroic intimacy. One early mystic says we were created out of the laughter of the Trinity.
-The Sacred Romance, p. 74

My Lord God – I am your apprentice, and my eyes are on your hands as my Master. I am your squire, learning of your ways as we go this road in the rescue of the princess of the kingdom taken captive long ago by an evil one, long locked in a stone fortress guarded by an evil dragon.

I am your soldier, and you my Commander. Teach me the ways of a warrior, strengthen me in the weight of the Sword.

I am your sheep, hearing your voice and finding safe pasture. You lay your life down for me.

I am your son, destined to inherit so much. I see the strength from your arms, the passion of your heart, your desire and authenticity, your tenderness and patience, and remember that I am a stem of that victorious stalk, a seed of you, a bearer of a great image. This is who I am to become like – this Jesus. The Lion and this Lamb.

And I am your friend, let in on all the secrets of your Kingdom, on the heart of the Father and of the Son and of the Spirit. What dignity and honor you give me by your invitation to ride with you. Yes!

Yes, Lover of my Soul. Here I find, too, that I am the object of your grand desire and affection. I am to be known as a bride becomes known to her groom on that night and in all the coming trysts between them, those secret meetings known by them and by them alone. And I am to know you – for this is life. This is why you came.

With all that I am, with all the breath in my lungs and blood in my veins, I cry “Yes!” Yes, Holy God – to your invitation, I say Yes. I am yours, O’ great I Am.

The Risk of Setting Sail

Futile, the winds, to a heart at port.
-Emily Dickinson

Setting out with God is dangerous. Out on the horizon certainly lies great adventures, but also great mysteries. The sun sets past some distant land, and the haze and glow of twilight settles first over the mast, and then the trim, and then your face. The rope rests in your hand, the other end tied firmly to the dock. You wonder about letting go, about letting the breeze that’s kicked up this evening give its all into those sheets. Where might it take you if you do let go?

I know it's tough, but that's the battle right there. We are free... but are we willing to believe that, really... and are we willing to trust in the heart of the One who set us free, to let this rope slip through our hands, the Wind of his passion for us take us out there on the waters?

I want to walk with my Lord. Remember in John when Jesus mentioned going back to Jerusalem, and the disciples just knew that would mean his death. Thomas spoke up and said they'd go with Him if He chose to go anyway, knowing it would mean their death as well. There it is, this secret, this life of “holy longing,” as Augustine put it. He is moving. Aslan is on the move. The Spirit hovers. The Wild One calls your name, your true name, a name you've never been called before. And when He does, your heart burns because somewhere deep you hope beyond hope that it is true, that that really is who you are… and whose.

Carl Sandburg wrote, "The sea is never still; it pounds on the shore,
restless as a young heart, hunting. The sea speaks, and only the stormy heart knows what it says."

Who's ready for the stormy seas? Who's ready to set sail away from predictable, “responsible”, organized, sanitized beliefs and lives, and push out into deep waters, all because they, too, want to walk humbly with their Lord? Who's ready to push toward and pursue others' hearts, just for the sake of their hearts and because you know they are worth it and they matter, because you matter and have mattered to God and you really believe and set your hope in that?

Who is ready to trust in this crazy, kooky, insane, wild, unfettered, unflinching, humiliating kind of love and model their lives after it? Who is ready to move with the Spirit of Christ – to be motivated, to be changed, to be daring enough to live in freedom and bold enough to believe it for others even when they can’t believe it for themselves and love even if it doesn’t change things and to be meek enough to rejoice in inheriting something great from the Kingdom… maybe even, maybe even Christ Himself? And maybe He is after all our hearts’ greatest desire, underneath everything else. Maybe He really is our hearts’ true home, the Lifter of our Heads, the Joy of our Salvation.

It can be hard, this kind of believe. It can be so hard, hard enough to take all the guts and violence of a man’s heart. Moses was familiar with that – with weariness from the journey and the battle and with the passion that laid him waste. And God had Herr and Aaron raise his hands for him so that the battle would be won.

The battle is raging right now. He’s not left a single one of us to do it on our own. “So lay down your fears, and come and join this feast… He has brought us here, you and me…”

Lord Jesus, whenever there was a storm on the Sea of Galilee, and your disciples were terrified, they called to you for help. For two years they had followed you, had been with you, learning the art of living. They had seen you give sight to the blind, make the deaf hear again and the lame get up and dance. Funerals turned into festivals and death turned into life. And yet, when they saw you walking on the water in the middle of the storm, they thought You were a ghost. Their minds and hearts still could not fathom You, could not contain You. In the middle of the wind and fury of the storm, You stood, You watched, You loved. Then, in their terror, you breathed into their faces the breath of new life yet again, the reality of who You were, another piece of Your heart for them. And they worshipped You, out of holy terror, out of reverence for the mysterious, unexplainable. You, as containable as a fish net can contain a hurricane... Your grace. We can only be brushed by it, and left ruffled and alive in its wake.

You who commands the wind, blow on our hearts, breathe on our souls. Bring to life those things dead. As you teach us to give things to you, good and bad, empty hands, show us, by Your grace, what you mean when you say that by losing our lives, we gain Yours... real life, full life. This wind, this Spirit in our hearts, the wellspring of life, is the very air we breathe. It is Your holy presence living in us. It is the wind of Your Spirit that blows the low-lying black cloud completely away (Rom. 8), allowing us to run free again like a child (Ps. 63), and to join You in the work You have laid out for us since before time began.

Lord, will you fill these fish nets with fish, after casting us over in deep waters. "I am ready for the storm, yes sir ready. I am ready for the storm, yes sir ready..."

These things I want - a letter to my men

There are some things in me that I need to process, that I need to just express. Phillip Yancey once admitted that a large part of his desire to write comes out of a need to work through some of his own discoveries and doubts and beliefs. And that’s what this is for me. I need to put words to some things going on in me. But, I realize, too, that I need to express them to you all because you are my allies and because I’ve seen the violent hearts that beat within you men, the fierce passion and burning desire that is set within you. I love A.W. Tozer’s catch-phrase for the men in the early church after they had received the fire of the Holy Spirit, “Men of the Flame.” That’s it. That’s who you are.

And so how do you go about putting words to the movements of the heart? It feels sometimes absolutely impossible. They are “deep waters,” indeed. I can only hope that God can reach even deeper than the stars are far and draw out what is down there.

There’s something about expressing your heart that seems all the more important as it is awakening and coming alive. Expressing your love for God and your love for others. A friend of mine was killed in a car wreck last Friday. At his funeral on Monday, I glanced over at his parents. They are disconsolate. They are crushed and devastated. I saw it on his dad’s face. And his dad is a man that I’ve known all my life, a friend that I love and respect. What in the world do you do with the death of your 22 year-old son? My heart broke for them. I wanted to open up and wail, to grab something and throw it against the wall. I wanted to rage for their sake and cry out above the nice sentiments of the priest, “It’s not supposed to be this way! Oh God, come for us! Come for Ryan’s family!” I mean, I get a little better now why some of the Old Testament folks would rend their clothes in agony and mourning. But, just then, I turned to see some of Ryan’s closest friends. I remembered them from school, and they’ve since grown up into men. They stand stoic and seem unaffected, concentrating more on their gum-chewing than on the hurt and disorientation of it all. And I know that some men don’t express themselves as much or in different ways, and that’s great. But what I heard from the Enemy was, “You don’t really want to cry. You’ll draw attention to yourself. They’ll think, ‘What are you complaining about? I knew him better than you ever did.’” Right then, right then, I heard God speak. “Mourn with them (Ryan’s parents and brother). That is my gift to them. And your freedom of heart to do that is my gift to you.”

The men in my family have very seldom lived from their hearts. They are largely silent men. And from my dad I’ve come to understand that when a man offers silence, he offers death. There are only two things he can offer into his world: life or death. To offer nothing is not to offer nothing, it is to offer death. Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when He said, “If you are not for me, you are against me.” There’s no “no contesto” there. It’s either “Yes,” or, even in silence, it is “No.”

I was reading the other night the story of David and his son Absalom. Remember the story? Amnon, David’s firstborn, raped his half-sister Tamar. Absalom, Tamar’s full-blood brother, was furious. But David, bound to favor Amnon because of Hebrew custom, did nothing. Amnon got off almost completely scott-free. I mean, David didn’t even address the issue with Tamar or with Absalom, and in so doing, he basically told Absalom, “I don’t care what you feel. It is irrelevant to me.” His silence was deadly, and it stayed in Absalom for years, only to become bitter resentment and eventually hatred. Four years later, he raised up a coupe to overthrow his dad. A war began, a war that divided a nation and cost so many lives. A war that would rival most Hollywood portrayals, with spies and counter-spies, factions, disloyalties, evasion and death. A war between father and son.

What blows me away is that David still cared deeply for Absalom. He did. Just before his victory, he told his men not to kill the commander of the invading army – Absalom! Naturally, Absalom ends up getting killed anyway. And David is so overcome with grief that he can only cry that it should’ve been him that died and not Absalom. He can tell his men how much he cares and treasures his son, and he can wail to the wind of his deep love and delight in him. But he cannot express it to his face. Once again, all he can offer is death, “It should’ve been me that died.”

I read the other day that male sparrows sing to mark out their territory. Their song is their declaration to the world, “I have found my place, and I announce my kingdom here.” I love that. If they remained silent, neither the world nor they themselves would understand their place. Their voice gives dimension to and domain over their corner of the world. They do not rest in others’ songs, though they may be inspired by them to begin their own chorus, or be awakened by them to remember they do, in fact, have a voice and a reason to sing.

Something else about them. Birds of almost every kind will sing even when sick. It’s their defense against predators, who often stalk the weak and dying. Even caged birds will do this. I’ve heard stories of pet parakeets who will be singing strong and beautiful one day, and the next morning will be dead on the floor of the cage. They refuse to give their enemies an opportunity or a foothold. It reminds me of the Princess Bride scene when Montoya, wounded and bleeding, finds his courage and strength to declare his name and wield his sword fiercely against his father’s murderer.

I want to live fully. I want to express my heart – to love, to open myself up to deeper and more authentic relationship with both God and man, to offer life –oh, God, to offer life and not death! I want to really mourn with those who mourn and to really rejoice with those who rejoice. I want to live courageously from my deep heart in conviction and reality, flinging myself violently and wholly into the love of God. I want to live out my calling and from my giftings – not to offer those alone, but certainly to offer those as part of me, as a part of the song I have to sing. No more hiding in shadow and shade. The promise that I will soar on wings as eagles speaks so deep.

I want to be healed more deeply. I want the truth of the heart-stopping love of God to reach to the deeper places within me. I need that grace so desperately. I want to live a life worthy of my calling, and do come to the end of my days having walked so intimately with the Lover of my Soul, having fought valiantly alongside the Great Commander, having loved to death and given until there was nothing left to give.

I want to have enough breath left in me in my last seconds to exhale, “What a ride,” and then find myself home at last – the home I had for so long yearned for and clung to like a man in exile lusts for his native country, remembering the promise that I had already been “a citizen of high heaven.”

And between all the days from this day to that, I want to journey well. I want to ride with you men. I do. I want to remain in your troop with the lasting honor of fighting beside you and for you, of red-faced laughter and known stories, of scars and glory and living in the Kingdom, of experiencing it, of expressing it, and of extending it to others. I want my wife to be vibrantly alive because of the strength I offer her and the passion with which I pursue her.

And that’s it. That’s all I want. And I guess for those things to be true in me and about me, I need Jesus to come through. Just a bit.

Tozer suggested that we "draw near, and feel the heat" from those who walked close with God. I do that with you, Men of the Flame.