The Christian life does not begin with a list of do’s-and-don’ts, with morality, with a social agenda for bringing change in the world, nor even with sin. What Jesus comes to offer is life, real life-the real deal. This life begins with desire. “The awakening of an irresistible thirst for Christ,” says Piper, “the pursuit of joy in God…is the birth of the Christian life.” To our deepest desires Jesus speaks when he gives the offer, “Come to me if you are thirsty…”
The Invitation of a Lifetime is an invitation into love, an invitation born by love, and one that lasts in love. “Greater love has no one than this,” Jesus said, speaking of himself, “that he would lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13) He could have just as easily said, “No one has greater love than this, and no one has ever known of a greater love than this. He laid down all his honor and splendor, trading in the robes of kingship for the rags of bondservice, leaving the throneroom of heaven for a little-known town in Israel. The Ancient of Days came wrapped in the disguise of a newborn. The Beginning and the End moved all of heaven and earth and traveled the furthest distance imaginable. And He did it to rescue us from all that would kill us — from ourselves, from our Enemy, from the matrix of the world. He did it to bring us into real life with Himself, real and intimate and lasting friendship with the most passionate, jealously-loving and desirous Heart ever known. He did it that we might join Him from the heart as lovers, as prophets, as intimate allies, as friends.”
We have never been loved more by any other. Never.
These pages chronicle a heart wrestling with the deep issues of thirst and desire, of walking and stumbling after the Risen and Living God, the Creator, the Healer, the Rescuer and Warrior, the Counselor and Friend, the King, the One who condescends to stoop to breathe His breath into dirt and create a heart that beats and longs to grow into his Father’s image and to know this Groom in full union and intimacy, the same One who speaks a name to his child and writes it on stone, saved for the day when he will finally, and fully, arrive into life.
These pages, then, are the blood-and-guts expression of a man’s journey of passionate and at times faltering faith through this world, tales of brutal battle, of slaying dragons and bringing down strongholds, of being ripped apart by the blood-dripping teeth of devouring lions, of broken bones and broken words, of being bandaged and being rescued, of mystery, of confusion, of intimacy, and of glory. A haunting and alluring Presence as a youth becoming a personal and trusted Name as a man. An abandoned orphan becoming an adopted son, well-pleasing and still baffled at his inheritance. Hints of mighty position and tales of mighty men and virtuous women, a “peculiar people.” A journey into the heart of both the deepest hell on the one hand, and the greatest love on the other. Life desired like water, death drunk like wine, the taste of it lingering as lip brushes against lip, the indwelling Life breathing His breath into my lungs. These are a few brief chronicles of the Greatest Story ever written, “not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on the tablet of the human heart.” As Jean-Pierre de Caussade said, “The books the Holy Spirit is writing are living, and every soul a volume in which the divine author makes a true revelation of His Word, explaining it to every heart, unfolding it in every moment.”
If the raucous coming of Christ means anything (and my contention is that it means everything), it is that we have been invited to join God from the heart in the adventure of full living. These are some of my discoveries and conversations along the Way.
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