A new day

A new day - today, I kick off my blog. I hope you enjoy my ramblings.

Much has been happening in my life over the course of the past 3 months. God is moving. One of my favorite lines from Narnia by CS Lewis is when it is the darkest and the children are most afraid. The beaver says they shouldn't worry because, "They say Aslan is on the move". The very mention of Aslan's name brought an unexplained calm and excitement to the children even though they did not know who Aslan was.

God is on the move in my life. I feel it. These moments occur in my life every now and then and when I get a taste, I am totally free, totally liberated ... It is a taste of heaven. Sometimes, God converges events in our lives that we cannot explain. The convergence usually leads up to a culmination when only so briefly, we get to see Him and feel Him and be really near Him. That has happened to me in the past month. The peak was a few weeks ago and already, I am dying of thirst to taste it again.

It started for me by seeing a friend with a book, Why Men Hate Going to Church. I asked him about it and he encouraged me to get a copy. I tore through that book and was blown away by much of it. It hit me dead on where I was. I was bored with the "church". Not necessarily my church itself but "church" in general. I had stopped going to Sunday school and the sermons seemed so basic. Nothing was hitting me.

A few weeks into that book, I read an article in the paper about Bill Shorey at Morningside Baptist and how he had started a men's group called Call of the Wild. I had read most of John Eldridge's work (Wild at Heart) so some of what I read about COTW struck a familiar note. I had never heard of Bill Shorey and knew nothing of their COTW ministry. The very next week, I ran into Bill with a friend at Panera Bread. God was converging events in my life.

The next week, I scheduled a lunch with Bill. I knew this was a man I had to meet. I soaked up what Bill had to say. He talked about his visit to Eldridge's Boot Camp in Colorado (I'm hoping to go this fall) - 3-4 days in Colorado with other men trying to reconnect with the real man God intended them to be. All of this connected back to the Why Men Hate Going to Church for me.

The basic takeaway for me from that book was the feminization of the Church -- that men have been driven away by the church not hitting the missing mark. Churches want "nice" men. Men who attend potluck suppers or go to lunch with the Sunday School class or men who will serve passively as deacons and sit in mindless meetings for hours on end boring themselves with the "business" of the church.

This was exactly what I have been feeling but have been unable to put my hand on. I am most alive outside. I feel God when I am in the woods working. My screen name is now "HawkSoars" because I love watching red-tailed hawks work their magic above the forest floor. We have two nesting on our property and I have watched with fascination lately as they have been training their young hawk to fight and fly.

I want to soar in my relationship with Christ. The Good news isn't good news --- it is amazing news and I want the boldness and passion to openly express my love for what Christ did for me on the cross and in the power of the resurrection.

I've formed a "band of brothers" and one of my partners said last week, "The church doesn't talk enough about the resurrection. We stop at the cross. Once we get to the cross and believe we are saved but I don't want to sit back for 40 years after I am saved and do nothing and ride my ticket to heaven. The resurrection is the picture of how I want the rest of my life to be lived - in the power and fullness of what God intended me to become." What a great picture this is.

This is a good introduction to my blog and my walk. I will use this blog to fill in the blanks and bring my reader along the path I am taking. Hopefully in a few weeks, you will have a good idea of what all is happening and can, perhaps, help me along this path.

Life with Christ is an exciting adventure (at least, it is supposed to be). Here is to "chasing the adventure" as the hawk soars.

In Him.