The Pursuit

We are in the process of making some vehicle changes, which I never really enjoy. My non-California truck, which has been with me for a long time, has gone to live with another family. My wife wants a mini-van. We still need some sort of truck. So I’ve found myself scrolling through postings of cars for sale, pursuing the perfect option, which doesn’t actually exist in our price categories. But it has made me think about what we pursue in the course of our lives.

I’ve been in a few conversations lately where I have found myself asking some questions about how we do things. We live in a time where we are told to pursue our dreams, that nothing else matters, that our desires are the core of who we are. And it’s produced a selfish and culture-less culture, a lost people wandering in search of an identity, and looking to find it in empty and meaningless pursuits. The more those pursuits produce nothing, the more hopeless the search becomes, the more painful the deferred and unattainable hopes become, and the easier the next meaningless click.

But what if we have the process backwards? What if we are trying to tune the car and fill the gas tank at the end of the journey? Then we get frustrated that we can never make the journey cause there’s not enough gas and the car breaks down? What if we are wanting passionate and life giving relationships, and when we find one we will make a commitment to the person who we think will fulfill us for our whole lives. But when we think we find that moment, that feeling, that special person and try to launch into commitment we discover that the feelings don’t last, that passion can be fleeting, and that relationships can both give and take life - depending on the nature of the relationship. What if we wander around looking for the perfect community, only to be disappointed again and again and again, so we become jaded and somewhere inside come to believe there is no true community, that somehow isolation is better, that people only hurt us, and connecting is just too hard.

Or one more - We have declared for all the world that God wants a relationship and not a religion. We’ve told people that “relationship” will fill all the empty places inside and satisfy the desires of our heart, and that we can enter into that relationship with no journey, just by accepting Jesus and inviting him into our hearts. Yet all the statistics these days tell us there is no difference between those who have prayed “the prayer” and those who haven’t. Their families fall apart just as much. Their kids rebel and blowup their lives just as much. They cheat on their spouses just as much, their marriages implode and then dissolve just as much. They swear and lie just as much. They sneak around internet sludge holes just as much. Their communities, called churches, are beset with infighting, power games, impurity and perversion, big money budgets, and personality wars. Leaders strive to get people to feel like those empty places are filled up and those desires are met, but it often ends up being one more show, one more powerless motivational talk, one more emotion triggering melody that leaves people alone on the couch on Sunday nights wondering what the point of it all is, why nothing seems different, and why they still feel so empty when the hype fades. 

But what if things seem the same because they pretty much are the same. What if you can’t get to the destination without the journey? What if this “religion” which we’ve so wholesale rejected, is just a big word for the journey, and you can’t get to the destination, the life giving relationship, without the journey, the religion. Religion by definition is simply a practice of beliefs. With no journey, there is no arrival.

Google Maps can be a great tool. Plug in an address and it takes you where you need to go. But how many of you have had the experience of plugging an address into Google maps and then driving mindlessly following the blue line. Until you suddenly realize there is no way it can take that long to get there. And you start looking at the blue line and realize for whatever reason it is taking you to Yuba City via Fremont. 

Our lives are no different. We can say we know where we want to go, but how often do we find ourselves plugging into whatever source is best at telling us this is the way to go. And then suddenly we end up discovering we are not practicing the things of God, or we are practicing the things God wants us to practice, while missing the whole point of what He has called us to. There is no use carrying an ice axe and trying to glide on cross-country skis when walking a California beach.  

There are some things we tell everyone to do as they follow Jesus. Read your Bible, go to church, pray. But have we forgotten the point? All those things are intended to connect us to Jesus Spirit. They are never the point themselves. If we read the Bible and it says do everything with joy and thanksgiving, and we think we have followed God because we read our Bible, but we go through the day full of anxiety and complaining, we are not faithful followers of God, and our Bible reading will produce nothing. So let’s be a community of people who are focused on being connected to and following Jesus way of life. Let’s encourage each other not with how many people are on our prayer list, but if we are actually listening to the Spirit and following His leading. Let’s be a people when we gather who share our lives so that we can pray for each other, be challenged by each other, even be corrected by each other, not to some religious tradition of men, but to actually walk together with the living God.