In March 2008 I reluctantly attended an event in Rockbridge, VA called "Top Gun." This 4-day retreat marked the beginning of a new journey in my life, one that seems far more authentic and Christ-like than the life I've tried, or failed, to live in the 30-some-odd preceding years. A year later this journey is reflected in my humble commitment to share my thoughts openly online through this blog - but the beginnings of the journey were first articulated in an email I sent to the organizer of Top Gun late last spring. The beginnings of this journey mark the kindling of the first small flame in my life of true desire and hope...the hope that my heart's desires might just be my closest and most reliable connection to God.
Here is my remembrance of the impact of that long weekend:
Coming into Top Gun a few weeks back I was struggling to hear God in my life. I felt very separate from Him – like I was going through the motions and catching an occasional glimpse, far more like a memory of what it used to be like to have a relationship with Christ than any true relationship “today.” I was nearly totally isolated and could feel what little remained slipping away from my grasp. In fact, as we prepared to go to Rockbridge, I challenged God to meet me at Top Gun – a bit of a frightening prospect given that I honestly felt that He would likely not arrive and that my fears and doubts would only be confirmed: God either wasn’t as real as I thought or didn’t care enough about me to demonstrate Himself more clearly and overcome my doubt.
Friday night after the last session I was overwhelmed with these fears – I wandered the grounds of Rockbridge, avoided anyone else at the event, and finally found a spot by myself to pray and think. For some time – an hour perhaps – I wrestled with prayer and with my own intruding thoughts. Something would occur to me and I would think, “Is that Him?” and then doubt my own question as quickly as I’d had it… wouldn’t God be more obvious if He came? Why wouldn’t He come now? I was writhing in this cacophony of my own fears and doubts when, though I couldn’t really describe to you how or when it resolved, the noise of jumbled doubt and darkness faded in the distance as I realized there was a more certain clarity somehow in the midst of it all. It wasn’t a “stopping” of one thing and a “starting” of another as much as it was like stumbling over a certain thing that had been overlooked while in plane view… and, in discovering it, everything else simply faded away.
The thing I’d stumbled into was this simple phrase: “Lay hold of that for which you were laid hold of.”
For the time being, I could only “lay hold” of those words. They were both familiar and “other” to me – not that I had any sense that I’d evoked them (quite the contrary), but more that they had been given to me despite their odd familiarity, if that makes any kind of sense. I got up from my isolated spot and went to find a bible, all the time repeating those words in my head like a mantra. Back at my room I was fortunate to have my wife’s thick, black bible with me (mine doesn’t have all the bells and whistles) and was able to search through the concordance for help finding the simple word, “lay.” The phrase, I discovered, comes from Philippians 3 (12-14):
12Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. 13Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
I was somewhat surprised and amazed to find that this was a verse I have known for some time, though not at all from memory. One of my favorite sermons from a former church focused quite a bit on verses 13 & 14, “forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward the prize.” In fact, that “forgetting” seems to have been a recurring theme in messages that resonate with me…but the “laying hold of” portion was clearly what God intended me to hear. To tell the truth, I was less impacted by the scripture itself than by the clear sense that God had spoken – He had heard my cry for help, understood my need, and shown up! That was remarkable enough in my book!
That night I slept just fine.
Saturday was a new day – I felt rekindled in my journey and buoyed by my experience the night before. The sessions were good and I even decided, last minute, to take the zip wire plunge into 50 degree waters! I can’t tell you now, looking back, whether it was during the morning session or later in the evening, but God still had something left to reveal for me that draws this long, long story together. During one of the sessions the speaker was talking about the difference between forgiveness and freedom. The illustration he used hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks: a tollbooth. He said (paraphrasing, of course) that forgiveness is a tollbooth that we must all pass through in order to find freedom, but that all too many of us (men in particular) spend our lives circling the tollbooth, managing sin, rather than walking through the tollbooth to embrace the life and freedom that God intends us to have.
In other words, you were explaining to me how I was called…
“To lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.”
God’s overwhelming message to me on Top Gun weekend was to finally break through my internalized cycles of failure & my continual struggle to make myself “do better” – He made clear to me that His METHOD to lay hold of me is FORGIVENESS but that I was not laid hold of for FORGIVENESS’ SAKE!
I was forgiven so that I might lay hold of LIFE…not forgiveness! And instead I’ve been circling the tollbooth for years.
I’ve been circling the tollbooth thinking I was reaching for the prize, and all I’ve been doing is reaching into my pocket for another quarter of repentance. Not that repentance is unwarranted or uncalled for…simply that it is not the promise.
SO, now I stand on the other side of the tollbooth, battling sin not as a peasant battles for crumbs from the table, but as a warrior battles through the flames and past the dragon in pursuit of the princess. Freedom and life are my battle cry – sin and failure are not defeated for their own sake, but are hacked through as hurdles to overcome in pursuit of God’s promise in my life. And I can trust that the promise is good and that Christ is real and alive…because he spoke to me in the midst of darkness in the middle of Top Gun.
And that’s my story.
Like many “awakenings,” I suppose, it at times appears to have only modest impact in the moment-by-moment life that I lead – another reason to give thanks for Friday morning coffee with my “band.” Yet it offers such clarity of vision in moments like this (this taking time apart to write) that its impact is obvious and true and reverberates to my core. I have walked down the aisle in pursuit of forgiveness – “kneeled at the altar of the tollbooth” – over and again my entire life (I mean this literally, by the way). I have listened to men preach about the pursuit of the prize, of running the race, and somehow had that message twisted into a strange vision where the tape at the end of the track…the finish line… was Forgiveness – that it was the prize. Now I am truly free to run the race because I finally understand that Forgiveness came at the sound of the starter’s pistol – Freedom and Life are the race and the finish and the ever after; the promise of Christ!
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