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In a Pit with a Lion 2
By John | July 1, 2008
For the next few weeks we’ll be using Mark Batterson’s “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day” to help us stimulate a conversation about God-given opportunities in our lives. He blogs at: evotional.com
Each of us have lions that we face everyday - things/ideas/temptations that threaten to track us down and gobble up the gifts of time/marriage/family/money that God gives to us. But when we finally turn and face the lion and lock eyes with it, we have to make the same choice Benaiah did: give in to the comfort of the status quo or embrace the opportunity to be a remarkable presence of God’s love & grace in our world.
This has everything to do with God’s purpose for your life!
If you wonder where God is or where he’s leading you, look no further than the lions that are chasing you!
As I read last week’s comments, I was struck by the different ends of the spectrum that were represented. Dan reacted to the complacency that he feels characterizes Christian men, while Elizabeth reacted to an extremely tiring, hectic, and frustrating life that can only be described with a run-on sentence:
‘I used to be a full-time working woman and now I’m a mom with a part-time job that helps me keep in touch with my previous life, but makes my present life even more hectic and the overload of it all just makes me want to scream!’
Our lion can be complacency: “It’s too risky to go out & fight that lion - I might lose!”
Our lion can be exhaustion: “I’m so tired that I don’t even know where the lion is anymore!”
Today, choose to face that lion. Lock eyes with him.
Stare him down with one of those Bruce Lee ninja kung-fu looks.
In that lion lies all of your fear, your negative self-esteem, your failures, and all the other things that the Lord of Lies (& Flies) has been using to try to convince you that God really doesn’t have a good purpose for you in this life or that God can’t really use you to do anything great. If you always settle for the status quo or ‘doing things the way we’ve always done it’ in order to avoid the lion, then the lion has effectively trapped you in your realm of safety.
Where did God ever tell us to expect that our life as a Christian would be safe?
Our God is a big God. He is big enough to do anything - nothing is too difficult or scary or risky for him! Lions hold no power over him. As God’s child through Jesus Christ, the lions don’t hold any power over you either!
What could you do today to begin to live with a bigger view of God?
Editor’s note: Sheesh — 2 grammar corrections and an errant ninja reference. Sorry Bruce Lee…
Topics: Books |
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I like how you sum up my life…when I can’t condense my thoughts I should just call you!I think simply (or not so simply…)being in God’s Word and in prayer helps you focus on God and allows God to help you see the bigger view of God.