Last week, I was watching the indie movie Sweet Land and the movie begins with the narrator saying:

“Let us hope we were preceded in this world by a love story.”

The quote is referring to the love story surrounding the movie, but my mind immediately went to the Lord. We are all preceded in the world by a love story, it’s just that few of us realize it. I spent the last weekend listening to Donald Miller lecture on the topic of story. He asserts that we’re all involved in an all encompassing love story written by God. The Bible tells stories that cause us to dream, but for some reason we’ve forgotten that our lives are part of an amazing love story. We’ve learned to live small lives colored in gray and  wrought with drudgery. We’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten that we have a role to play in writing the story of our lives. Instead we let them be written by circumstance.

What we want in life dictates our story. Our ambitions fuel us.

Do you live your life like you are apart a love story? Or are you just doing the best you can with the time you have before you die?

Have we forgotten to dream? We are moved by movies and music, but rarely do we live a life that is so impassioned. We have forgotten life is a story to be written, not simply lived.

in the living

comes the dying

in the doubting

comes the truth.

in the hoping comes the dreaming,

in the believing come the proof.

- Steven James 

So let us search and seek. Let us dream and hope. Let us never quit in the pursuit of the Almighty and the author of our lives. We are preceded by a love story. We are in a love story. Let us wake up and realize.

Yesterday, I headed off with a student for an overnight camping trip to Coal Lake. He needed some time away to refocus and refresh his perspective on life. And as it turned out I did too. We hiked in 3 miles to the Coal lake and set up camp. Our theme for the trip was Mark 1:17 when Jesus called out to some fishermen and told them to “Follow Me.” So we discussed what it meant to follow Christ.

Kierkegaard said that, “The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.”

We discussed how Jesus doesn’t want admirers. He wants followers. We really got into sobering discussions about how in both of our lives we follow in some areas and others areas we don’t. The scriptures say, “Come follow me, he said to Simon and Andrew. At once they left their nets and followed Him.” What will we decide? To drop all we have and follow Him? That’s what we’ve been called to do.

We ended our discussion with a poem by Steven James:

the path is narrow,

my heart is hard,

guide my feet.

break me, God,

for I will not bend.

and I’m not shaped as I should be

anymore.

Both of us left our trip challenged and convicted of the places where we’re not fully committed to Christ. Jesus doesn’t want part of us. He wants all of us. The cost is great. We’ll endure hardships, heartbreak and trials. No one ever said life was easy. No one ever said following Christ would was for pansies either. It simply comes down to a choice. Will I be known as an admirer or a follower?

Oh and here’s a shot of my new pair of Chacos I was breaking in on the trip. They’re the most amazing shoe/sandal known to man. I’ll give you the complete review later.

I began reading Steven James’ book Story: Recapturing the Mystery.  I can usually tell if I like a book within the first chapter or so. This book has kept me reading it. So far so good.

The premise: it’s a narrative telling of stories from the Bible. We used some of it on our backpack trip to tell stories of Jesus that really breathed life into Him and His ministry. James has an amazing knack for personalizing Bible stories and making them seem much more human and real that before.

I’ll give you a review once I finished.

Steven James also has a great blog you can find here.