“You can avoid Jesus as Savior by keeping all the moral laws. If you do that, then you have “rights.” God owes you answered prayers, and a good life, and a ticket to heaven when you die. You don’t need a Savior who pardons you by free grace, for you are your own Savior.”
1 CORINTHIANS 10:14-33
JOURNAL
There are a handful of books and writings that have profoundly shaped my heart and the way I understand life. The Bible stands above all of them, but alongside it there have been books that seemed to find me at exactly the right time: The Road Less Traveled, Man's Search for Meaning, Mere Christianity, The Shack, and Wild at Heart. Then there are words I continually return to, like Kipling's If, Roosevelt's Man in the Arena, and the extraordinary life of Theodore Roosevelt himself. Different writers, different stories, different perspectives, yet I am beginning to realize how often they have been pointing me toward many of the same truths.
Rereading The Road Less Traveled has brought much of this together for me. Peck begins with the reality that life is difficult. Problems, suffering, discipline, and sacrifice aren't unfortunate interruptions to a meaningful life. They are often the very places where meaning is discovered and character is formed. Frankl found meaning even in unimaginable suffering. Lewis continually points beyond self toward God. The Shack wrestles with finding God in the middle of pain we cannot understand. Wild at Heart speaks to courage, purpose, and the willingness to enter the battle. Kipling describes the discipline of remaining steady through triumph and disaster, while Roosevelt reminds me that a worthy life is lived in the arena, risking failure rather than watching safely from the sidelines.
And Scripture gives all of it its ultimate direction: love.
The great battle of life isn't ultimately against circumstances or other people. It is the battle within myself between love and self, surrender and control, courage and fear, discipline and immediate gratification. It is the temptation to make life about what I can acquire, accomplish, control, or prove rather than what I can give. Even faith itself can become another attempt at control, as Keller warns, where I quietly begin believing that if I behave correctly, God somehow owes me the life and outcomes I desire.
But that isn't surrender. And it isn't love.
The life of Christ reveals something entirely different. Real strength expresses itself through sacrifice. Real courage requires giving up control. Real meaning is discovered through serving something greater than myself. And real love ultimately means giving myself for the good of another. Perhaps that is why these books, poems, stories, and lives continue to affect me so deeply. They remind me that the meaningful life isn't the comfortable life. It is the life willing to enter the arena, accept difficulty, solve the problems placed before me, sacrifice for others, and surrender the outcome to God.
Maybe that is the epic story that has always stirred something inside me. It is the struggle for the human heart. Will I live primarily for myself, or will I surrender myself to God and become a conduit of His power, love, and discipline in the world around me? I don't win that battle once. I choose it again every morning. And perhaps Psalm 143 expresses that choice as simply as anything I have ever read: "Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love... Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life... Teach me to do your will."
That is increasingly the life I want. Receive God's love. Entrust my life to Him. Enter today's arena. Face today's difficulties. Love and serve the people He places before me. And surrender everything else to Him.
