Hurry Up And Find Rock Bottom

Happy Wednesday!

Here’s a large EDITED clip from Make Me A Legend, chapter 6: Hurry Up And Find Rock Bottom. We still have a final edit to go, so be kind! I’m listing the other subtitles for this chapter, so you can get a feel for the flow. I hope you love it!

My Crazy Little Theory

The Struggle is Part Of The Trap

Hovering Over Rock Bottom In The Pig Pen

Isn’t it sad and ironic to think about how much God loves us, and how we spend so much of our lives running and hiding from Him? Why do we muscle through our days in human strength, only turning to God when we have nowhere else to turn? Aren’t we out of our minds for making Him our last resort? Why are we like this?

We live in a time when anyone claiming a close relationship with God is shunned as a religious fanatic. This modern world makes it seem as if the only people who actually use the Bible as their guiding light are the Jesus freaks. We want God to leave us alone so we can live as we see best, without having responsibility to some heavenly Father. Take a look at the beautiful story Jesus used for describing this insanity:

To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting until you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living.

About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. The boy became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. [Tough love] When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired men have food enough to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired man.” (Luke 15:11-19 NLT 1996, Emphasis added.)

Can you see why this message was, and still is, such a big hit for Jesus? Millions of people, who have never heard about Jesus, have still heard His story of the Prodigal Son. I think it’s so popular because every one of us has served time in the pig pen haven’t we?

Of course, not everyone in the mud is perceptibly trudging around in some extreme state of human deprivation. There is a vast sea of prodigals who seem to have their lives together-living in nice homes, driving nice cars, and having nice careers–while the real truth is that they’re torn to pieces on the inside! No matter how successful we become in this world, nothing ever truly satisfies when our connection with the Father is broken.

Almost every day, I run into people who are worn down with hard life in the pig pen. Some of them have spent so much time in the mire they’ve started to oink, grunt and squeal at their own reflection! Their weather-beaten hides are bone dry and callus covered–coarse like sandpaper. They look 30 years older than they are! In a haze of misery, herds of these history-maker hopefuls drift into the wastelands with very little chance of return. They stopped liking themselves a very long time ago, their dignity is shredded; they feel like they have nothing and nobody to live for.

God forbid that you’re up to your neck in the slop right now, reduced to a fraction of the amazing person you once were or could be, gasping for your life under the unbearable consequences of a big series of wrong moves. I’ve seen this so happen so many times to so many people. Nobody ever plans a trip to rock bottom. Everyone gets there trying to go somewhere else.

The Worse Thing About Deception

I remember not too long ago, I was praying and even crying about several of the off course people scattered throughout my wide circle of acquaintances. Just as I once lived prior to 1991, these people had thrown up a five second thought about God and then they went on living dangerously with their fingers crossed! They didn’t know it yet, but they were racing straight into Hell without any doubt over their chosen course of direction. They needed to be rescued–and I really wanted to rescue them!

During this time, I was meditating almost daily on 2 Corinthians 4:4, “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” (NLT) (Emphasis added.)

Look at the key phrases from that verse: blinded the minds, unable to see, and don’t understand. Isn’t it scary to admit how often we’ve confidently devised idiotic plans, only to find out later how far we were off? Over and over again, we drive ourselves to dead ends because we’re too prideful to stop and ask for directions. Even worse is the frustration of trusting an inaccurate source of information-the wrongness of being hoodwinked! At first glance, the wrong path usually feels perfectly natural. After all, everyone’s doing it, right? But how can we know for sure that everyone’s going in the right direction?

This prodigal son Jesus talked about was also confident in his plan! There was no doubt about it; he just knew his life could be so much better if he didn’t have to suffocate under his father’s rules. He felt that his father was somehow holding him back from the better things in life, that if he could just break his father’s restricting grip, he would be a free man with limitless opportunities!

That is when the journey to destruction begins: an unpatrolled false impression grows into a faulty belief that inevitably steers us in fatal directions. We become stubbornly emboldened in our feeble stances and we refuse to talk about options because we’re 100% convinced that we are right. (Blind minds, unable to see, and don’t understand.) The worst thing about deception is not knowing when you are deceived.

“There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death.” Proverbs 14:12 NLT, Emphasis added.) The Contemporary English Versions says it like this, “You may think you are on the right road and still end up dead.” (Emphasis added)

Thresholds Of Pain

Where Is God When We Need Him?

The Turning Point

Humpty Dumpty

Writing Your Happily Ever After

That’s it for today… I just finished praying for you all! Have a most triumphant day!

Dream Big, Live Bold, and Make the Difference!

Chuck

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