Jesus Army: Magazine - Prophetic Word

“LIFE IS A journey, not a guided tour,” boldly declared the slogan decorating the cap of the portly gentleman who sat opposite me in the airport lounge. And it was enough to get me thinking.

Any journey inevitably involves some element of risk taking. But if life is the ultimate journey, the sum of all other challenges we ever face, then it's no surprise that it takes huge courage, discipline and determination to keep moving forward into the unknown. And neither is it surprising that the constant hurdles, obstacles and unexpected turns in the road that we all inevitably confront can slowly sap our energy until sometimes all we want to do is give up and collapse.

The Journey Life is an adventure to be lived, a challenge to be enjoyed. However, worn down by life's incessant pressures and demands, too many people eventually lose the will to keep pressing forward and instead opt for wandering around in ever decreasing circles.

And once we surrender our sense of purpose and direction our security then lies only in attempting to hang on to yesterday. Daunted by the challenges or threats of the road ahead we settle for living life by looking back over our shoulder and heading, as fast as we can, for familiar ground.

But though it seems easier to hang on to the comfortable than to make yourself vulnerable to new tests and unknown struggles, in reality the attempt to cling to yesterday is always doomed. Yesterday's experience is like the wind, you can't bottle it. Or, to change the metaphor, as the ancient people of Israel found, yesterday's manna soon turns mouldy. "Wherever you find yourself in life," wrote Mike Riddell, "the answers to your questions always lie in pressing forward into the unknown, never in moving backwards."

That's why we put the ! in the "Oas!s" logo. We are an organisation that is intentionally committed to innovation. Our exclamation mark is there to remind us that we're on a journey, especially at those moments when we find ourselves tempted to retreat into spending our time trying to recreate the security of yesterday rather than continuing to press forward. Change is sometimes painful, but lack of change is sure evidence that any organism - in our case organisation - is dead.

However tough tomorrow's challenges are, the secret is to confront them, rather than to retreat from them. And if we do back off, we only get stunted until we come back round to face up to them again.

The Old Testament tells the story of the people of Israel who, having escaped slavery in Egypt and travelled across a desert to the border of the Promised Land, lost their nerve and turned back, afraid of what lay over the horizon. Though Caleb and Joshua, future leaders of the people urged them to "take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it," (Numbers 13:30), the people refused and as a result spent the next forty years wandering around in the desert until a new generation arose who had the courage to return to the same spot, to confront the same challenge, and this time overcome it.

Pressing forward is never easy, but avoidance gets you nowhere. The desert, which once had been full of discovery and challenge, was now barren and empty. As the Hebrews discovered, not much that is valuable is easily won. Though we, as an organisation, have come a long way since we began in 1985, the truth is that pushing forward is as demanding now as it was then because every leg of a journey requires new strength and courage.

First published in Oasis News, October 2001, and used with permission.