Wild At Heart
June 17, 2007 (Father’s Day)
Genesis 1:27
Genesis 2:7-8
This past Tuesday our family was at the dinner table having supper when I noticed a bunny hop into our front yard. I didn’t mention it at first because it was dinnertime and because I remember the last time a bunny came into our yard.
But about 30 seconds later the bunny hopped in front of a window. As soon as Luke and Ben saw it they yelled out "Bunny" and then jumped out of their chairs and headed for the door. They were going to get that bunny. That bunny was as good as dead.
As they were on their way to the door Emma who was strapped into her seat, was begging to see the bunny before my boys strung it up. She was doing her best to maneuver herself into a position to simply see it.
Deb got her out as quickly as she could and I corralled the boys and redirected them to the living room window where all of us could see the bunny.
So for about a minute the 5 of us watched this bunny do its thing in our front yard, scratching in the dirt and then rolling in it. Finally the boys couldn’t contain their juices any longer, we gave them permission to go and get that bunny.
Fortunately the bunny won and hasn’t been back since.
Today is Father’s Day - the day on the calendar that Moms, children and grandchildren pause to recognize Fathers.
Fathers who were at one time little boys - anxious to chase down little bunnies.
Fathers who at one time dreamt of becoming:
Firemen
Policemen
Professional athletes
Adventurers
Men of the wild
But now - many a time have forgotten those boyhood desires in order to become:
More sensible
More cautious
More honoring
Many of us dads. Many of us fathers. Many of us husbands have forsaken, or put on the back burner the very pursuits and interests that for so long fueled our ambitions. We very dutifully have become or are trying to become men who do indeed look out for, provide for and serve our families.
This is a reality and a needed one. These are indeed some of the duties and responsibilities of being a parent, male or female. Certain dreams are indeed put on hold until a later time.
But what concerns me is that some men, some dads, some fathers never pick those dreams and ambitions back up again. They never pursue them. Never try them. Never explore them. Instead choosing the remote control. Or a safer life. Or their work, whatever it is has so shaped them, confined them. And their overspending at times causes them to be enslaved to work that those boyhood ambitions have been lost.
For younger fathers like myself, I see in myself a tension of wanting to really love and care for our families but at times wanting to become that little boy again who dreams of becoming Grizzly Adams or Ponch or John from the TV show CHiPS.
Even this week I saw the little boy in me come out. It was the day after the bunny visited our yard. Wednesday morning. Wednesday morning is trash day, so I went to the shed and put out the trash can and came back inside to eat my cereal.
As I sat at the table with Emma on my lap helping me, Ben yelled out "Crow Dad." Sure enough a crow had landed on the trashcan and was trying to rip open our trash. So I went to the window, opened it up quietly and on the count of 3 - Emma, Ben and I yelled and the crow took off.
Only to return rather quickly - only this time the yelling didn’t scare it, so I said to Ben and Emma stand here quietly.
I quickly snuck out the door and like a SWAT team member picked up 3 stones from our driveway. I ran up to the big tree in our front yard and poked my head out to see it the crow was still there. When I saw that it was I leaped out and launched my missiles at it. Never striking it or the can unfortunately but close enough to scare it off.
Though I missed it, it felt good to act that way again. A bit silly.
Inside men, the author John Eldredge writes, we are wild at heart. This is who we are. No matter the age. Not matter the profession. No matter the place you live and no matter your interests, at the core, the Christian author John Eldredge writes we are wild at heart. We dream of adventure.
Adventure in the woods.
Adventure in the business world.
Adventures on family vacations
We want to conquer-
Wanting to close the deal and make a profit.
Wanting to tear apart an engine
The toaster.
The bathroom to see how it works and maybe put it back again without using the instructions.
This Wild at Heart nature of men can be seen at the various:
Boat shows
Fishing shows
RV shows
Who are these geared for? Grown men. Men who have deep within them those boyhood dreams and are looking to live them through acquiring the gear.
The stuff to make their dreams come true.
Most of us men are pretty good at acquiring the stuff, just ask our wives, but few of us ever use it or not a whole lot.
Instead we live a life that is tame
Controlled
Often quiet and sanitary
We have become like the deer I saw this week along I-5 in Bellingham struck by a car. This wild deer had its life crushed when it left the woods for the pavement.
In Many a man this same thing happens - community and family responsibilities, unrealistic expectations and often times having never been taught or having never seen examples of men who are truly alive have caused men to be on the sidelines.
On the side of the road.
Wounded
Hurting
Bleeding
But being men, we don’t admit this.
We don’t even like to hear this because to do so would be to admit weakness.
And a true man, we falsely believe - would never do such a thing.
Deb was the one who first began reading this book. She did it to try to understand her 3 boys - me, Luke and Ben. I’ll never forget when she came to me one night and asked me, "What makes you come alive?" "What stirs your heart?"
she had read it in the book-
God meant something when he meant man, and if we are to ever find ourselves we must find that. What has he set in our masculine heart? Instead of asking what you think you ought to do to become a better man (or woman, for my female readers), I want to ask, What makes you come alive? What stirs your heart? The journey we face now is into a land foreign to most of us. We must head into country that has no clear trail. This charter for exploration takes us into our own hearts, into our deepest desires.”
Because it was late at night and the kids were in bed and because I am a man one thing came into my mind, but Deb wasn’t after that answer. She was truly sincere seeking to understand.
She was desiring for me to live into the person God created me to be. A man. A male.
I think Deb’s desire for me to come alive as a man is a common desire wives have for their husbands. They long for that man they once knew to be the man they are with now. That man, who was spontaneous, energetic, fun, able to laugh, be daring and a bit romantic. Wives long for that in us men.
They are mourning the fact that we get consumed by work, consumed by projects, distracted by matters that bring not life to their mate but instead drain, and deaden them. Making them unresponsive to nearly everything.
I believe and I have experienced that Deb rather than being bitter at me for those times when I do pursue my passions finds it refreshing and encouraging that I can feel, can smile, can enjoy life. And she wants it to happen more.
She and most women want we men to become alive. Our wives want us to identify and pursue those matters that stir our hearts.
And our children - especially our sons need to see in you and me - dads
Men who are healthy
Men who are alive
Men who are wild at heart.
So thing morning I want to impress upon men. I want to give you permission to be a man - wild at heart.
I’m not talking Rambo like men.
I’m not talking becoming like Rocky.
I’m not talking steroids.
Macho
Gold chains
No what I’m talking about is becoming men who know that they are loved by God foundational so that their work success doesn’t have to control them. So that their approval is not primarily received by how big of paychecks or how big the project was.
I’m talking about men who lead their families on the daring adventure at following God. Responding to and living in god’s call is never boring.
I’m talking about men who are willing to fight for, stick up for matters that are just and right and to attack things that are harmful so that our culture, our community, our families are healthier.
This is the kind of man I’m talking about
Lets look at 2 texts that are foundational and supportive to becoming just this kind of man.
The first - Genesis 2:7-8, page 4
V. 7 only -Let’s take it phrase by phrase
7The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became
a living being.
v. 7 - "Man formed" - the verb like a potter
The male -God shapes him
-creates him
-works on him
-deliberate/intentional - not an accident.
Adam - Adamah -"from the dust"
-close connection with the ground
-formed from something that already existed.
Adam - ground
-"breathed into his nostrils"
- animals have breath but humans have the very breath of God sustaining them.
God forms and brings into life.
Hamilton p. 159 Not "ruah" -400x in Old Testament - God, man, animals, false gods.
But nesama - 25x in Old Testament, applied only to Yahweh and to man.
Wenham p. 60 "Man is more than a God -shaped piece of earth he has within him the gift of life that was given him by God himself."
V. 8 - read,
8Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.
Notice - What does God do with the man he created? He places him in the garden.
This means that man was created outside of the garden.
By God’s design man was created in the wild.
The Garden was a safe place
An enclosed place
A protected place
It was in the Garden where the woman was created but the man; he wasn’t shaped, formed, molded, given breath there. He was formed outside of the Garden in the wild.
This is significant. We are at our core as men people who live I the tension of being created outside of the Garden but placed in it to live.
We are by nature adventurers, explorers, risk takers etc, a bit wild - but living in a world that values safety, protection, enclosure.
Living into our manhood, helping your husband to become a man, raising your son/s to become boys - teaching small boys in the classroom requires us to realize by God’s design we were created outside of the Garden.
Think through many of the biblically men God used and had relationship with. Many of them were formed and shaped in the wild. This is where they became the man God used.
Moses met up with God where? Burning bush
God told Abraham to go to the Temple or to a mountain to sacrifice his son, Isaac.
Elijah was formed and shaped by God alongside a brook, inside a cave and on a mountaintop.
John the Baptist was a man who ate locust, wore furs and lived in the wilderness.
Jesus was shaped and lived into his identity in the wilderness.
Men, you and I become alive to God.
Alive to our wives.
Examples to our children
When we embrace the place our creation, outside the garden.
A second text - Genesis 1:27, read page 3.
The text tells us that men (and women) have been created to be the way we are by our God.
And the way we are reflects who our God is. Though we don’t say much about this side of God when we say men are wild at heart, what this means about our God is that He is wild at heart.
We have a God who is daring.
Who takes risks.
Who likes a good battle
Who is stubborn about certain matters.
Who is willing to embrace bad odds.
This is our God.
You see Jesus has 2 sides to him, Yes he has the Sunday School side of him.
He’s tender
He loves
He forgives
He heals
He listens
He touches
He’s sensitive and perceptive.
But he is also fiercely combative and aggressive when it comes to certain issues. Never does he lose control or take it to far, but he isn’t afraid of stirring the pot.
He turns over tables at the Temple.
He seems to rub in the face of religious officials the truth of His way of life and the shallowness of simply being nice and law abiding.
He heals on the Sabbath day.
He angers the Pharisees so much that in chapter 3 of Mark they already want to kill him.
In the Old Testament.
After all the plagues God sent upon the Egyptians do you think they’d call God nice?
In the man of Samson, we are told the Spirit of God came upon him (Judges 15:14) and while it was Samson kills 30 Philistines, a lion with his bare hands.
God’s wild nature and adventurous spirit is seen in the story of Exodus - when he parts the Red Sea.
With Jonah when a whale swallows him.
With Daniel in a den of lions.
Men - God will make you more than nice if you follow him, he will lead you into adventure.
He will push
Stretch
And pull you along because ultimately he wants you to become like him.
John Eldredge writes, "Too many men forsake their dreams because they aren’t willing to risk, or fear they aren’t up to the challenge, or are never told that those desires deep in their heart are good." (p. 205)
Brothers - our God is passionately in love with you and he has planted himself in you and wants you to live him out. He wants you to live out and live into his wild at heart image.
Story of penguin at aquarium in Chicago.
-class field trip - Suburbs to Shed Aquarium for the day.
-Groups of 3 explore/eat lunch and then meet back at bus to head home
-After full day, all the groups were back on the bus but 1 group had lost a child.
-All teachers left the bus to search for little boy.
-They searched - couldn’t find him.
-Then after a while the boy came walking to the bus a bit wet.
-bus pulled away - headed home.
-Police lights/sirens pull it over.
-Officers got on - is there a little boy with a backpack - got on late and was a little
wet
-Yes - They went back to see him - open backpack - a penguin inside.
Men - let’s use this little boy as role model for us today - I don’t want to push it too far but most of us need more or what he has in us.
Men -May you have the courage to break away from the pack.
-May you be able to identify that which stirs you and makes you come alive.
-May you be willing to climb over, under and through all the obstacles in your way.
-May you grab hold of those deepest longings and bring back to those you love the
tales of your adventures.
-Knowing that often you will cause them to think you are nuts and a bit off your
Rocker but you will also inspire them to live - to really live.
When Jesus lived he said that he came to give us life and to give it to us abundantly.
Men, God will give us this gift when we live wild at heart.
Amen.
Lord,
If I have stated something that isn’t accurate or true of your design, cause us to forget.
If I have spoken something that isn’t true or isn’t your desire for us me - cancel it out.
If I have hurt someone or caused them to get the wrong idea - work it our/bring healing.
But if any of those is true and is for us - help us to embrace it.
To live it.
To believe it.
Not so that we become wild
Callous
And selfish
But so that we come to experience your image in us. For our families long and need to have more of you.
For each dad I pray for the enormous and often unspoken concerns and matters that we feel responsible for
-to find work
-to make money
-to be patient when we are tired
-unselfish when we want otherwise
-to be able to fix
answer
and care for need after need after need.
The message heavily influenced by John Eldredge, Wild at Heart
