Run with the Horses – The Quest for Life at Its Best

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All truth must be experienced personally before it is complete, before it is authentic.Read more at location 735 Authentic prayer: “We take [God] seriously— why else would we be praying?— but we take ourselves more seriously, telling him exactly what he must do for us and when” (101). One of the supreme tasks of the faith community is to announce to us early and clearly the kind of life into which we can grow, to help us set our sights on what it means to be a human being complete” (29). It will be easier to be fearful, it will be easier to live with anger, it will be easier to be neurotic—don't. Learn to run with the horses.

The LORD said, "Jeremiah, if you get tired racing against people, how can you race against horses? If you can't even stand up in open country, how will you manage in the jungle by the Jordan? You are the eighteenth class to graduate at Ambassador Bible College. From this day forward, we will see you really as a picture on our hallway out here. Now, we're going to pass your picture a dozen times a day. Occasionally, we'll pause and we'll look at your class picture. Wse'll look and we'll remember. What might we remember about the class of 2017? Prayer is never complete and unrelieved solitude; it is, though, carefully protected and skillfully supported intimacy. Prayer is the desire to listen to God firsthand, to speak to God firsthand, and then setting aside the time and making the arrangements to do it” (99). We are so used to considering everything through the prism of our current feelings and our most recent acquisitions that it is a radical change to consider the vast before. But if we would live well, it is necessary. Otherwise we live feebly and gropingly, blind to the glory that we are known, chosen and given away by God. location 399For you have run with footmen, | And they weary you, | And how you fret yourself with horses! Even in the land of peace, | [In which] you are confident—And how will you do in the rising of Jordan? Peterson made me see Jeremiah in a completely different light. Yes, Jeremiah lamented, warned, and annoyed his contemporaries with his prophecies from God. But he also lived an incredible life of obedience and faith in a world gone wild. So it is with us. Incited by our best friends’ acquisitive raving, the well-prepped soft soap of a salesperson’s flattery, or the Joneses next door who have SO much more than us... It is not enough to be in the right place; it is not enough to say the right words; it is never enough until we are walking with God twenty-four hours a day everywhere we go, with everything we say an expression of love and faith” (68). I stake the future on the few humble and hearty lovers who seek God passionately in the marvelous, messy world of redeemed and related realities that life in front of our noses. William McNamara[1]

At another time, when God was beginning to work with Jeremiah, He said these words to him, words that really fit us today. “God said to Jeremiah, ‘I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were born, I set you apart and appointed you as My prophet to the nations.’ ’Oh sovereign Lord,’ I said, ‘I can't speak for You. I'm too young.’ The Lord replied, ‘Don't say, “I'm too young,” for you must go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. And don't be afraid of the people, for I will be with you and I will protect you. I, the Lord, have spoken.’ Then the Lord reached out, He touched my mouth, and He said, ‘Look, I've put My words in your mouth.’ ‘Today,’ He said, ‘I appoint you to stand against nations and kingdoms. Some you must uproot and tear down, destroy, and overthrow; others you must build up and plant.’” Scripture’s task is to tell people, at the risk of their displeasure, the mystery of God and the secrets of their own hearts—to speak out and make a clean breast…Honest writing shows us how badly we are living and how good life is. Enlightenment is not without pain. But the pain, accepted and endured is not a maiming but a purging” (128).

We underestimate God and we overestimate evil. We don't see what God is doing and conclude that he is doing nothing. We see everything that evil is doing and think it is in control of everyone.location 505 If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? And though in a land of peace you are secure, yet how will you do in the pride of the Jordan? The author then proceeds to outline a life of faith in the example of Jeremiah the prophet. Faith is presented as tangible when Peterson quotes that "hope is not a dream but a way of making dreams become reality". He says that "God is out to win the world in love and each person has been selected...to be set apart to do it with him."

We know our Maker has always watched out for us in our past... And, when the storms of life hit he’ll always cover us with His Umbrella of Peace, anyway. Now it came to pass, when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking all that the LORD had commanded him to speak unto all the people, that the priests and the prophets and all the people took him, saying, Thou shalt surely die. Many critical things happen before I am conceived and born that predetermined the reality that I experience (biological, geographical, political, scientific)…But the most important things are what God did before I was conceived, before I was born. He knew me, therefore I am no accident; he chose me, therefore I cannot be a zero; he gave me, therefore I must not be a consumer” (43-4).Life is rich, life is beautiful, life is challenging, and life sometimes will be difficult. But as you leave Ambassador Bible College with your Bibles marked, colored, margins full of notes, know that that is but the first step in the long process of God writing His Word on your heart.