Shipwrecked
“For the Son of Man has come to save that which is lost.”
Matthew 18:11
From my Journal 2005:...Best to start this story from the beginning..."Travel Lines - 1: The Self Train Line - Derailed"
My wandering eye couldn’t miss the billboard. The bronze-tanned, long-legged, scantily clad, voluptuously displayed woman lying on the beach beaming a smile directly at me added life to the words advertising paradise:
Take command of your life!
Be the captain of your destiny!
Launch your life on the yacht laden with the treasures of fun-filled living!
Choose this “Cruise Line for your Soul” and experience the fulfillment of your dreams!
Call 1-FOR-THE-SOUL
The phone number connected me to a recorded, seductive greeting: You deserve what you desire! The ship is about to sail. The prevailing winds are with you. The cards predict it. The signs are right. It’s in the stars and your horoscope reads, “Sail away from your trouble. It’s good for your soul. Paradise lies ahead.” By the time a travel agent picked up the call, I had taken the bait, hook, line, and sinker. I heard what I wanted to hear from the travel agent, and within the week, I boarded the schooner, “Gone with the Wind,” with its three masts towering overhead and the feeling of adventure coursing through my veins. I was lead by my heart to gratify whatever felt good. Have you ever been ruled by your heart?
Sailing away with the wind at my back, I left the coastline and everything behind— except for the mess of baggage that I stowed below deck is hidden from view. I wanted to appear to “have it together.” My investment in Self-help had built a beautiful façade. What is your “baggage of life” full of? How do you keep it “hidden”?
Sailing on a boat is very different from traveling by train. Whereas the Self Train Line had a definitive course, predictable and planned, the Soul Cruise Line was at the mercy of the wind, a force unpredictable regarding direction, danger, and destiny. While on the train, my mind led my behavior, a myriad of calculated thoughts, by design to propel me successfully to stardom, to the heights of my career. In contrast, the cruise on the sea was like floating through time, my heart leading the way. I had burned out the high-powered scheming pattern of the past—the fewer the thoughts, the better as long as it felt good—Ecstasy!
The nature of Self-help is insidious. Its foundation is based on one’s ability to change his or her circumstances. Self-help employs and empowers the flesh, and who rules the flesh, but the prince of the power of the air of the world in which we live, none other than the Devil himself.1
When I empowered the flesh, I gave authority to the ruler of the carnal mind to direct the lusts of my heart, the feelings and emotions that drove my behavior.2 Essentially I had the cart before the horse—my emotions and feelings lead my behavior instead of my actions guiding how I felt. I became impulsive, heading in one direction then changing course, my destiny at the mercy of the wind. At sea, I was affected by storms, waves, bitter winds, and the contrasting lulls of stillness where I sat deadpan, motionless in the scorching sun, listless, useless, and demoralized—the destiny to paradise became a figment of my imagination.
The course of my journey on the Soul Cruise Line was left in the hands of the wind. If only I could take control of the rudder! The rudder, a moveable paddle attached to the back of a boat, is small in comparison to the major effect it has on changing direction—it can turn a ship around! Without this mechanism to steer, a boat could be cast upon the rocks, shipwrecked and unable to continue its journey. Does your life at times seem as if you are lost at sea, aimlessly moving about wherever the prevailing wind takes you?
As storms swept across the seascape of my life, I found myself cast about, out of control, at times harming myself, as I was unable to place my feet on solid ground. It was during these times that a feeling of helplessness overcame any means of Self-help, and I sank into despair and depression as my course headed closer to rocks of doom. Where was the paradise the advertisement described?
I chose to leave my troubled life behind, but I did not realize that I was still hanging onto the baggage that I brought on board. The lure of the advertisement deceived me; the travel agent sold me false goods, promising me I would find a better life. What I was about to find was that I didn’t have a foundation to weather the course of life. As the tempest intensified, I was eventually cast on the rocks of hard times and the last of all I called my own was scattered across the waves. Desperate for survival, I numbed the emotional pain but found nothing to hold me up above the consuming waves of my past. My legs churned aimlessly in the water, nowhere to go, if only… My foot scraped against the rocky shoreline. Marooned I was, yet dead I was not, as I waited for the sea of my predicament to calm, not knowing what to do next—shipwrecked—my life broken like the pieces of the boat that brought me to this destination.
“But I became afraid, and because of my fear I crashed beneath the waves.”
Matthew 14:30
I was fed up with my life. It may be OK to fail once on the course chosen, but twice? I was so angry with my Self that I was willing to do anything to rid me of the torment, day and night, which I experienced. I was never free from the reminder of my train wreck, my shipwreck, and the daily drowning in my past. Who to call? Who would answer? What would I say?
Desperate for a change of the ugly feelings to which I woke every morning, I left work on my lunch hour and went home. A concerned friend had given me a phone number to call for help, and I had left a message the previous day. Does anyone care? Where do I start, and how far is the climb out of the pit I am mired?
I called the phone number again, and someone answered. My life was about to change. Gone was the façade of Self—the “You’re OK” mantra. Here I was talking on the phone to someone I had never met, to whom I was spilling my soul of pain, bearing my heart of desperation, and venting my mind of torment. Purged of the erupted emotion, I waited to hear the answer I needed. There was silence, and then I heard, “Can I pray for you?” My lips quivered as my eyes flooded with tears. I reached forward to lean on the bureau for support as I fought to mouth and whispered, “Will you?”
I was bawling inside, pent-up pain churning inside. The words I do not remember, but the vision was burnt in my mind, and the feeling stamped in my heart as he prayed. I saw the drama of the Last Supper in which I portrayed Peter, the self-confident and impulsive disciple who boasted that he would give his life for his Lord.3 I could hear my voice as I exclaimed, “It was I who walked upon the surface of the Sea of Galilee. But I became afraid, and because of my fear I crashed beneath the waves.”4
I was desperate for Christ to take the weight of my suffering and the bondage of sin from me. At that moment, I let go of all that weighed me down, the baggage of years of Self-reliance, Self-indulgence, and Self-ambition. I would trade all of that to find solid ground underneath my feet.
It was at that moment, at home on my lunch hour, standing in my bedroom with the phone to my ear hearing the man pray for me and seeing the vision of Peter desperately reaching to Christ for help, that I raised my right hand to the sky and inside myself I cried out, “Lord, save me!” And as suddenly as the thought, a bolt of Power touched my hand and shot through every fiber of my being as God’s Spirit gave me an understanding that I was no longer in bondage. The cathartic effect of God’s Holy Spirit purged me of the stronghold. From that day forward, I was free. I was liberated.
“If a shepherd has one hundred sheep, and one wanders away and is lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others and go out into the hills to search for the lost one? And if he finds it, he will surely rejoice over it more than over the ninety-nine that didn’t wander away! In the same way, it is not my heavenly Father’s will that even one of these little ones should perish.5
—My Savior, Jesus the Christ, Son of Man, Son of God
Now, the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, he gives freedom.6
—Spoken by Paul, an apostle shipwrecked three times
and once spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea7
Praise to Our Father for the words He has given me.
Copyright © 2004, 2005 Stellar Rhema Ministry, Jeff Cambridge
References
All Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society. “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office by International Bible Society.
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.
1. Ephesians 2:2, John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11
2. Romans 8:5-6, 1:24-25 NKJV
3. Luke 22:33
4. Matthew 14:29-30
5. Matthew 18:12-14
6. 2 Corinthians 3:17
7. 2 Corinthians 11:25
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