"The spiritual life cannot be made suburban," said Howard Macey. "It is always frontier and we who live in it must accept and even rejoice that it remains untamed." The greatest obstacle to realizing our dreams is the false self's hatred of mystery. That's a problem, you see, because mystery is essential to adventure. More than that, mystery is the heart of the universe and the God who made it. The most important aspects of a man's world--his relationship with his God and with the people in his life, his calling, the spiritual battles he'll face--every one of them is fraught with mystery. But that is not a bad thing; it is a joyful, rich part of reality and essential to our soul's thirst for adventure.
The Modern Era hated mystery; we desperately wanted a means of controlling our own lives, and we seemed to find the ultimate Tower of Babel in the scientific method. Don't get me wrong--science has given us many wonderful advances in sanitation, medicine, transportation. But we've tried to use those methods to tame the wildness of the spiritual frontier. We take the latest marketing methods, the newest business management fad, and we apply it to ministry. The problem with modern Christianity's obsession with principles is that it removes any real conversation with God. Find the principle, apply the principle--what do you need God for? So Oswald Chambers warns us, "Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as he is with you."
excerpts taken from "Wild at Heart" by John Eldredge
(pgs 210-211,212)
