Walking the Tightrope

 This video will serve as the backdrop for the blog which will follow, enjoy. 

The guys name is Dean Potter... and to sum up what I think about what he just did i'll just state my humble opinion: HE'S CRAZY.  When asked about why he does what is called "soloing" he had this to say: Soloing for me is about being completely in the moment, not worrying about the past or future, but just being right here, right now. That’s why I do it.

I am just going to try and unpack what we just saw in this video.  Dean Potter is not your average person.  As you saw, he gave two attempts at walking the rope with "protective equipment" on and he fell off the rope both times.  I mean your trying to walk across a 100 foot rope, which is 7,800 feet in the air so I don't mind you having something to ensure your safety.  Then this man does the unthinkable.  After failing to walk across the entire rope with his protective mechanism, he decides that THIS is the time to shed himself of his self-made protection and try to walk across this rope without it.  At this point you are probably thanking me for stating the obvious in your mind.  Bear with me as I start to unpack this.

Our lives are like tightropes.  We walk this thin-line from the time we are born between what feels "good" and what we know is right.  Between what we want, and what God is telling us we need.  Most of us are currently standing at the beginning of that rope.  There are people of many different ages standing here.  The side we are standing on consists of several things.  It could be what we have been taught to be true our entire lives.  It could also be our sins and personal habits.  It could also be our legalistic mindset which could include our worship preferences, holier than thou attitude, or our "don't judge me" my life doesn't need to show my Christ attitude.  We all are at the beginning of this rope for different reasons.  Before we move forward, I want you to be thinking about what your current condition is and why.

Now we get to the point in our lives where we are sick of the place we are at.  We hear a good sermon, get an emotional high during praise & worship etc and we decide a change needs to be made.  Christ gives us simple instructions: "Leave your condition behind, keep your eyes on Me and keep walking towards me, I am at the end of the rope."  This sounds cool and all and we definitely want to change....but these instructions are CRAZY!!!  You want me to walk across this rope??? I've been in control of my life this whole time and your trying to tell me that I haven't even really started living yet?  How could I still be stuck at the beginning after all these years?  All you get in response to these questions are the same instructions.  But what about all I have been through???  All the pain and suffering that i felt when I lost my father.  The pain of my divorce.  The guilt of my sins, and the shame it has caused me.  I am supposed to leave that behind???  At this point we make the all too familiar choice.  We decide to start walking across the rope, but we strap ourselves with the safety harness of our current condition so that just in case we fall we have our old ways to fall back on.  Yea God, a compromise, that'll work right???  I'm still walking towards you, but You really expected me to do that with no safety mechanism?  

We embark on our journey, getting a little farther each time but always finding a way to fall.  We get to the point where we travel all the way back to the beginning and are on the brink of giving up.  We pray and pray to Christ and He responds with these simple instructions: "Let go of the safety harness."  But God that is who I am, I can't leave all these things behind...I won't be able to make it.  Many times in the church we get caught up in the box that we have placed God in so much that we feel like He is only capable of doing things one way.  If God were to confront us on that "box" that we have created, our whole entire world would shatter.  God is telling us to shed ourselves totally of what has kept us at the beginning of our walk with Him for all these years.  So we finally get on the rope, no safety harness, past behind us, not fully understanding why He said what He said.  But our eyes are on Him, He's at the end of the rope, and with each step He begins to reveal to us a little more about Himself.  Things we only could have learned by taking that first step of faith on the rope with him.  We learn that He is our shelter in the time of storm because even the winds and the waves obey Him.  He is the Alpha and the Omega, He was with us as we were stuck in our beginnings and He will be with us when we make it to His intended end for us.  He lets us know to not worry about falling because since we have decided to put our past, present, and future in His hands, He has become not just a harness but our safety net.  We find a new comfort with Him in the middle of a thin rope with no visible harness that WE DIDN'T have when we were standing at the beginning of the cliff in control of our lives.  The truth is that if you have surrendered your life to Christ you are currently on this rope.  Things will get wobbly from time to time, but if we keep our eyes on Him we will make to the end of the rope and walk into eternity with Him.  

I am not sure how religious if at all Dean Potter is.  I would like to conclude by analyzing what he said when he made it to the other side of the rope:

"Its as pure as it gets, there is nothing but my stripped down body walking my path.  I feel like I'm climbing out of a darker place, one of the deeper lows I've been in in my life.  And I was kind of resentful of being divorced, getting dumped and stuff, but the whole world is kind of opening up to me ya know?"  

 God is calling us to strip ourselves of those darker moments in our lives and walk the path He has planned for us.  He only asked that we have faith and trust in Him and keep our eyes fixed on Him.  Be encouraged family, God bless.