by Bob A Clifton
Can’t believe it is only two weeks out until the Wild at Heart Boot Camp. This is such an exciting time for me, and I bet for those of you who are coming it is a great time also. For those of you who have not been before, you might be experiencing some warfare right now that is a direct response to your attendance at this conference. For those of you who have been here before, maybe just excited about tucking away for a couple days. Shawn and I went to Colorado almost two years ago to experience our first boot camp. It was like changing.
I really want use my last blog before boot camp to share my experience with the Wild at Heart material. I ran into this material at a men’s bible study in Lawrence Kansas many years ago. I read the book and was hooked. Not hooked, at the time, on all of his ideas and concepts, but definitely on a few. The most influential chapter is the father wound. Chapter four makes clear that each one of us will take some kind of wounding from our father. I knew this was the case for me growing up, but didn’t understand that it was a big deal to take a closer look at this and do something about it. This book came at the same time as my daughter entered into the world. The very things I did not want to be doing with her were spilling out of my mouth with little control. By releasing some of those wounds in the past and asking for God to come in and heal up those tough places.
From the foundation of understanding that we are a product of our past I was able to move back into manhood. See, manhood seemed something of a mystery to me. I knew that we are supposed to get married, have kids, pay a mortgage, and die. What I didn’t understand that with the relationship that I would have in Christ it would bring warfare into my home. Spiritual warfare is the product of the relationship we have with Jesus Christ. When we became sons of the living God Satan could no longer steal our heart away from Him. What Satan can do is destroy our lives and our witness if we spend our time in and of the world instead of following our Father.
When I figured this out so many of my trials began to make good sense. I had drawn the conclusion that bad things were happening to me because I did not know how to do things right. I must not be reading my bible enough, or praying enough. I thought I must have done something wrong and so now I am experiencing God’s punishment for all the bad I did in my life. What Eldredge did a great job of explaining is that we are in a battle whether we like it or not. We can either choose to take our position in that battle or we can pretend that it is not happening around us. As soon as I got a grasp of this and started stepping into the battles that were designed for me, the guilt and shame of a failed life made more sense.
This is a brief glimpse of some great things that have come out of this material. For those of you that are joining us in two weekends, I am praying for you. I am praying that God would show up in your life and speak in some divine ways. I am also praying that you would be able to soak in the material you are supposed to and go home to execute what it is God shared with you this week. I am anticipating with excitement getting to know each one of you at a deeper level and be an encouragement to what I hope will be a life changing experience.
Get Fired Up!
