To "The Edge" from The Fort

For three days I have been six and a half hours from home with 570 youth and adults from all over the country at a Youth Conference ( www.theedgeconference.com  – to see my pics go to: www.facebook.com/dukex2 ).  This conference was held at a Baptist Camp known as “Fort Caswell,” which in its heyday was indeed a fort.  You can Google the history if you want to.
    This camp is located on the tip of an island.  On one side is the ocean, and on the other is the sound.  As you can imagine, it’s a beautiful setting.  Anyway, after a long drive across two wide states, we pulled into the place and the first thing we saw was a kind of catacombs built into the sand dunes.
    The structure was made of cement and brick, with steps and rooms and caverns built into it.  There are places where large gun turrets were obviously positioned, and they are composed of 2 or 3 levels, each of which in their day, served important purposes – defense and protection.  There must be 8 such structures around the camp.

    As you might imagine, the kids, especially the boys, were chomping at the bit to get out and explore this fort.  Images of forts they had built years before passed through their minds, and they must have thought, “Wow!  Mine was nothing compared to that one!  I gotta get out and see this!”  Quite a bit of time was spent by the kids exploring this place that was new and foreign to us.
    This place was intended to be a barrier to those from whom ones protected themselves.  They were built into the dunes, so on the front side, from the water, the enemy could not see these forts.  It just looked like part of the landscape.
    As I watched the kids run up and down, jumping from level to level like urban gymnasts, I thought about what it must have been like to have been a solder on the back side of that fort.  There must have been great comfort in knowing that there was a wall between them and the enemy.  Then I thought about what it must have been like for those on the other side, for them to be floating up to the beach unaware of the danger that lay just beyond the dunes.

    This Conference was a conference intended to draw us closer to God.  The theme was about changing our mindset and living into who God intends us to become.  It was about being freed from the deceptions of the world and fully embracing the love of God.
    As I have processed what I experienced these last few days, I’ve realized that underlying these themes have been questions for the kids and me that dig a bit deeper.  Issues raised that can well be characterized by the very setting in which we have been living – in a fort.
    What I’ve come to realize is that, in order to change our mindset, in order to align ourselves with God, in order to become who God wants us to become, we have to first acknowledge those times and places when we’ve set up forts, strongholds, safe havens (from ourselves, the world, our God...) on the inside, while on the outside we reveal a facade that looks like the regular landscape of our lives.  Then once we acknowledge this truth, with the help of God and others, we allow that fortress to be broken down, or we simply walk away from it, and we come out into the open, revealing our true selves and God’s true nature in us.

    It’s ironic and quite appropriate that this Conference is entitled, “The Edge,” for as I left I realized that it was about going to edges of our lives – our hopes, our fears, our secrets, our dreams, our everything – and then being willing to step out from behind the edges of the walls we’ve built to protect ourselves, step past those mental lines in the sand which hold us back from accomplishing God’s desires for us, even stepping off the cliff of control and trusting that God will catch us.  To do so is scary, but it is also thrilling.  To do so is the only way to truly live.               

  
What are the fortresses you’ve built in your heart?  What are you keeping from others or trying to keep from God?  Is it time for you to break down the barriers or walk away from your self-made protections in order for God to truly work in your life?  What do you need to do to be truly free to dance as God intends?