You’re in for a treat again! Logan is back to guest blog for me. I say he’s back because he just returned from seven weeks of survival kamp (you’ll understand the “kamp” when you read below). He has some cool stories to tell about his adventures, but the most incredible story is about the work God did in and through him while he was at kamp. There are no words big enough to describe the gratefulness in this momma’s heart. So wildly blessed!
And now, here’s Logan:
Before I begin, it is necessary for you to know two things. The first being that I’ve spent the past seven weeks of my life working at Kanakuk survival kamp (yes we like to spell things with K’s…just let it be). This two-week-long kamp consists of a training week, where we teach the kampers all the essential survival skills, followed by a survival week, where we put the kampers in different and increasingly difficult scenarios. Eventually the kiddos cap it all off by going through a 48-hour, solo survival challenge (and yes, as counselors we went through the whole process too as training…if nothing else, it allowed us to tell the kampers to quit whining when they were complaining about sleeping on the ground or eating packaged tuna every other day for lunch).
Needless to say this kamp is all kinds of awesome. Living out in God’s creation, late-night kampfires complete with smores, learning skills 99% of the population doesn’t know, being challenged in brand new ways every day, repelling off huge bluffs, killing and eating rabbits, caving…the list goes on.
The second thing you need to know is I’m still very much a rookie in the blogging world. So if the goin gets rough here in a bit, then just grit your teeth and keep reading till the end. Even if it’s purely out of sympathy, I’ll still take it.
Here goes…
There is a tiny catch to having a survival kamp. You see, no matter how difficult or extreme you try to make it, the kids know they’re never really on their own. And they know they’re never truly in actual danger of not surviving. The challenge presented by that reality is how to get the kampers in a complete, genuine survival mindset.
Because…if one was in a real, do-or-die survival situation, your mind would be utterly focused on how to live just one more day. We’re talking 100% concentration. Literally every single thought and action would be geared toward surviving in some way or another.
And if you weren’t able to achieve that level of focus…well you’d probably end up as supper for the buzzards.
The crazy thing is our everyday life ought to be the same way. The only difference being that same level focus is on how to live just one more day…for Jesus. Literally every single thought and action should be geared toward loving God and loving others.
And if we’re not doing that…well then we’re living a life that isn’t as full as it could be.
This kind of life filled with complete obsession with Him may sound a little extreme. But there’s no doubt the proof is the puddin (the puddin in this case being Scripture).
Everybody knows the story of Jesus clearing the temple in John 2. In verse 17, after watching Jesus destroy the market, the disciples remembered what was written in the Old Testament that “zeal for Your house will consume me.” Those words were written by David in Psalm 69:9. The same David who we’re told in Acts 13 was a “man after God’s own heart” was the same man who wrote about his passion for the Lord consuming him.
The word “consuming” can also be found in Deuteronomy 4. The passage is telling the Hebrew people not to make for themselves “an idol in the form of anything.” Then in verse 24 it says, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”
Considering last year’s happenings in Texas and this year’s in Colorado, most of y’all probably get a bad taste in your mouth when you think about fires. But it really is such a fitting analogy for how God wants our relationship with Him to look. Fire doesn’t spare anything. It consumes everything. God wants us to be fully focused on bringing Him glory, and every single waking moment ought to be spent being consumed how we can do that…it’s the only way to survive in a broken world.