I was blessed to experience JBP's wisdom in person. Never before have I felt the reverent energy of an auditorium full of fans that truly honour, appreciate, and love the speaker like I did at Moody Center last night.
Your aim determines your perception.
Depending upon what you want, what you’re shooting for, the same circumstance or event will feel entirely different to you than it does to someone with an opposing or different aim and set of values. What is a joyous victory to you will be a defeat to someone else.
JBP’s humility and the great personal cost he has paid to be a conduit of truth to a groaning world was apparent the moment his thin frame appeared on stage.
But what strength, what wisdom, what gravity his words had, and how thoughtful he is with each and every one of them.
He was baffled again that so many people would receive him with such love and reverence.
How does someone like that stay humble? Remain a vessel, a conduit?
Just as Robert Greene speaks with such measured, quiet humility, I’m sure it has to do with their grave illnesses they’ve both experienced; their brushes with death.
The thorn in their flesh that God does not remove, because it’s the very thing that invites them to rely on a strength other than their own. To rest in Christ’s sufficiency, not their own prowess or brilliance.
A few days ago, I asked myself “are there any Bible stories in which God’s chosen people stumbled into their missions through their sin?”
I knew David, Abraham, Saul/Paul, Peter, committed some egregious errors in their time, but I was wondering if anybody found their calling because of their failures.
Moses sprung to mind. He’d killed the Egyptian.
I’d also been contemplating Abraham and Isaac. He got Isaac back because he was willing to let Isaac go.
JBP brought up both last night, in nearly identical contexts to my contemplations.
Abel brought his best and got more. Cain didn’t, destroyed his ideal, and was left with less, his lineage becoming murderers.
Abraham gave his best, and got it back.
He sacrificed his best to what is highest.
Not only that, but JBP also was talking about the Pieta, the mother’s crucifixion. The job of the mother being to offer her son (her best, herself) to the world, for it to have its way with him.
So doing, our sons become men, able to contend with the brutality and complexity of life.
We let go. Completely. Mary’s left hand is raised, perhaps for hope, perhaps to symbolize letting go, perhaps in worship.
Jordan Peterson eloquently tied this into becoming friends with one’s adult children. How does one accomplish such a thing? By raising, then releasing them.
Jesus Christ operated entirely by invitation, never by force.
This is the same way your adult children come back to you as your friends.
“The complete abdication of force.”
We encourage our children to do their best (not to “win,” but to bring forth their utmost effort) because we are desperate to see potential actualized. The most heartbreaking and frustrating thing we experience is when we see someone we love and have invested in abort the development of their own potential because of self-doubt, self-sabotage, or fear.
How do we change the world? How do we come alive, and how do we operate as a net positive in our spheres, lighting the souls of those we interact with?
“By going all in on what beckons to you.”
JBP expounded on each of us having an individual calling. Something that beckons to us, that brings forth our best.
Something that, when given our best, becomes an exemplar to others.
It invites.
He described the “transformational energy” when someone is on mission. When they are alight. How that calls in the best of others nearby.
That transformational energy is exactly what I am yearning to see again. In someone, in anyone. Manifestation of animating, generative energy; proof of God.