The following is a fiction story to illustrate the futility of a life lived in the pursuit of what our culture says will satisfy.

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The journey started pleasant enough. It was a beautiful cool day. The sun was shining, birds were chirping and there was a light breeze. It really was a perfect day to set out on an adventure. Although distant, when I lifted my gaze straight up I could see the destination. Sure, it was far off but nothing that I couldn’t manage. Squinting, I could see the splendor that awaited me. The ladder was tall and at times I lost sight of it among the clouds. It was a shiny green metal and I couldn’t help but think of Jack and the Beanstalk, but this was no fairy tale, it was the real thing. This was my life and I was determined to succeed. 

With great confidence, I began my climb, quick and energetic, With every rung I could see the prize getting closer. Success would be mine before I knew it. I just had to keep going one foot in front of the other.

As time went on I began to notice just how far I had yet to go. But I was undeterred, after all nothing good ever came easy. It was colder now. My hands had begun to fall asleep from my fingers tightly grasping each and every rung ensuring that I didn’t slip and fall. One misstep and all of the exerted effort would have been in vain. My pace slowed. When I looked down I could see that others had begun the accent. All of us knowing with unwavering certainty that the great prize awaiting us would be worth any temporary discomfort. Great things never come in comfort zones. 

I began to count the rungs as I passed them. It seemed like a good way to pass the time. 1,2,3,4,6, no that can’t be right now I have to start over. 1,2,3,… on and on it went. Only the knowledge that everything I had ever hoped for and dreamed about would soon be attained kept me going. I simply needed to keep pushing ahead. Hand over hand and foot over foot I continued to climb. 

After starting my count over for what seemed to be the three thousandth time, I realized I was no longer wearing shoes. Having long ago lost all feeling to any of my limbs I wondered how long since they had fallen. I’m certain they were on my feet when I started the venture. Oh well, shoes were a small price to pay for what awaited me. So I trudged on. What had started as a joyful journey could now only be described as drudgery.

My eyes were firmly locked on the ladder, no longer wanting to brave the look below. The ladder had long ago become encrusted in corrosion. My hands filled with flakes of rust. The grandeur had given way to ruin. Yet I kept going. 

My arms ached in pain. My legs felt as though they were lead. It took every last ounce of energy that I had to pick my foot up and place it on the rung above. It seemed as though the ladder never ran out of rungs. It was like trying to go the wrong way on an escalator. No matter what I did, the destination didn’t get any closer. But not being one to give up, I pushed on, fighting the pain, cramps, and fatigue. I had spent myself to get here. I remembered the years of training and preparation, I though of the mentors promising that the pain would be worth it in the end. 

I couldn’t believe that I had traveled so far. Blood was dripping from my limbs but I could finally see the prize. The top was nearly within grasp. What felt like a lifetime passed. Perhaps it did. Eventually, I reached the last few rungs, nearly losing my footing in my excitement.to behold the prize. The last few steps felt like an eternity. My eyes crested the long awaited edge and when my eyes beheld what lay before me my mouth opened in shock. It was nothing like I had ever imagined. Simply put it was… nothing, I had climbed the ladder to nowhere. There was nothing special about this place. It was no different than anything else. Expecting the elation of final fulfillment I instead experienced empty disappointment. 

Looking down again I saw others scrambling after me. I tried to warn the upcoming climbers, but they refused to listen, “It’s not what you think. It’s not worth it. Don’t waste your life!” I called down, but few would listen. They were determined and had to see it for themselves.

I’d gotten to the very top, I chased what everyone told me to chase, and it was empty. What a waste. I had spent myself and for what? I slowly and methodically headed back down with a heart full of disappointment and despair.

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Another way

Countless people spend their lives striving for what can only lead to disappointment, climbing ladders that reach nowhere. God warns us that what we think satisfies never will. (Proverbs 14:12). Jesus offers another way. He says to seek first the kingdom of God and that then everything else will be added to you (Matthew 6:33).  

The cruise ship industry is an estimated 8 billion dollar a year business. Last year alone, millions of individuals made their way on board ships averaging over 1,000 feet long and several stories tall. It’s not surprising that the experience of a cruise is highly coveted. Passengers are greeted warmly by a small crew of dedicated workers set on meeting the desires of each and every passenger. People choose to go on cruises so that they can enjoy a limitless amount of luxury and comfort. Cruise ships are dedicated to meeting not only the needs but the wants of each of their customers. Take a stroll across the deck of a typical cruise ship and you see people swimming in pools, going down waterslides, sunbathing, eating obscene amounts of food, and drinking until they can no longer walk straight.

A Better Way

Battleships, on the other hand, are full of people who are gathered together for a single mission. Every person onboard the vessel is there to participate. Instead of a small minority working to provide extensive comfort for the majority, all on board work for the sake of the fulfillment of the assignment. Instead of chasing comfort, the sailors deliberately embrace discomfort for the good of their nation.

All too often the Christian church seems to possess the mentality of a modern-day cruise ship. A small group of people working hard to provide entrainment, comfort, and service for any that would find themselves “onboard.” Christians seem content to stroll through their lives demanding amenities rather than submitting themselves to service.

The Example of Jesus

Jesus makes no such allowances for those who would call themselves His followers. Instead, He said in Matthew 8:20 “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” He makes it clear that if you are hoping for a life of comfort and ease it won’t be found following Him. He came not to be served, but to serve. He traded the comforts of heaven for the difficulties of earth. He didn’t let a desire for a life of comfort and ease keep him from His assignment.

Caught in Comfort Unaware

Satan would love for you to be comfortable. He wants you so comfortable you forget about the war you are supposed to be enlisted in. He wants your comfort to send you drifting off to a sleepy sort of apathy that keeps you from ever doing anything consequential. He wants you so comfortable that you never actually need God to come through for you.

I’m afraid that the reality is many of us are more comfortable than we even realize. The problem is we can be so accustomed to this comfort that we don’t even recognize it. We fail to understand that we have allowed ourselves to be lulled to sleep by a lullaby leaving us in a state of spiritual lethargy and indifference. If you are going to do anything worthwhile it will require that you leave the clutches of your metaphorical couch.

Embracing the Difficulty 

If Jesus was as concerned for His own comfort as you and I are tempted to be, we would be left with no hope of salvation. But instead, He not only allowed discomfort into His life but in submission to His Father He intentionally sought out discomfort. The same must be true of you and me if we want to be used by God. As Jesus told His disciples in Luke 9:23, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” We need to go beyond allowing discomfort into our lives, and instead, throw ourselves into it.

Jesus did it for us. Will you do it for Him?

Ballast is a material that is used to provide stability in many sea vessels. It is usually a heavy substance that is placed in tanks low in the vessel to prevent possible disaster, commonly counteracting the tendency of a tip-over and eventual shipwreck. The lack of proper ballast has been the primary cause of many tragedies at sea, some, such as the Sewol ferry in Korea cost the lives of over 300 people. The ballast provides much-needed stability when the waters become treacherous and seas seem insurmountable. It is critical for the lifetime of a ship and should not be overlooked by any sailors desiring a long and successful career.

What about us?

The storms of a life fiercely following the lead of Jesus are unavoidable. To go where He is leading necessitates that you pass through them. How can you be sure that you will make it through those storms without making a shipwreck of your faith? What is the ballast in your life that steadies it in the most tumultuous of situations? When you receive a tragic phone call, what keeps you going? When your emotions tell you that everyone around you is against you, how do you stay in the fight?

Improper Ballast

Filling ballast tanks with the wrong substance does nothing good for the ship. In fact, the wrong ballast can actually achieve the opposite of the desired result, instead of leading to stability, it can induce weakness and vulnerability. Sometimes we cram our lives with things thinking they are going to give us what we need. We fill our life with unhealthy relationships, passions, and desires and then we act surprised when those things cause more problems than they are worth. They don’t enhance our life, but instead pull us beneath the surface.

Finding the right Ballast

We must be careful to not expect our emotions to carry us through rough times. Neither can we always count on the relationships that we have around us, even the best of them. Our stability cannot come from ourselves. Instead, our stability must come from the Lord.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. Psalm 40:2

We need to fill our tanks with ballast that comes from God: the reliability that comes from the truth of His word, the peace that is experienced from the love that He has, and the hope for eternity from the promises that He has given. Anything else that we look to for stability in life will eventually shift beneath us. 

The storms are coming, make sure your tanks are full.

In Luke 14, Jesus is amassing great multitudes who are traveling with Him. Christ, realizing that the vast majority of the supposed “followers” were unqualified and ill-prepared, turns to them to explain that most of their lifestyles were incompatible with following Him. He explains that the cost required to go where he was leading them was great, far greater than many were willing to pay. Jesus will take you on the journey of a lifetime if you will let Him, but it will cost you. Much of what you are tempted to hold onto in a life of following Jesus is going to have to go. For years this reality has been illustrated in many different ways. Below is my attempt to do so.

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The glow of the alarm clock read 4:57. Three more minutes until the alarm would sound, but I didn’t need any alarms this morning. Like a kid on Christmas morning, I had been awake for hours waiting for an appropriate hour to get out of bed. I had been waiting for this day for years. I was finally going to meet Chris Carson (Kit) and begin our accent up Mount Telos. I had been watching his videos for years and after two years on a waiting list, my turn to join his troupe of five other climbers had come. I glanced to the corner of my room and saw the heap of supplies all strapped tightly to my pack. I wasn’t sure it would fit in the trunk of my car but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything I could bear to leave behind, after all, climbing Mt. Telos was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I turned the alarm off at first blare, jumped out of bed, and begin getting ready. Six minutes later I was ready to go, hefting my massive pack onto my shoulders. I sure hoped Kit would be impressed with all my new gear. It had cost quite a bit, but I wanted to ensure that there was nothing that I was going to regret having left behind. I wanted to be ready. I ran out the door banging my tent pole on the top of my door as my collapsible camp dishes knocked over my coffee mug sitting on the counter.

My bag didn’t quite fit in the trunk, but no matter I got it in the back seat and on the second good shove was able to get the door to click shut. I turned my key and looked down at the clock, 5:11. I was going to be way too early, but oh well I guess that just mean more time to spend with Kit before we started our climb. The closer I got the more the peak towered above me. Pictures didn’t even begin to compare. As I pulled up to the shack that functioned as our point of departure, I realized I was alone. Kit was nowhere in sight. I pried my bag from the back and prepared to make a good first impression.

After what felt like hours, my four climbing companions arrived. I noticed smugly that none of their packs were even close to the size of mine. They must have forgotten all the important stuff. Well, I certainly wouldn’t be sharing. I had everything that I needed. Kit pulled up and jumped out of his car. As he approached, I noticed him eyeing all of us up. I thought I caught a snicker forming.

“All right,” he said, “start by dumping all your stuff out so I can get a look at your gear. I need to know you are ready and bringing what you need to make it to the end” I smiled knowing that out of the five of us I certainly had what it took.

We emptied our bags as he started his inspection at the opposite end of the line where a meager pile of supplies laid. Kit dug through slowly and silently eyeing each item and begin to form two piles. I figured some gear must not have met his required standards. He repeated the process without words all down the line and then stood before me. I couldn’t help but grin, I bet I had some stuff that even the great mountain man Kit had never seen. He had to be impressed, I had even managed to squeeze in my collapsible camp oven to make a proper celebratory dinner at the peak. I bet no one had ever brought a solar-powered laptop before, but if I was going to climb Mt. Telos I was going to be sure the whole world knew about it.

His eyes went back and forth between me and my impressive mound of supplies with no words. Finally, a grin broke across his face as he said, “Son, is this some kind of joke.”

“No sir” I replied. “I come prepared, you just wait and see”

I could tell he was taken aback by my uncommon forethought. He dug through my pile and to my delight I was the only person who had only one pile in front of them.

“Okay, the pile on your left is what you are taking, the pile on the right you can leave behind. And you,” he pointed his finger at me, “I don’t know what on earth you were thinking, but you can’t take any of that crap you with. You won’t make it 50 feet without collapsing.”

Was this some sort of joke? I had been planning this for years. How could I climb the mountain without my canon, or my go pro, or my picnic blanket, and what about my 3,000-foot rope. Surely, he was mistaken. I waited for the punchline but after a few moments, it was clear none was coming. My heart dropped. How could I have been so mistaken? How could I have been thinking wrong for so long? Here I had thought there was no climber better in all the world than Kit Carson, but it turned out he was nothing but a fraud. He had no idea what he was doing. How could I have ever trusted him?

He looked at me and said, “If you want to make it up this mountain, you’ll do exactly what I say. I know what I am doing. No one has ever done this on their own. You need to leave all that behind and I’ll give you my backup gear to use. You can leave all your toys here in my shack. Reaching the end requires certain things, and you’ll have to leave everything else behind.”

I just shook my head. “Fine then,” he said, “but you aren’t going to come with me if you want to try and climb this mountain your own way with all of that junk, you’ll do it alone.”

He was right. He didn’t own this mountain. I would just go on my own. I had what I needed. Kit could do things his way and I would do them mine. The rest would depart at first light the following day. But there were still a couple hours of daytime. After the way I had been treated, I was going to set out on my own. I didn’t want to lay eyes on Kit ever again. With indignation, I gritted my teeth and begin to carefully repack the contents that Kit had so foolishly dismissed.

I hoisted my pack on my back and left quickly. I was going to show him. After a few steps, I slowed my pace. It was a long journey after all. As the sun sank, I continued on. Growing weary but still determined. As the base camp disappeared from view, I let out a sigh of relief. I could finally lighten my pack. Not much, and I didn’t need to, but I might as well be comfortable as I go. I removed half my rope, and my collapsible oven, I wouldn’t need an oven if I was cooking just for myself anyways, and stowed it behind a tree hiding it from sight so that Kit wouldn’t think he was right.

As time stretched on, my legs grew weaker. My arms ached. Every step seemed like it would be my last. My knuckles glowed white as I gripped my pack. I noticed many of the things I had strapped on seemed to have fallen away as I had gone. The path too narrow to allow the width of my belongings to traverse. I remembered Kit’s words, but what remained of my pack was too precious to let go. I marched on.

Hours went by, perhaps days, and I had lost any understanding of time. The path continued to narrow and my belongings had been stripped back to just a few. I took one more step and was tugged to a stop. Try what I may, no amount of twisting and turning would let me continue. Not with the shreds of my pack still firmly strapped to my back. If I was going to continue on. I was going to have to let it go.

Dismay filled me. I had worked so hard and come such a long way, but the cost of moving forward seemed too much to bear. One more step meant leaving everything behind. It meant admitting my failure in humiliation. I had worked too hard and too long to let go now. My fingers were wrapped so tightly around the straps that it seemed impossible to pry them away. Yet to move forward would require just that. If I was going to get where I was supposed to be, I needed to say goodbye to that which seemed impossible to relinquish. What was I going to do? The cost seemed impossible to pay.

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Now you are left with a question, “will you reach the top?” Jesus will take you on the adventure of a lifetime, but it’s going to be costly. There are things currently in your life, relationships, character traits, long-held beliefs, that your fingers are wrapped around in refusal to let go. You can cling to those things if you want to. But remember if you do, wherever you’re going, you just might be going alone.