the men I feel most sorry for…

"Concepts create idols, only wonder understands." 
Gregory of Nyssa

You are the God of great wonders! 
Psalm 77:14

Several years back I was with friends who gather every year to confess sin, strengthen our spirits, and listen to God. Every morning a man is put in the middle of the room in a kind of prophetic hot seat, where he gets prayed over by the rest of the group. The group shares what they sense God saying to him for a time of exhortation and encouragement. When it was my time in the middle, one of my friends shared something that has stuck with me over the years, something that I have clung to in the midst of anxiety and despair. The words he spoke were along these lines…

Jon, you may think that people follow you because you’re smart, or people follow you because you’re strong, but those are not the most important things. People follow you because your heart is strangely alive. In spite of all you have been through, you haven’t let the pain of cynicism rob you of joy. 

I think God is telling you that you need to lead from wonder.

Leading from wonder? I have studied leadership theory at a Doctoral level. I’ve looked at charts and books and paradigms but in all my years I have never heard of the "leading from wonder" paradigm.

How would leading from wonder even work?

Isn’t leadership about outcomes and results and progress?

Isn’t leadership about goals and metrics and movement?

Isn’t leadership about integrity and character and drive?

But upon reflection, maybe there is value in trying to introduce a new paradigm. Maybe the leaders we need in a time of anxiety, fear, and despair are those whose hearts are strangely alive. Maybe we need leaders who can lead us out of cynicism and back into joy. I want to be a leader like that. 

A LOSS OF WONDER

The author Douglas Coupland has a unique way of articulating the brokenness of the human condition. One quote that has haunted me over the years is about the loss of wonder in modern life. He writes,

Sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder - people who closed the doors that lead us into the secret world - or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness.

This is a profoundly articulate sense of how so many of us feel in our disenchanted world.

  • Wandering through life without direction or passion.

  • Numb to sensation due to the availability of illusionary pleasure.

  • Closing off the door because we cannot take any more disappointment. 

  • Loss of hope through tragedy, suffering, and the grind of life.

  • Neglecting the beautiful parts of life because they feel like a luxury in the midst of so much responsibility and need. 

  • Choosing survival in times of weakness rather than fullness of heart.

I see men like this everywhere. Men with a kind of sadness and frustration at the thought of another 30 years of working, paying bills, and slowly losing intimacy while numbing themselves with small pleasures to take the edge off. We need more.

The old English term wundor may be related to the German wunde or ‘wound’. From that perspective, "it would thus suggest a breach in the membrane of awareness, a sudden opening in a man’s system of established and expected meanings, a blow as if one were struck or stunned." That is, "to be wonderstruck is to be wounded by the sword of the strange event, to be stabbed awake by the striking." 

Wounded by wonder, maybe this is what we need for our numb hearts. 

WHERE ARE THE WONDERS?

God begins to open our hearts to the gift of wonder when we become aware of its absence. It is the longing for more that opens the door for more. In Gideon's story, it was his questioning of the decline and despair around him that opened him to the possibility of awakening and deliverance. 

"Pardon me, my lord," Gideon replied, "but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our ancestors told us about?"

Judges 6:13

REGAINING WONDER THROUGH FEAR AND AWE

According to Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the principle religious virtue of wonder is contained in the Hebrew word yirah. He says this word has two meanings: "fear and awe." 

The difference is this: "fear is the anticipation and expectation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good." In contrast, awe "is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery." Further, "awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but on the contrary, draws us near to it. This is why awe is compatible with both love and joy."

Upon reflection, much of what has kept my heart alive has been the pursuit of fear and awe. I try and position my life to face the things that scare me and position my heart to experience awe that overwhelms me. Sometimes this is in epic planned moments, and other times, small gifts in the flow of normal life. I cherish these times of… 

FEAR

  • Standing near the edge of the cliffs of Moher in Ireland with my mate "Irish Rob" feeling like I was going to be blown off by the wind.

  • The first time I encountered a bear in the woods early one morning while sipping coffee realizing he could end me if he chose.

  • Watching a demon come out of someone as a new believer and feeling the force of it rush by me as it left.

  • Moving to a new community out of a sense of mission without the resources we needed.

  • My kids struggling with their faith while growing up in a hostile city.

AWE

  • Traveling Ring Road around Iceland with my daughter during Covid while drowning in Icelandic glory.

  • Surfing with dolphins on my own when I was 16.

  • Sharing the gospel with Morgan Freeman at the airport and chatting with him about Jesus.

  • Feeling tangible waves of the liquid love of God during the Asbury Revival.

  • Finishing the Camino with my son Nate after 500 miles and 5 years on the Primal Path.

Moving toward fear and awe are choices we have to make. Often, we settle for comfort and pleasure instead. We may not think we have lost much in the moment, but over time, the door to the other world will slowly close, and we will find ourselves locked out of the joy God freely offers.

WANTING MORE

Moses was filled with yireh when he asked to see God's glory. It was a combination of fear and awe at the thought of seeing the God who was. And we should seek to encounter the God of wonders too. Experiencing his wonder has the power to resurrect our dead hearts and shift our perspective of who we are in the world. 

Research has shown the power of wonder to change the heart.

In one study, after experiencing an "awe event," a group was asked to draw pictures of themselves and the event they had just experienced. They literally drew themselves smaller in size. Such an effect has been termed ‘unselfing’. Unselfing is "the experience of loss of self, of letting go of ego-dominated rationality." Decentering the self, and dispositions that flow from such decentering, can have important ethical value in a heart, including "openness, availability, epistemological humility in the face of the mystery of being, and the ability to admire and be grateful."

And it doesn’t stop there. Interestingly, "recent research using fMRI has also shown that experiences of awe, such as watching awe-inspiring videos (compared to neutral or pleasant videos) decreases activity in the brain’s default mode network (DMN)." This network is "associated with self-focus and rumination. The result is decreased mental chatter."

Moses was changed by God's glory. Saul was thrown to the ground. Peter was overcome by the transfiguration and "didn’t know what he was saying." John fell on his face as though dead, and Mary wept at Jesus’ feet. We should never settle for mere religion when glory is offered instead.

CHOOSING YOUR WOUNDS

All of us will be wounded as we walk through this life. We will be wounded by rejection, betrayal, abuse, or neglect. These wounds can go deep and poison a man’s heart. They can rob us of wonder and cripple our expectation for more. Yet I want different wounds. I want the wounds of wonder.

- I want to be wounded with love. I want all that Jesus promised without giving in to theologies devised to cover for lack of experience. 

- I want to be wounded with gratitude. I want entitlement to die and thankfulness to come forth for all that God has done.

- I want to be wounded with joy. I want to savor the taste of the age to come, while hungering for more. I want to drink from the river of God's delights without apology.

And by the grace of God, I have been "struck" and "stunned" by the wonder of what God has done these past years. I have seen hardened atheists melt under the love of God, people endure debilitating sickness with patience and grace, and impossible love that has sacrificed and served in ways that seem like a bonus chapter of the book of Acts. Where cynicism had closed the door of wonder, Jesus has opened it again, and I have a door jam firmly in place with resolve to never let it close.

THIS WEEK.

I don’t know if you want to join me in leading from wonder or if you have another paradigm that is working fine. But I know for myself that more effort, teeth grinding, and technique are not going to re-enchant our secular age. I’m heading toward fear and awe. I’m asking to see more glory. I’m letting go of "ego-dominated rationality" to create space for God's tangible presence. I hope you will join me.

I believe the world needs your heart to be strangely alive too.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.

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