Daily Jewel

by Pastor Carnell, McAlester, OK
Mar. 19,2012

“How Lost Can You Be?” (Part One)
“Above all else, guard your heart….” – Proverbs 4:23

For the next couple of days I want to do something a little different for the daily message. I will be using an illustration from a book called, “The Journey of Desire: The Journey We Must Take to Find the Life God Offers” by John Eldredge. The name of the story is “The Sea Lion Who Lost the Sea.”
The heart holds the most intimate portions of our life: Our emotions and our desires. We often are warned to not let our emotions rule us, especially when it comes to our relationship with Christ—but there has to a proper median when it comes to this thing called “the heart,” because if God did not want us to use our emotions then He would not have “installed” them as a part of our creation.
Since the heart was created by God—it also belongs to Him. That is why He wants us to give our hearts back to Him so He can fill them and treat them properly...with the care they deserve. When we are lost—it leaves such an incredible void that absolutely nothing can fill. This is why Solomon says, “guard your heart.” The following is part one.

Once upon a time there lived a sea lion who lost the sea. He lived in a country known as the barren lands. High on a plateau, far from any coast, it was a place so dry and dusty that it could only be called a desert. A kind of coarse grass grew in patches here and there, and a few trees were scattered across the horizon. But mostly, it was dust, and sometimes wind, which together make one very thirsty. Of course, it must seem strange to you that such a beautiful creature should wind up in a desert at all. He was, mind you, a sea lion. But things like this do happen. How the sea lion came to the barren lands, no one could remember. It all seemed so very long ago. So long in fact, it appeared as though he had always been there. Not that he belonged in such an arid place. How can that be? He was after all, a sea lion. But as you know, once you have lived so long in a certain spot, no matter how odd, you come to think of it as home.
There was a time, many years back, when the sea lion, knew he was lost. In those days, he would stop every traveler he met to see if he might help him find his way back to the sea. But no one seemed to know the way.
On he searched, but never finding. After years without success, the sea lion took refuge beneath a solitary tree beside a very small water hole. The tree provided refuge from the burning rays of the sun, which was very fierce in that place. And the water hole, though small and muddy, was wet, in its own way. Here he settled down and got on as best as he could.
Had you journeyed in those days through the barren lands, you might have seen the lion for yourself. Quite often in the evening he sould go and sit upon his favorite rock, a very large boulder, which lifted him off the burning sand and allowed him a view of the entire country. There he would remain for hours into the night, silhouetted against the sky. And on the best nights, when the wind shifted to the east, a faint smell of salt air would come to him on the breeze. The he would close his eyes and imagine himself once more at the sea. When he lay himself down to sleep, he would dream of a vast, deep ocean. Twisting and turning, diving and twirling, he would swim and swim and swim. When he woke, he thought he heard the sound waves breaking against the surf.
The sea was calling to him…

Getting lost may be easier than it sounds—and getting back to where we need to be extremely difficult. We must guard against the things that would draw us away from where we need to be (in the Sea Lion’s case, the sea) and into places where we absolutely do not belong.
Is the “sea” calling you right now?