Don’t Grab the Line: What I Learned from Ziplining about Intimacy and Authority
by Rev. Carolyn Moore (M.Div., 1998)
When you start, you’re on a 2-foot by 2-foot platform in a tree. You can be as much as a hundred feet in the air. Your goal is a tree about 500 yards away, and a platform just as tiny, just as high up, as where you are now. All that spans between you and that other tree is a thin wire. When you step off the platform, you pray that this remarkably thin wire will hold you while you zip through the trees.
You’re wearing a harness clipped into a pulley. You rest one hand on the pulley and the other hand holds the strap of the harness, and the gear does the work for you. The hardest part is stepping off the platform. The best part is the feeling of relief you get when all that gear catches you once you step out into thin air.
The zip line is calibrated so that when you step off the platform you pick up speed pretty quickly and zip along until you begin to approach the large tree on the other side. About halfway across, the line begins to bend back upward and that bend helps you slow down. That bend is calibrated so that for the most part, the line does the work of slowing down for you. Depending on a bunch of other factors, you may end up going a bit fast as you approach the tree and you may want to brake a little. You do that by putting your hand in an upside-down “c” above the line, and all you have to do is touch it. Just the friction of a little contact with the line will slow you down as you approach the extremely large tree that’s hurtling toward you.
Touch … don’t grab. Say that with me, “Touch. Don’t grab.”
The first time Steve and I went zip lining … on that first line I got a little too nervous on the approach to that little platform landing. That tree on the other side seemed to be coming way too fast, so I reached up and … because a person can get panicky in a situation like this …rather than gently placing my cupped hand over the line and simply touching it, I grabbed …and while the rest of my body continued hurtling toward the tree, my hand, arm and shoulder stayed right in that place where I grabbed the line. And for the rest of that day, my shoulder reminded me over and over of one critical principle in zip-lining: Let’s say it together … Touch… don’t grab.
There was another family zip lining with us that day, and there was a teenager in that group who did the same thing I did. He grabbed the line and it stopped him cold. The guide had to shimmy out there and tow him in. And bless his heart … it happened again on the next line. And on the one after that. On every line after that, as soon as he left the platform his mother would yell at him, “Relax, Jimmy! Relax!” Which, I’m sure, made him do anything but.
So the next time I went zip-lining (a year or so later), I coached myself while I was still on the platform … before I ever stepped out into thin air. I said to myself, “Don’t brake! Don’t do it! Don’t grab the line when you get nervous about the approaching tree. Remember how much it hurt last time. Remember Jimmy! And if you must brake, touch … don’t grab.”
That’s what my whole brain was saying before I stepped off the platform, while I was still standing on a solid surface. As soon as I stepped off the platform, though, my brain split into two halves, which began arguing with each other. One half was still saying, “Don’t do it. Don’t brake.” But the other half was saying, “Grab the line! That tree is huge, unmovable and coming at you like a freight train! Channel your inner Jimmy and grab that line!”
That’s the side of my brain that won the argument. I grabbed the line. And I pulled my shoulder … AGAIN … and when I got to the platform … which … mercifully, I did, without having to be towed in … the guide looked at me like I was a child and said, “Please don’t grab the line until I tell you to, or you will end up stranded out there in the middle of the line, and I’ll have to come get you.”
And like a child, I said, “I know.” Because I do know … but for some reason, when I was out there, hanging literally by a thread, I couldn’t trust what I know and what he knows and what everybody else who has ever done this knows. I know … but I still put the brakes on.
This thing I do in the air on zip lines I have done too often in my ministry and with my call. Out of fear, I put the brakes on. I don’t trust what has been so obviously calibrated for my good. This is sheer confession. For a ridiculous amount of my ministry, I’ve allowed the voice of fear to war within me with the voice of the Spirit … and it has too often left me hanging between two worlds. Fear is what creates that war within me and where there is war, there is death.
So this is what I’ve come to tell you today. I’ve come to tell you this: fear breeds death. And somehow that lesson from the zipline has become for me a sort of prescription for killing the spirit of fear. Touch … don’t grab. Become obsessed with touching the Father, recognizing that your authority comes from him. Authority isn’t something you can grab for yourself, or generate within yourself. It comes from intimate contact with the Father. If intimacy is the conversation with God on the platform that speaks confidence and truth into our lives, then authority is trusting that the line we step out on has been calibrated for our good. And fruitfulness only comes when I ride it all the way out without putting the brakes on.
Listen: Fear breeds death. But intimacy breeds authority. Authority breeds power. Power breeds fruitfulness. And fruitfulness breeds (reveals) glory to God. I absolutely believe this, that intimacy and authority are the difference between life and death in ministry.
If you have a Bible, I wonder if you’d find Exodus 33 and somewhere in the vicinity of verse 7, “the place of intimacy.” And somewhere around verse 14, write “the promise of intimacy.” And around verse 16, write, “the point of authority.” And then at verse 18, write, “the prayer of intimacy.”
Let’s start with the place of intimacy.
READ EXODUS 33:7.
Which is cool. Because in the Bible, “outside the camp” is where you find people with contagious diseases. And your enemies are outside the camp. Further on in the story of God, people get crucified out there … beyond the walls. The outer court of the temple was for women and messed up people. And I’m sure that’s not the reason Moses picked up this tent and took it outside the camp, but I love that he met God in the same place where God met us the day He proved His love for us. Outside the camp. Where the sinners and broken people are.
Speaking of sinners and broken people … seminary can have a funny effect on people, can’t it? We get inside these walls and we read so much about God and write so much about Jesus and talk so much about the Holy Spirit … and in the midst of it we can actually develop a kind of numbness toward the reality of him. The same thing can happen in ministry. If it hasn’t happened that way for you, I praise God for it. But I can tell you it has happened that way for me more than once over the years. I get so caught up in the work of it that I can lose sight of the God over it.
The antidote, I’ve discovered is what Moses models here when he picks up his tent and takes it outside the walls to seek the Lord. This is where intimacy breeds. And it is much like that time on the platform when I’m ziplining. If I only do it once a year or once in a while, I will never really get used to stepping out into thin air. Those conversations on the platform only stick if they happen often enough to breed confidence. Having a regular discipline of seeking the Lord has become an obsession because I’ve discovered that intimacy is the key to all the rest of it.
Richard Foster says, “The desperate need today is not for a great number of intelligent people or gifted people, but for deep people.” I cannot over-stress the importance of practicing intimacy. Verse ten reminds me that our ability to worship inspires their ability to worship.
READ Ex. 33:11.
Can you remember the other place that phrase, “face to face,” shows up in the Bible? It is when Paul tells the Corinthians, at the end of his poem about love, that now we see through a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face.
It is like walking into a dark room from a lighted hallway. It takes a minute for your eyes to adjust. You have to give your eyes time to begin making out the shadows. Stay there long enough and you’ll see all kinds of things you didn’t see when you first walked in.
This is why the deep is so important … why we’re called to that place of intimacy first if we want to carry any authority at all. It is so our spiritual eyes can adjust … so we see things we could never see otherwise.
THE PROMISE OF INTIMACY: Exodus 33:13-14
I love how Moses fusses with God. When you spend that kind of time in His presence, I guess you gain that right. And in that face-to-face, God gives the promise of intimacy: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
I can’t add anything to that.
So I wonder if you’d just close your eyes for a moment and absorb that promise. This is a touch-don’t-grab promise. It is God on the platform, assuring us that if we step out, He will meet us. He will go with us. He will be our rest. We can ride out this call, because He who calls us out into the deep can be trusted to carry us across the chasm. If you’re willing to take your tent beyond the camp to seek the Lord, this is the promise God gives.
THE POINT OF AUTHORITY: Exodus 33:15-16
Then Moses asks one of the most profound questions in the Old Testament, maybe the whole Bible. He asks (verse 15), “If your presence doesn’t go with me, how will it be known that I have favor with you? If you don’t go with us, Lord, what makes us any different from anyone else?”
Profound question. What exactly makes us … the Church … any different from any other well-run non-profit … or even the not-so-well-run non-profits? If God isn’t in it … if we aren’t intimately aware of His presence among us … what makes us any different? Brothers and sisters in Christ, I have late-breaking news for you. You are not here to learn how to run a non-profit. You have been called to step into a great move of the Holy Spirit, a move that will at times defy logic … maybe even defy gravity.
“Is it not in Your going with us so that we are distinct from all the other people on earth?”
We recently hired a Director of Adult Discipleship in a move was absolutely counter-intuitive by the world’s standards. Heather is her name. She is a poster child for how we’d like see it done. She’s been with us for eight or nine years, but for most of those years, she played hokie-pokie with us. She put her foot in when she was clean but she’d disappear when she was using. Heather was a meth addict. At the end of her of years of using, she was living in a cheap hotel, cooking and selling meth. Way outside the camp.
One night, she cried out to God. “Lord, I can’t do this any more. If you don’t come for me, what will make me any different from any other statistic?” God heard that prayer and two days later, He came for her. He showed up in her hotel room wearing a cop uniform. She was arrested and got eighteen months in what we like to call “in-depth Bible study.” She went through a drug rehab program while she was in. She was given an award for leadership skills.
When she got out, she came home to us and got into our recovery program and a small group. She went through our leadership development program, and began to lead Celebrate Recovery. She distinguished herself as a spiritual leader among us. When it came time for us to hire an adult discipleship leader, there was one really obvious choice. So yeah, our Director of Adult Discipleship is a felon, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
THE PRAYER OF INTIMACY:
READ Ex. 33:18
God tells Moses, “This thing you’ve asked for. I’ll do it. I’ll go with you.” And in response to that promise, Moses prays the prayer of a hungry person. “Please show me your glory.” This is what we all want, isn’t it? We want to see the glory of the Lord … Amen? We want this–this is what we fanaticize about in our pastor fantasies. We want to see the glory of the Lord falling down on throngs of people, and we want to see mighty healing and countless salvations. But we forget that glory doesn’t begin with us. It begins when lonely, tired servants of the Lord pick up their tents and take them outside the camp to seek out the presence of the Lord. While everyone else stands at their doors, lonely, tired servants have it out with the One being in the universe strong enough to take it.
I want you to pick up this prayer and make it your own … “Lord, show me your glory” … but understand that this prayer comes with a cost. It isn’t first of all a prayer for glory at all. It is first of all a prayer for intimacy. It is the prayer of deep people. We won’t usually pray this prayer until we’re fed up with the superficial.
Do you want to be profoundly aware of His presence, in touch with Him at the deepest possible level? Do you want to think His thoughts, receive His wisdom, live as close to His heart as is humanly possible? Do you want to see His glory? Then practice the Presence. And then when the Lord promises to go before you — for the Kingdom’s sake — don’t brake.
Intimacy breeds authority, and authority breeds power, and power breeds fruitfulness, and fruitfulness breeds glory. And fruitfulness is the desperate need of the Church of Jesus Christ.