Wild at Heart Boot Camp

One week from today I'll be heading to Crooked Creek Ranch in Fraser, Colorado to attend Wild At Heart Boot Camp. The retreat is put on by the Ransomed Heart ministry team and is based on John Eldredge's books Wild At Heart and The Way of the Wild Heart. It's tough to boil the content of two books down into a few sentences but let me give it a shot to try and give you a better idea of what I'll be experiencing next week.

In Wild At Heart, Eldredge lays out three core desires found in the heart of every man: A Battle to Fight, A Beauty to Rescue, and An Adventure to Live. He goes into the different ways these manifest themselves in a man's life and also how the enemy has assaulted those desires using both personal experiences and our culture.

The Way of the Wild Heart takes these themes at looks at how they apply at the various stages of a mans life. The book also goes deep into the process of masculine initiation and specifically how God wants to initiate every man. It's a powerful book and one that's fascinating to revisit regularly as I see new ways God is initiating me and leading me deeper into my masculine journey.

Wild At Heart is a book that has meant a ton to me over the last several years. The great irony is that when I first saw it, I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to read it. A friend of mine had been preparing to go on a short term missions trip to Poland and, based on someone's recommendation, he'd bought several copies as gifts to give away on the trip. He hadn't had time to read it and so, knowing that I love to read, he asked me to take a look and let him know what I thought. I really wasn't interested. At the time my reading of Christian books started and stopped with C.S. Lewis. But, as a favor to my friend, I gave it a shot.

Looking back on that I'm so thankful for how God cut through my cynicism and spoke to me through the book. It took a second reading before the message really began to take root but it was that initial reading when God really began to get ahold of my heart and lead me from being just a Christian to beginning to walk intimately with Him and live deeply from the heart. It's been a long process, in many ways the messages in Eldredge's books have really only begun to come to fruition in my life over the last year. But no matter how long it's taken for what God was trying to say to sink in, my journey to finding full life in Christ all began with Wild At Heart.

It's been about four or five years since then and now I couldn't be more excited to see what He's going to do next. I really believe that this retreat is going to be a major step for me on this journey.

I've been praying about the retreat for a while now and I'd like to ask anyone who is willing to join me in the last week leading up to it as well as in the four days I'll be gone. Here are a few of my prayer requests for the camp:

• Pray against fear: I'm a big time introvert and the idea of going to a camp with 400 guys who I don't know is a little intimidating. I don't want to get in the way of what God wants to do.
• Pray that I'd be sensitive to God's voice: Pray here that I would be willing to really enter into the weekend and leave my busy, noisy life behind. It's tough to hear God when the cares of every day life and playing through my head. Pray that I can surrender those to God for the weekend (and maybe even beyond that!)
• Pray for safety: By this I mean both for me and my travels but also for Annie back home. She's seven and a half months pregnant and well it's been a very smooth pregnancy I'm still a little worried about being in the middle of nowhere in Colorado.
  
• Pray for God's agenda: I've got a lot of stuff I'd love to see happen in my life during this trip. And while that's all God, I really want to be willing to set aside my agendas and listen to what God has for me.
  
• Pray against spiritual attack: The devil hates nothing more than watching the hearts of God's children come fully alive. What happens at this retreat will be opposed! Pray for victory
• Pray for the other men and the retreat as a whole: There will be about 400 other guys there. Include them in my requests.
  
• Pray for John Eldredge and the Ransomed Heart team: I know from reading his prayer letters and his blog that these events, well very worthwhile and full of blessings, are also draining for Eldredge and his team. They fight some pretty tough spiritual battles to bring this message. Please keep them in your prayers both leading up to the camp and throughout the weekend.