The Lion's Roar

I had a moment recently and I deem it worth sharing. Was it divine interaction? A feverish dream? An emotional spell in a fit of exhaustion? I’ll let you decide, but the fact that there seemed to be a clear conclusion that I managed to extrapolate from it all has me curious. Let me get right to it. 

Recently, I found myself spending some time with some lost sheep. A good mix of folks with pretty negative views of God. I won’t go into the specifics, but there was very little God on the scene. As time passed, I began to despair. I cared enough about this group that I wanted to see their hearts change, as mine once did. I wanted to see them care about God, not play the games of the day, trying to worship every god under the sun all at once. Despair crept in, and I felt the darkness closing in. 

As despair began to seep in like a poisonous myst, I began to feel the last of my strength leaving me. “I HATE how things are going, but I am utterly powerless to stop its course!” I said to myself. All of a sudden, I remembered something I had contemplated last year. I went through a phase where I was thinking a lot about hope. I learned that we have an obligation to hope, despite the risk of being let down. We must have hope, and hope must become one of the weapons in our arsenal. “Hope with brute force!” I heard distinctly. I imagined a giant hammer, and suddenly it was as though a door was being shattered to splinters! That hammer of hope broke through to me, and I knew I must wield it. I must wield the force of hope. As I wielded the hammer, another image swiftly followed. I felt the roar of a lion. Yes, I felt it. I didn’t just envision it, seeing it or nearly hearing it. I felt it. Oh, the sheer force of this lion was unmatched! No feat of Hollywood, no real-life encounter could ever match the sheer force, and the reality of the lion’s roar. It was a brute force that overcame the darkness. It felt realer than any real I had ever encountered.It was as like the roar was a brick, and the rest of the world was cardboard. I can still feel it when I retell this story.

But what came next made me tremble. For as the lion finished His mighty roar, He gazed at my sheep with a ferocity unbound. Unchained was His intent, and had I not known the Lion’s true nature, I would have been terrified. Here’s how to best describe it: we reserve our poetic metaphors of war and fighting for the demonic. We say things like “raise hell,” and “fight like demons,” because there is no force a human can imagine that shows more ferocity, drives one towards forceful action like our anger. 

Dear reader, what scares me about the Lion’s stare was that it 100% matched the ferocity, the force of will, the “I must take action” power of a human’s wrath. But here’s the kicker: I felt the stare was completely devoid of ill intent. That’s right: there was no plan to harm, to destroy, or to crush their spirits in any shape or form. With a deafening silence, the Lion roared “I’ll be taking them. THEY’RE MINE.” 

I trembled in awe, standing behind the Lion in resistance to the oncoming darkness, like a child taking refuge behind his father. It felt like the ending of a movie, where despite the crushing odds overcoming, a crack of light breaks through and by some divine miracle (or, as we like to call it: plot armor,) the hero manages to turn things around and get their happily ever after. That miracle moment, that ray of hope, that impossible light. It’s out there, and it’s not actually an “it” at all. It’s a HE, and His name is King Jesus. 

My story sounds delusional, but I’ll let you be the judge. You have my guarantee that I have rarely felt anything as real, as powerful, and as emotional as that moment. I rarely shed my tears, but for the remainder of that day and the next three that followed, I had to actively avoid thoughts of the Lion, because I didn’t need the tears to be flowing. Normally it would take a good song, or clips from a favorite movie to bring me to tears, but this was just my mind. Just thinking about that encounter, about the Lion’s mighty roar brought me to tears. It has been almost a month now, and I still tremble at the Lion’s roar. I still feel that power, and that stare when I find myself in a dark place. I believe something real happened that day, and I believe something real will happen this year. 

I started with the idea that I managed to draw a conclusion from the encounter. I want to reiterate it:

Sometimes you have to force yourself to hope. Hope is not something you stumble upon, nor something that drops into your lap. Sometimes you have to decide that hope will be your driving force. It is not irrational, it is logical. It is calculated. It makes plans. As I processed my encounter with the Lion, the beginnings of a course of action began to form in my mind, and I began to see biblical patterns that backed my plan up. I had moments where an idea sprung itself on me, and I said “you know, that is such a ‘Jesus’ move. He would definitely do something like that.” It became the spark that started off my new year’s direction. Hope is alive! Sometimes, you just have to bring it onto the scene. You can choose to fall down defeated, or you can choose to get up and go to war. You can huddle up in the corner of the darkness, or you can reach for the light switch. It’s go to war, or be defeated. There is no room for neutrality here. 

If I never hear from you again, dear friend, I’d like for you to hear from me right now. Hope is here. Hope is a raging storm ready to take on the dark forces. It craves the destruction of its oppressors. Of your oppressors. It’s hungry to devour despair, and to rage against anger, to ravage hatred with vibrant ferocity. It is the Lion. The Lion is real, and

HE

IS

HUNGRY!

But don’t be afraid, for the Lion welcomes all who will side with Him. And those who side with the Lion know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is none as good as HE. But none who knows the Lion can say with any shred of truth that He is tame. He is ferocious, He is fierce and He is enraged. Can you hear it? That shaking beneath your feet? The tremors in the earth? They are a warning: the Lion awakes from His long-lasting slumber. He is ready to ravage the darkness along with His armies. He’s looking for recruits, and he’s giving you the choice. Whose sword will you wield?