Day 61- Burn the Boats 🛶🔥
📖Daily Reading
1 Kings 19-22
🎥 Video
Join me on my morning walk as we rise and shine together by walking through the Bible daily and learn a practical applicable coaching nugget from the ultimate life coach - our creator (whatever that means to you). No judgement zone here, all are welcome, we are all on a spiritual journey because we are after all spiritual beings having a human experience.
📝 Reflection
1 Kings 19: 20-21
Elisha left the oxen standing there, ran after Elijah, and said to him, “First let me go and kiss my father and mother good-bye, and then I will go with you!”
Elijah replied, “Go on back, but think about what I have done to you.”
So Elisha returned to his oxen and slaughtered them. He used the wood from the plow to build a fire to roast their flesh. He pass around the meat to the townspeople, and they all ate. Then he went with Elijah as his assistant.
This nugget of a story at the end of chapter 19 is a powerful one! One way of life ends and a new one begins. Elisha must demonstrate that he understands what is being asked of him and that he is not only willing but he is ALL IN, he is ‘burning the boats’! He slaughters and burns his team of ox. He doesn’t give them to someone else to take care of for him just in case this new life isn’t for him. That is what most of us do right, we give ourselves a ‘back door’, and sometimes that is appropriate and what needs to happen. But there are times when you know that you know that you need to burn the boats. As a man in charge of his own life, Elisha could always return to his life as a farmer, but he was drawing a line in the sand and making it very hard for himself to change his mind.
This is what you and I need to do sometimes with changes we want to make. We need to go all in, no turning back! And when we get tempted, which we surely will, we always still can change our minds but we are going to have to be really sure and it is going to take just as much of an attitude shift and work to go back that way! This is the conversation that is really happening between the two men here. Elijah also needed this understanding to be demonstrated from Elisha. Where they were going and what they would be asked to do and who they were asked to be was not going to be easy, but it was going to be worth it! They need to have each other’s back and their own backs! When the going gets tough, the tough get and keep going! Scene from the Lord of the Rings come to mind as Frodo steps up and accepts that he must be the ring bearer and time and time again he has to stay the course and Samwise also has to help him stay the course. They had burned the boats!
This message speaks for itself and I think conceptually is understood by many. But the other very important idea that I would also reiterate is to really drill down into what are you really going all in with and to. Going all in with the ‘wrong’ outcome in mind and for the ‘wrong’ reasons is not noble. Sometimes we can get misled by ‘burning the boats’ as in and of itself a noble and good thing. I would argue strongly against it! We have seen this demonstrated time and time again all the way up to now in the Bible. There were a lot of people going all in with their little (g)ods and with their way of life. So make sure the island you are ‘taking’ is one worth staying on and burning the boats for! You don’t want to be stranded on the ‘wrong’ island but deceiving yourself and staying committed to only to find out later that you are stuck and in a bad place.
Let’s take a common example that a lot of us deal with. Weightloss and or fitness. Let’s say we go all in to attain a number on the scale and/or a body composition goal. You might very well achieve it, but is it really making you happy? I know a lot of miserable thin and fit people. We can also take the goal of buying a home in a certain neighborhood, I deal with this a lot as well as a realtor. I know a lot of unhappy people living in big beautiful homes and driving new cars and all the things. Heck - I was one of them. I have seemingly had all looking from the outside, I had all of the things, and yet I was chasing my tail in the cycle of ‘not enoughism’, and then taking the edge off with wine 🍷. I was even once a size 2 too, and even then I was never thin or fit enough. I can remember being so self conscious on my wedding day and my whole honeymoon, rather than being fully present and enjoying being married to my best friend. I was so caught up in comparing myself. Ughhh 😞, and I was a size 2 on at that time!!! WTF, right??!!
So I finally sat down with myself and honestly looked at my motivations and what I really wanted. I burned all the expectations of chasing a number, size, $ amount, the house, the car, selling # of houses per year to bring me fulfillment. Instead I went all in with living with integrity and aligning with the values I claimed to live by previously. I also gave my self permission for it to take time and to trust the process and really enjoy the journey and the adventure of embracing this new way of life, even if… The journey is not always fun, and just like Elijah at the beginning of chapter 19 as we find him saying in verse 4 “I have had enough, Lord,”. Then he went to sleep and the Lord sent an angel with some food and water. Even though you burn the boats - don’t mistake this for having it all figured out in an instant. It just means you are fully committed and will keep going and trusting that your strength will be renewed during the times when it feels like you can’t keep going.
✍🏼Daily Journal Prompt
What do you want so bad for your life that you MUST do it and are ready to burn the boats for?
📖Tomorrows Reading
2 Kings 1-4
Coaching Opportunity
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