Yesterday morning, I was grateful to play hooky from church and just enjoy the quiet of a Sunday morning at home.

After my chores, I climbed into a chair at the bar table in the back of my kitchen, opened my journal, and then opened Mark Batterson’s book, “In A Pit With A Lion On A Snowy Day.”

The book, given as a thank you for service by a former kid’s director at the church, had sat on my bookshelf for the last year, occasionally catching my eye. Yesterday, needing something to speak holiness into my soul, I saw the book again, and decided it was a good time to start in on it.

The world quiet, except for a turtledove cooing and fluttering around off the back porch, smiled under sunlight. It was a good moment to read.

And as soon as I got into Batterson’s book, there it was.

The book, built around the briefest vignette given in 2 Samuel 23, is about audacious living, and about finding opportunity in the options life presents to us.

The source verse Mark draws from, a pothole in the miles of scriptures that fill the Bible, is such: “Benaiah chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it.”

From this small pericope, Patterson draws some pretty amazing observations.

Most people run from lions. Benaiah chases his.

Most people fare poorly fighting lions in their lairs. Benaiah likes his chances in the pit.

Most people would consider grappling with the big cat in the snow pretty challenging. Benaiah finds the snow a suitable stage for his struggle.

Benaiah suggests to us that seemingly impossible situations can actually be opportunities in our lives.

Later in Scripture, we learn that this fearless lad who chased lions also had his own “David and Goliath moment” against a well-armed Egyptian giant. No big whoop. Eventually, Benaiah becomes the commander of David’s army in Israel. Benaiah’s resumé is pretty solid to lead an army- but the source of his strength lies in his spirit, which led him to be a cat hunter, not cat prey.

Now, most of this good stuff came out of the first chapter in the book, and Batterson’s observations are pretty compelling. When it comes to you and I and how we do life, we eventually meet lions of our own.

Batterson goes on to suggest that God himself allows these moments to happen to us- we end up face to face with larger, faster, and more powerful opponents that threaten to take us down- and we are left in those moment to make choices of our own.

In the instances where we are completely underarmed or outmanned, God allows it to happen so that by sticking around and staying near Him, when he vanquishes the opposition, it is clear He was involved in the instance, and He can be clearly seen as our trustworthy provider and deliverer- so that we might see Him as that, and that others around us witnessing the situation can see Him as that as well.

I liked the intro to the book, and the premise- that God wants us to chase lions- but its basic message also appealed to the junior counselor in me.

Since I think about the meaning of maturity quite a bit, Benaiah’s little story helped me to see, once again, how significant choosing to fight is in one’s path to maturity. Such situations, when and where we are forced to make these immediate and ominous decisions, are mettle moments.

Mettle moments always put us in a position of fight or flight, and I think that a side observation from Batterson’s book is that learning to fight is necessary in growing up.

Facing our fears is always the crucible of courage and a movement toward maturity. What helps boys to become men is when, thrown into mettle moments, they learn to choose fight instead of flight.

Fears strip us of hope and strength. But fear strips us of hope and strength only to the point that we decide to battle them back. A modern tragedy lies in the fact that many young men fail to find their place in life because they never decided to grapple with their fears. Rather, they developed a pattern of fleeing instead.

Fleeing failures.

Fleeing faults.

Fleeing evaluations.

Fleeing exposure.

Fleeing challenges.

Fleeing threats.

Fleeing obligations.

Fleeing discomfort.

Fleeing pain.

Flight is THE common choice for facing fears, and for coping with the cowering afterwards. Give me food, give me sex, give me drugs, give me stuff, give me silence, give me movies, give me booze, give me sports- just give me something to get away from myself.

But the reality is, everything worth building, chasing, accomplishing, or securing in life requires fight. Everything worthwhile we earn, experience or become requires that we are diligent over distractions, that we are determined against diversions, that we are focused against fantasy, and that we are proactive, not passive. In short, that we learn how to be disciplined people.

Discipline is a quality of the mature because disciplined people choose to go through uncomfortable or unpleasant circumstances in the immediate to reap long-term gains. Disciplined people practice fighting repeatedly and regularly, aware that not confronting the kitties that attack them day by day leave them unprepared for that day- that moment- when the hungry lion attacks.

Disciplined people recognize that fights inevitably occur, and that it is better to see what is attacking you rather than feel its claws in your back as you try to outrun it.

Will, like courage, is a spiritual muscle that develops with experience and the application of faith.

Before the lad can say “I will”, we must first be able to say to ourselves, “I can.” And the veracity of our proclamation, “I can”, strengthens with our ability to say “I did.”

The mettle moments confront us when we are 5 and on the playground, challenged for a swing. When we are 9 and Danny Filco just wants to show everyone he can punch us. When we are 13 and we wonder whether we should talk to her or not. When we are 15, and we have an opportunity to cheat on the algebra exam. When we are 17 and Toby says its okay, we can ditch from work for two hours to go smoke some stuff- no one will know. When are 18 and we find Mr. James’ porn stash in the garage and no one is home. When we are 20, and we can either stay home and play video games, or listen to Dad yell at us to go pound the street and find a job. When we are 23 and we get her pregnant and we aren’t ready to settle down. When we are 27 and its either the Lucky Star bar every weekend night or pounding the books, prepping for the licensing exam. When we are 34 and its chocolate chip cookies every night or spinach and carrots for snacks.
When we are 42 and our marriage has lost its energy and we argue apathetically and we wonder what else is out there. When we are 47 and the first boy is headed off to college and we say it’s time to let him go.

Every choice feeds or starves the will.

Every choice strengthens or saws on our courage.

Every choice makes the man, or the man-child.

Learn to step into the ring early in life, young man. And it’s not too late, older man. Learn to fight.

Your first lesson is to make yourself fight fleeing.

Your next mettle moment, your next chance to chase lions, is right on up ahead, around that next bend.

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Image Credit: “John the Lion” by Mark Dumont via Flickr. Creative Commons license.