Bill was on the move in his profession. He’d done his time as a researcher and was now ready for the big time in front of the camera. His days of being a nameless faceless weather researcher had ended. The cheap motels, fast food, erratic sleep patterns and the unending task of searching for grants to fund the research was in the rearview mirror.
He was ready for easy street in an air-conditioned office, having great technology at his fingertips, and a guaranteed salary. He even had the opportunity to gain a nice little bonus with local commercial advertising as long as he could keep his nose and reputation clean. The only time he would need to venture into the rain was doing those occasional backyard segments for the TV audience. On top of all that professional success, he had a fiancé who was a therapist, so their household income would have them sitting pretty in a nice neighborhood somewhere in the suburbs.
Sounds great…as long as you’re okay with your heart dying.
See “Bill the Weatherman” was not who he was. Who he was…the person that made him feel alive, was Bill “the Extreme” Harding, the former weather researcher and storm chaser. It was in this role that his heart came alive. Does this sound familiar to some of you? It should if you’ve seen the movie “Twister”.
How Did This Come Up?
Today I went into my Kindle archives looking for a book on “Original Design”? Maureen and I are both feeling a pull in our heart to get back involved in ministry in our church. I found the book I was searching for and began reading this afternoon. This evening I came downstairs with the idea of eating dinner and reading some more because Maureen is off seeing the grandkids and I stayed behind.
As I was eating, I turned the TV on just to watch something for a bit. The movie Twister was on. Twister was a favorite movie of mine because in my earlier years, I was one of those nuts out running around on the eastern Colorado highways looking for tornadoes. It’s amazing the little sub-culture of people who were involved in this activity…and this was before the movie came along popularizing the idea. I’ll skip the talk of my infatuation with storms but it goes way back to the early 70’s growing up in north central Indiana.
The passion behind this story is all about “original design”…and since I’m writing this to share, I’m talking about your original design as well as mine.
Lucifer’s Glory:
Think about this for a minute. As I was reading about Lucifer’s fall in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, I read through these descriptions of his original design. Think about that for a moment…Satan had an original design too! As Lucifer, this is what the Word of God said about him:
Ezekiel 28:
- Your clothing was adorned with every precious stone and set in the finest gold.
- He was ordained and anointed as the mighty angelic guardian.
- He had access to the holy mountain of God.
- He walked among the stones of fire.
- He was blameless in all he did from the day he was created until the day evil was found in him.
Isaiah 14:
- Shining star – son of the morning
All that sounds impressive. Really! He sounds like he was a magnificent being…and yet, as impressive as the descriptors are of Lucifer, it does not say he was created in God’s image…that was reserved for you and I. Please, let us ask the Spirit for help in allowing this truth to sink in before we move on! When Creation looks at the redeemed, they see the image of God. I wonder if our beauty is breath-taking. I’m not trying to get carried away here, because if anything, our personally held beliefs about ourselves probably agree more closely with Satan’s lies about us…not God’s report of us. But we are being made to be the Bride of Christ. Do we think for a moment that Jesus, the Son of God, would accept anything less than the most beautiful of brides? On that day, when we are presented to Christ as His bride, I do wonder if we will take His breath away…but only because of what he did for us at the Cross.
Let me remain focused here: I am talking about our original design. Remember Bill the Weatherman at the beginning of this story? He had chosen a safe life, he had chosen to follow the path our mainstream culture defined as the path to success…but by traveling this route, he lost passion and he lost himself.
What does God say about our lives?
Psalm 139:13-16 describes how God knit us together in our mother’s womb; he made us wonderfully complex; God’s workmanship is marvelous…Hold up! Did you hear what was said about you? God’s workmanship was marvelous when he made you. He watched you as you were being formed in utter seclusion. God was watching you for that 9 month (give or take) in your mother’s womb, he was watching you be woven together. God saw you before you were born…He had a picture of what He wanted when He thought about you. You were a big deal in God’s eyes because you weren’t just randomly found to walk this planet during this time in history…You were created specifically FOR this time in history. Every day of your life was recorded in His book, every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. I wonder if God factored in all those Big Mac’s I would eat in my lifetime….but I digress here.
A Fallen Design:
As we know, we have an enemy, a thief who seeks to kill, steal, and destroy…and he has a plan as well. He desires to pull you off course away from the design God intended. He desires to steal your passion and your dreams, he desires to kill your spirit, and he desires to destroy your life. He places the bait of temptation out there and tricks us into biting…and only then do we realize there was a hook concealed within the bait.
For Bill “the Extreme”, that bait was a false definition of success and happiness. The security of a salary and an air-conditioned office appeared to be the good life…but he didn’t realize he would have to sacrifice his heart at the altar of success. He didn’t realize he would have to sacrifice his original design for that promotion.
Obviously I am reading way more into that movie than the script actually portrayed, but I’ll be honest with you here. I sat downstairs with my steak and baked beans, and I was consumed with lust for my beefy meal. I was hardly in a place of spiritual depth. Then, when the tears began developing in my eyes as I watched the movie, I initially wondered why I was acting so stupid. This is a movie about storm chasers! What is there to cry about? Then I realized I was really focused on the struggle between Bill “The Extreme” and Bill “The Weatherman”, and perhaps, I found myself identifying with that battle at some level in my own life. Perhaps, I kind of got caught up in the direction the masses were taking and unknowingly, made choices that must be addressed now if I am going to take back the design God gave to me.
I could go on but it would become long. So I will hope you take this conversation to the Lord and talk about what His thoughts were when He formed you in your mother’s womb. Why did he plan for you to walk this earth at this time? What were His thoughts about your life when He watched as you develop during those 9 months? When He sees you through the Blood of Jesus…who exactly does He see?