“Let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.”
Hebrews 10:22
I have never really understood “caving”. Some consider it a sport, but I guess I really don’t see the athleticism of it. People actually seem to derive some satisfaction and thrill from exploring muddy caves in the dark. I guess I can try to grab the basic idea of it, but to me it’s a whole lot like “parachuting”. Why jump out of a perfectly decent airplane, when you can sit in a Starbucks with a vanilla latte? It doesn’t compute.
But there is a sense about caving that resonates with the hunger in a man’s or woman’s heart. Hebrews tell us that we are to enter the presence of God. The keys will be sincerity and trust. In other words, a honesty, and a trust that will open up the passage. Spiritual spelunkers in a quest for His glor
y.
Sometimes something will block a person. Depression is a barrier for us. Essentially it effects our passion and strength. Our pursuit of God is nullified by the corrosive facets of depression and melancholy. There is no longer any zip or zeal for His presence. The fire of zeal we once had just fizzles out. But to reach our goal, we need to squeeze beyond the blockage. There is a spiritual resistance. Our infernal enemy is working against any progress.
So much involves patience and humility. A person must continue to probe ahead but slowly and patiently, taking their time and monitoring their progress. Humility is necessary. An awareness of self and our dimensions in tight spots. “Am I small enough to squeeze through that hole?”
Our scripture tells us that we have a key to the throne room of God. Our guiltiness and our defiled conscience have both been cleansed or sanitized from anything that would corrupt us. We haven’t done a thing. And we are exhorted to be very bold. Jesus has made us pure. We are clean.
Broken Believers 
What a great image! I have experienced times when it felt like God was having to drag me through something similar and parts of me were being scraped off! Painful like surgery – good in the end.
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Caving interests me a lot, although I’ve done very little myself. There’s a book I read every so often called “The Longest Cave”, which describes how Mammoth Cave was discovered to be the longest cave in the world. The book makes me feel like I’m in the cave exploring.
Caving is about exploring the unknown. The book says caving is unlike other exploring ‘sports’. If you want to climb a mountain, your goal is always in sight. (If you want to parachute, the same applies.) But with a cave, you can’t see your goal and you don’t know how far your exploration will lead you. This describes our pursuit of God much better than mountain climbing. We can study Him and know Him, but no matter how much we know, there is always more to learn and know.
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Bryan,
You write with truth and beauty while comparing caving to our spiritual walk. Although sitting at Starbucks drinking a latte is much more my style these days, there was a time in my younger years when I did jump out of an airplane with a parachute on my back. Taking a tentative step out of an airplane’s door and into open sky can be compared to taking a step of faith. Sometimes there’s no turning back and the outcome is “up in the air”.
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