“Eve was created within the lush beauty of Eden’s garden. But Adam, was created outside the Garden, in the wilderness. In the record of our beginnings, the second chapter of Genesis makes it clear: Man was born in the outback, from the untamed part of creation. Only afterward is he brought to Eden. And ever since then boys have never been at home indoors, and men have had an insatiable longing to explore.”
—John Elderedge, Wild at Heart
John Elderedge wrote a whole book about men being “wild at heart” and how the Lord has specifically created a man to be the way he is and to search for adventure and take risks. I can name a hundred men in my life who have done just that. Now I have 31 more to add to that list.
“Adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness, is a deeply spiritual longing written into the soul of man. The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated, modular, nonfat, zip lock, franchised, on-line, microwavable.” More from Elderedge in Wild at Heart.
Teen Challenge Cambodia is making this a reality, and I don’t think it’s on purpose. I walk on to the base and at any point in time there are boys swinging down from trees, some are covered in mud, catching and eating frogs, prancing around in very little clothing without a care in the world.
I get flashbacks of nannying in Texas and one of the 3 boys that I lived with for a year and a half would immediately come in from school and disappear. There was never any doubt in my mind where Matthew had gone. He would resurface about 5 minutes later in his entirely too small Spiderman costume. Matthew would turn in to another person. He would jump from stair to stair, couch to couch with recklessness, terrifying his mother and I. When he would disappear again you would always have to be on guard. When God created man he meant for him to have this adventurous spirit, this desire to ask questions and get answers, to not settle for the ordinary but pursue the extraordinary.
Working with the boys at Teen Challenge reminds me that you have to let boys be boys. They wrestle each other on the tile ground. Pummel each other’s faces with the biggest grins. Run from each other like they are running for their lives. Jump from the highest point imaginable in to a haze of water, where the bottom is imminent. Get each other’s attention by slapping each other. This is all their nature, they can not be tamed.
It settles my soul to know where the boys came from and where they are now. Many of the younger boys were forced to steal on the streets because there was simply not enough food to feed their family. Their fathers are not present and their mothers are taking care of large, abandoned families. Most of them had exhausted all options. So the oldest boys in the family, some 14 years old would be forced out on the streets which led them to steal for food and then eventually drugs to numb themselves from the situation. I can’t even fathom their desperation. I can’t fathom it because they are now different people.
They are the explorers and adventurers that the Lord created them to be.
Apart from their past sin and shame.
The Lord has led them to Teen Challenge just as He led Moses to the deserts of the Sinai; Jacob to Mesopotamia; Elijah to the wild; John the Baptist to the wilderness.
Many of these boys just needed an escape away from the sin and corruption of the world in order for them to come alive again. They have found happiness beyond compare in the wilderness of the Lord in the form of a compound a mere hour away from their pasts. They are on a new journey now. A journey where they are clean and sober and chasing after the adventure that the gospel has offered them. They are seeking to find their identities in Christ, their joy from the Lord, and their passion from the cross.
Please pray for these boys. Pray for them as they finish the program and are thrust back in to the temptation of drugs and alcohol. Pray that the Lord will protect their hearts and they will never forget the encounter with the Lord that they had at Teen Challenge. Pray that Teen Challenge is provided the resources to maintain contact with them as they go back to their families. Pray that they will be a light to the struggling country of Cambodia. Please also pray for direction and guidance for the people who might be led and called to work with these boys. They are boys and boys are WILD!
