Erwin Raphael McManus - Seizing Your Divine Moment: Dare to Live a Life of Adventure

Copyright 2002 by Erwin Raphael McManus

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Literary Agents, Orange, California.

The Perils of Ayden. Used by permission of Erwin Raphael McManus. Copyright 2002. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations noted NKJV are from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations noted NASB are from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McManus, Erwin Raphael.
Seizing your divine moment : dare to live a life of adventure / Erwin
Raphael McManus.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-7852-6430-2
1. Christian life. I. Title.
BV4501.3 .M375 2002
248.4dc21

2002010353

Printed in the United States of America

02 03 04 05 06 BVG 5 4 3 2 1

TO KIM

In a moment two become one.
Two lives become one heart.
Two roads become one path.
Two journeys become one adventure.
With you, one moment has become a lifetime.

JOIN Erwin Raphael McManus & SEIZE DIVINE YOUR MOMENT

Its easy to read a book, but its really difficult to continually apply what youve learned in all aspects of your life. We understand this struggle and we want to do everything we can to help you continue your journey toward adventurous, abundant living.

Take the next step by logging on to SeizingYourDivineMoment.com and receive a free copy of Courage to Live the Adventure. Erwin McManus specifically selected this lesson to help you forge ahead toward a life of spiritual adventure.

Courage to Live the Adventure is available to you either online in streaming audio format or if you would prefer to add this lesson to your personal development library, we can ship you a copy on either audiocassette or CD for a minimal shipping charge of $2.00.

Also from ERWIN MCMANUS
Gold Medallion Finalist,
An Unstoppable Force:
Daring to Become the Church God Had in Mind
www.anunstoppableforce.com

CONTENTS

SOME MOMENT ARE SO BIG YOU CANNOT SEIZE them by yourself. This book certainly qualifies. So many people stepped through this moment with me and stayed the course until the mission was complete. This project has merged several teams together. I would like to thank Thomas Nelson Publishers for believing in my message and bringing me on board. Thank you, Mike Hyatt, Brian Hampton, Laurie Dashper, and everyone else at Nelson who has served us so graciously. Thank you also to my friend and agent, Sealy Yates. I dont know where you find the energy, but your passion has certainly fueled the success of this project. Every day in Los Angeles I bask in a pool of creativity known as Mosaic. Without this unique community my dreams would remain thoughts and not realities. I am forever indebted to the elders, leadership team, staff, and congregation of this wonderful community of faith and imagination. Especially I would like to thank from Mosaic Dave Auda, who inspired me to write on this topic; Holly Rapp, who moves me from storyteller to author; and to Noemi Martinez Bary, who lifted words into images. While I dedicate this book to my life partner, Kim, there is no part of my life that is left untouched by my children, Aaron, Mariah, and our daughter in the Lord, Paty. In many ways they live the book with me.

Finally, words cannot do justice to the level of gratitude I feel toward the God who created us. What a gift He has given us. He created us to live, not simply believe. To follow Him is to experience, to explore, to discover. Thank You, Lord Jesus, not only for who You are, but for whom You created us to become. So now let us not waste even one moment. Lets face forward and pursue the prize set before us. New eyes will be needed to see this path, but once begun, we will know the exhilaration of seizing our divine moment.

Unleashing the Spirit of Creativity,
Erwin Raphael McManus

Rumblings are more felt than
heard and certainly never seen.
They come to you through the soles
of your feet into the depth of your soul.
Only then do they open the eyes of your heart.
They speak of a shift that is about to take place.

Kembr, The Perils of Ayden

So on the day of the battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in his hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them. Now a detachment of Philistines had gone out to the pass at Micmash.

1 SAMUEL 13:2223

One day Jonathan son of Saul said to the young man bearing his armor, Come, lets go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side. But he did not tell his father.

Saul was staying on the outskirts of Gibeah under a pomegranate tree in Migron. With him were about six hundred men, among whom was Ahijah, who was wearing an ephod. He was a son of Ichabods brother Ahitub son of Phinehas, the son of Eli, the LORDs priest in Shiloh. No one was aware that Jonathan had left.

On each side of the pass that Jonathan intended to cross to reach the Philistine outpost was a cliff; one was called Bozez, and the other Seneh. One cliff stood to the north toward Micmash, the other to the south toward Geba.

Jonathan said to his young armor-bearer, Come, lets go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.

Do all that you have in mind, his armor-bearer said. Go ahead; I am with you heart and soul.

Jonathan said, Come, then; we will cross over toward the men and let them see us. If they say to us, Wait there until we come to you, we will stay where we are and not go up to them. But if they say, Come up to us, we will climb up, because that will be our sign that the LORD has given them into our hands.

So both of them showed themselves to the Philistine outpost. Look! said the Philistines. The Hebrews are crawling out of the holes they were hiding in. The men of the outpost shouted to Jonathan and his armor-bearer, Come up to us and well teach you a lesson.

So Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, Climb up after me; the LORD has given them into the hand of Israel.

Jonathan climbed up, using his hands and feet, with his armor-bearer right behind him. The Philistines fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer followed and killed behind him. In that first attack Jonathan and his armor-bearer killed some twenty men in an area of about half an acre.

Then panic struck the whole armythose in the camp and field, and those in the outposts and raiding partiesand the ground shook. It was a panic sent by God.

Sauls lookouts at Gibeah of Benjamin saw the army melting away in all directions. Then Saul said to the men who were with him, Muster the forces and see who has left us. When they did, it was Jonathan and his armor-bearer who were not there. Saul said to Ahijah, Bring the ark of God. (At that time it was with the Israelites.) While Saul was talking to the priest, the tumult in the Philistine camp increased more and more. So Saul said to the priest, Withdraw your hand.