![]() ![]() The wilderness trial of Christ was, at its core, a test of his identity. No longer was he a shrewd business negotiator, but now he was one who wrestles with God. He was called out, called up into something much big-ger than he ever imagined, much more serious than CEO or “prince of Egypt.” Under foreign stars, in the dead of night, Jacob received a new name, his real name. Out there on the burning desert sands, lost in a trackless waste, Moses received his life’s mission and pur-pose. His deepest questions are not to be found on television or in the refrigerator. Who am I? What am I made of? What am I destined for? It is fear that keeps a man at home where things are neat and orderly and under his control. Deep in a man’s heart are some fun-damental questions that simply cannot be answered at the kitchen table. Whatever else those explorers were after, they were also searching for themselves. John Wesley Powell fol-lowed the Colorado into the Grand Canyon, even though-no, because-no one had done it before and everyone was saying it couldn’t be done. Magellan sailed due west, around the tip of South America-despite warnings that he and his crew would drop off the end of the earth-and Huck Finn headed off down the Mississippi, ignoring similar threats. Scott and Amundsen raced for the South Pole, Peary and Cook vied for the North, and when last summer I gave my boys some loose change and permission to ride their bikes down to the store to buy a soda, you’d have thought I’d given them a charter to go find the equator. Hannibal crossed his famous Alps, and there comes a day in a boy’s life when he first crosses the street and enters the company of the great explorers. We gave up at about eight feet, but it made a great fort. In 1260 Marco Polo headed off to find China, and in 1967, when I was seven, I tried to dig a hole straight through from our backyard with my friend Danny Wilson. It comes natu-rally, like our innate love of maps. My gender seems to need little encouragement. IntRoDUctIonI came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of. Printed in the United States of America09 10 11 12 13 RRD 5 4 3 2 1 ![]() titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. ![]() Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. Scripture quotations marked msg are from The Message by Eugene H. Scripture quotations marked nasb are from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Published in association with Yates & Yates, LLP, Attorneys and Counselors, Orange, California. The publisher is grateful to Craig McConnell for his writing skills and collaboration in developing the content for this book. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other-except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ![]()
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