Ep 25: Green Boots and Lost Hikers

Speaker1: Hey, good morning and welcome to for your Sunday morning Drive. The short podcast to help put you in a Colossians three two mindset and prepare your mind for worship on those hectic Sunday mornings. We are brought to you in partnership with the Ministry League Network of podcasts. Please see the link to their YouTube channel in the show notes of today's episode, and subscribe for over 50 podcasts to help your spiritual growth. And if you enjoy today's episode, please share it with others and give us a rating and review. And if you have time, stop by our Facebook page and say hi! Well, it's finally October. The spookiest month of the year. And my personal favorite. Here's to cooler weather, Halloween decorations, and all the goodness of fall activities. I think that takes care of our announcements for today. Let's settle in with our pumpkin spice lattes and get ready for episode 25 Green Boots and Lost Hikers. Let's go to church!

Speaker2: Are we there yet?

Speaker1: Have you ever climbed a mountain one of any significance? I mean, I'll admit, the only mountains I've ever really spent any time in are the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. And those don't even register as significant peaks. And the hikes I've been on certainly don't qualify as climbing. Well. Years ago I read a book by Jon Krakauer and it was entitled Into Thin Air, and it contains his personal and harrowing account of the 1996 disaster on the tallest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. It was a riveting tale in which eight climbers unfortunately perished on the mountain, and I was so enthralled by this book and the story within that it caused me to do some additional research on Mount Everest and those that have fallen victim to the dangers of the climb to its summit. And in doing so, I learned a somber fact. There are many bodies of climbers that have died while traversing Mount Everest that are simply left there because it's just too dangerous to go up and retrieve them. And the amount of bodies might surprise you. It's around 200, and there's even one such corpse that has become a landmark for those climbing on the northeast ridge of the mountain. And while his exact identity is not known, he's known simply by the distinguishing boots that he wears. They're bright green, so climbers call him green boots, and green boots has served as a sort of waypoint for climbers on the way up and down Everest ever since the mid 1990s.

Speaker1: And while the story of Green Boots is certainly a sad one and not an end, I'd want to meet, you know, freezing to death on a cold and lonely mountain. But it's interesting that in death, his final act still serves a purpose to others. He points the way to the top of the mountain, and people rely on him to do so. And I want to ask an honest question are we, as Christians, are we helping people climb the mountain to find the top? Because I want to be like green boots. No, I, I don't want to be a macabre oddity on an epic climb, but I do want to be a useful landmark, pointing the Los towards Mount Calvary. Those climbing Everest, you know, they see green boots and they know that they are on the right path. And maybe they say, well, look, it's green boots. I know I'm on the right path in the same way. I want them to be able to say, maybe, hey, look, that's that's Daniel. There's there's that fat guy in the Hawaiian shirt. I know I'm on the right path, and they come away from that interaction with their feet set firmly on the straight and narrow. They come away from that interaction a step closer to God.

Speaker1: You know, I, I hope I can point more people to that spiritual summit by being an active waypoint rather than a passive corpse on the slopes of Mount Everest. Because sometimes I think that as Christians, whenever we talk about evangelism, when we talk about being a light in the world, that we kind of just hope people stumble across us like hikers stumble across green boots. But we should be more active than that, shouldn't we? Jesus, after all, said in Luke 1910 that he came to seek and to save the lost. That's that's a pretty active role. May we have the same goal in mind? And may we be on the lookout for those lost climbers in need of direction, those truth seekers that are trying to find not the top of Mount Everest, but are trying to find that cross on Mount Calvary. Friends, let's do everything we can to point them the right way. Well, those are my thoughts for your Sunday morning drive. Now it's time to hear yours. Our discussion questions for today are are we distinctive enough from the world to be noticed by the lost? Are we playing an active role in seeking the lost, or do we expect them to just stumble upon us? And what can we do to be better seekers and pointers of the lost to the way?