Did You Burn the Ships?  Reflections Coming Out of the Spring Holy Days

There’s a famous story about the conquistador Hernán Cortés who, upon landing in Mexico, ordered all his ships to be burned, to ensure his troops would have no other option but to conquer or perish.

It’s given rise to the phrase “burn the ships” (or “burn the boats”), signaling an irreversible commitment to a course of action—by eliminating the possibility of retreat.

You’ll often hear it in the business world to describe making a decisive choice, leaving no safety net or Plan B, but it is just as relevant in many aspects of life.

This idea has been on my mind as we’ve come out of the Passover season and headed toward Pentecost.  We’ve been purged of leaven (sin), we took in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth (picturing Jesus Christ) for seven days, we’re a new lump.

But did you burn the ships?

We often read the story of Israel’s deliverance from Pharaoh’s bondage and the exodus out of Egypt during the spring holy days.  God worked amazing miracles and we’re told that the Israelites, loaded down with the gold and silver of Egypt, “went out with boldness” (Ex. 14:8).

Yet as soon as they saw Pharaoh pursuing them—faced their first trial—they panicked and regretted that they’d started along this path (Ex. 14:10).  This pattern repeated over and over throughout their desert journey.  No water?  Let’s go back to Egypt.  No meat?  We had plenty to eat in Egypt.  God provides the same food every day?  Boy, wasn’t the food in Egypt great?!

They were always looking back, trying to turn back.  Spiritually, they’d moored their boats along the coast just in case they needed to make a quick escape back to their old life if this “God’s chosen people” thing didn’t pan out.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to look at the Israelites and be like…”Seriously?!  You had piles of miracles, a pillar of fire leading you, God parted the sea to deliver you.  How are you not getting the message??”  But the fact is, we’re often not much better.

What does it mean to burn the ships, spiritually speaking?

To spiritually burn the ships symbolizes our forceful and decisive commitment to our chosen path, leaving no room for doubt or hesitation.  It means giving ourselves COMPLETELY to God—without reservations, without holding anything back.

Like Cortés’s men, if the ships remain available for a hasty retreat, they are the easy choice for us once the going gets tough—or sometimes simply when we’re not paying enough attention to what’s tugging us backward.

It’s like when you decide to make a huge change in your diet.  One of the first things you do is clean out your pantry and fridge, throwing away anything that doesn’t fit with your new lifestyle, particularly anything that would be tempting in a moment of weakness.  We all know that when your guard is down at 11:00 at night and you’re feeling snack-ish, having crunchy Cheetos in the house is a terrible idea.  You’ll break.

It’s the same for us in our walk with God.  Paul writes:

“I once thought these things [in my prior life] were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For His sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with Him” (Philippians 3:8, NLT)

God fully expects us to look at our past lives and to completely discard them so we can walk forward without anything pulling us back.  And He knows even better than we do what those things will be.  For example, when the Israelites were preparing to enter the Promised Land, God commanded them:

“When you drive out the nations that live there, you must destroy all the places where they worship their gods—high on the mountains, up on the hills, and under every green tree. Break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. Completely erase the names of their gods!” (Deut. 12:2-3, NLT)

He knew that if they left even traces of the pagan culture, they would eventually be drawn back to it (which we’d already seen with the golden calf incident).  And boy, was He correct.  Israel never accomplished His command, and eventually endured centuries of sorrow as a result.

The bible is full of amazing stories that we can look to when it comes to examples of burning the ships (metaphorically-speaking).  Noah entering the ark.  Ruth leaving her country behind to build a new life.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to bow down to the king’s idol and being thrown in the fire.  Daniel praying “as was his custom,” knowing it would condemn him to the lion’s den.

These are just a few that show us what it means to truly step out in faith without an emergency exit or any possibility of retreat.  To say, “I believe that God will make the way clear and protect me, but even if He doesn’t, I choose to trust Him and obey.”

We see this same attitude in the metaphoric language that the bible uses to describe our calling and conversion—the commitment we make to following God’s way.

• He tells us to circumcise the foreskin of our hearts (Deut. 10:16). That is a permanent cut, with blood and pain.  You can’t undo circumcision.
• The Passover lamb was sacrificed and then anything leftover was burned, nothing could remain. Just as nothing can remain of our old man, it must be completely destroyed.
• We must be “crucified with Christ”, our old selves dead and buried so that we can live a new life without sin having a hold on us (Gal. 2:20, Rom. 6:6). There is no “undo” button for death.

Cut off.  Crucified.  Buried.  Each of these is a bold and irreversible step, and comes with sacrifice and pain in pursuit of the goal.  Conquer or perish.

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How do we do it?

Paul encouraged the Philippians in very clear terms:

“…But one thing I do:  forgetting what is behind me and straining forward toward what lies ahead, I keep pursuing the goal in order to win the prize offered by God’s upward calling in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13, CJB)

He reminds them that our ultimate citizenship is in heaven and that THIS is the goal we’re straining toward, and contrasts this with people in the congregation who are still held captive by their carnal nature, “whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things” (Phil. 3:19-20).

The word that Paul uses for “forgetting” means to lose from your mind, or more broadly to cease to care about something.  We are to focus wholly on what’s ahead of us and completely block out what came before.  A runner in the last leg of the race puts every ounce of his energy, every twitch of muscle and nerve, into winning the race.  He doesn’t look back at the other runners or obstacles he’s overcome…this would only slow him down or make him stumble.

In the model prayer Jesus tells us to start by praising God’s awesomeness, expressing our deep desire for His kingdom to come, and asking that He show us His will and enact it in our lives (Matt. 6:9-10).

Now, God doesn’t need us to tell Him how awesome He is just to boost His ego, and He doesn’t need our help in bringing about the kingdom or His will.  That’s not the purpose of this prayer instruction.

Rather, Jesus is telling us that every single day when we talk to our Father, we should BEGIN by focusing on those three things—so that it reminds us to Whom we should be looking, of our ultimate destination, and that He is able to bring it about.  These three elements are critical for maintaining a clear vision and moving forward in confidence.

Instead of the burning platform analogy that we talked about previously, where disaster is imminent and we must choose whether to jump on faith to escape certain death, this is instead a clear, sober calculation and decision.

We must commit to our end goal, and then be aware of our weaknesses, our tendency to keep a backup plan, and inclination to cling to the comfort of the known. Clearly say that there is no plan B.  Destroy the way of return, and anything that would pull you back.

We just came out of the Passover season, when we were commanded to examine ourselves (I Cor. 11:28-32), but this isn’t only relevant once a year.  It’s relevant every day and in every season of life.  What is holding you back, pulling you back…making you LOOK back?

Just like Israel, who got just a little bit away from Egypt and started seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, so are we with our past lives.  Our adversary threw everything he had at Jesus when testing Him (Matt. 4), and you can be sure that he knows how to throw exactly the right things at us as well…giving us glimpses of our old, carnal life and asking, “Don’t you miss it?!”

Here are some questions that can help us reflect on whether we’ve truly burned our ships…

Are we trying to hold onto just a little bit of something from our previous life? A harmless bit of gossip?  Lust? Dishonesty? Compromising with God’s sabbaths to make more money?  Having a few too many drinks here or there?  We can’t just passively slide through until something smacks us in the face—we must be actively searching our hearts, allowing God to tear down the strongholds inside us.

Where in your life have you set aside the commands of God to pursue self-preservation, comfort, or pleasure?  Am I letting pride, sin, or distractions pull me away from my walk with the Lord?

When Jesus looked into the heart of the rich young ruler who was keeping God’s commands, He saw that the man’s wealth was his security (Matt. 19).  When God looks into our hearts, what is it He sees us clinging to, putting our trust and security in?  Is it money?  Our perceived status or identity, whether in our career, our church, or our community?  What are we unwilling to let go?

What is pulling you away from God?  What is trying to convince you that it’s more worthy of your time than spending time with God‘s word or on your knees in conversation with Him?

Is my spiritual “check engine” light on?  Are we doing as Solomon exhorted, to “let your heart be loyal to the Lord our God, to walk in His statutes and keep His commandments” (I Kings 8:61)?  Or are we more like those whom Isaiah admonished when he prophesied that the Lord “poured out on them a spirit of lethargy” (Is. 29)?  We all go through natural ebbs and flows when it comes to the amount of spiritual energy and zeal we have, but we need to monitor ourselves and not let the low-energy times become the norm.

Do I let God push me out of my comfort zones and give up control to Him?

This is a lifelong pursuit, not merely a single moment of repentance and commitment to God‘s way. Baptism pictures dying to ourselves and becoming a new creation. It’s a one time thing, but conversion is a process. Sanctification is a process. These days between Passover and Pentecost picture that process for each and every one of us. We can’t just return to the familiar when trials arise.

God has called us to be holy, set apart, sanctified and dedicated completely to Him (II Cor. 6:14-17; Deut. 26:18-19).  He means it.  So occasionally—if we’re not willing to—God will burn the ships for us, just like Cortés did with his soldiers. To save us.  He will send us into the wilderness so that we learn to trust Him.  Paul cautions us to be careful and make sure that our hearts are not lacking trust, “turning you away from the living God” (Heb. 3:12, NLT).

After listing dozens of examples of God’s faithful throughout the centuries, Paul summarizes what we should take away:

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [of the faith], let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us [a.k.a. our ships], and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of God” (Heb. 12:1-2, NKJV)

“…Think about Him who endured such hostility from sinners so that you won’t grow tired or become despondent.  You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in the contest against sin” (Heb. 12:3-4, CJB)

For Jesus Christ and for so many of God’s people throughout time, it DID require resisting to the point of bloodshed and losing their lives.  It might for you and me at some point, but even if it doesn’t physically require us to give up our lives, it does *figuratively* require us to do so.

There is nothing to go back to. There is no retreat, only pressing forward.

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Burn it down

When we came to understand the gravity of our former sins, repented, and were baptized, we entered into covenant with God and symbolically died in the watery grave of baptism.  We came out of it as a new being (Rom. 6), free from sin.  So…where do we go from here?

Jesus warned His disciples throughout time that “no one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62, NIV).  Once we commit our lives to follow Jesus Christ, that is IT.

So I ask again…have you burned your ships?  Do you know what your “boats” are, what your personal Egypt is?  What part of your past do you glance back at or lean on for security when things get hard?

Identify it.  Set it on fire.  Let it burn.  We must torch anything that could keep us from wholeheartedly committing ourselves to the pursuit of God’s kingdom, to the war we’re called to wage and the conquering we’re to do.

We are called to walk forward in faith and in singleness of mind because we know what we’re walking TOWARD.  Speaking of those same heroes of the faith, Paul says:

“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).

“And truly IF they had called to mind that country from which they had come out [a.k.a. this world and this life], they would have had opportunity to return.  But now they desire a BETTER, that is, a heavenly country.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (Heb. 11:15-16).

This is not a choice we make only once, but rather every day.  And we can make it because we have this promise from the Almighty:

“Listen to the Lord who created you…and called you by name; you are Mine.

When you go through deep waters, I will be with you.  When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown.  When you walk through the fire of oppression, you will not be burned up…

For I am the Lord your God…because you are precious to Me…Do not be afraid, for I am with you”  (Is. 43:1-5, NLT)

No matter where we are, whatever is happening, what we see behind us or fear ahead of us, He is with us.  We have the unshakable promise of the Creator of the universe.  So we can burn the boats and go forth in confidence, looking ahead to God’s kingdom and never looking back.

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