I was flying from Washington, DC to Miami Florida on May 11 to speak at a meeting. Fortunately, I had managed to be upgraded to business class and was comfortably reading a book as we soared at 35,000 feet at 500 miles per hour. Only three days later I was to fly to San Diego at the other corner of the country. Even though it seems like I live on airplanes, I do appreciate how convenient commercial airlines make it to jet from one part of the country to the next (even if they do have a bad habit of losing my luggage in the process!). Suddenly the captain spoke over the intercom and asked us to look out the left side of the plane. We were passing by Cape Canaveral and the space shuttle had just lifted off! We watched as the spacecraft hurtled upward leaving a large plume of exhaust in its wake. Soon the space shuttle disappeared and all that was left was a trail of exhaust. The shuttle was already in space. It instantly put our travel above the clouds into perspective! Our height and speed that seemed so impressive only minutes before now appeared downright sluggish!

Unfortunately I don’t just become complacent when I am flying on airplanes. At times in my Christian life I can be cruising along enjoying the ride. If I was not periodically reminded that there is far more I could be experiencing, I’d be tempted to think I had reached the heights of my Christian life. That’s one of the reasons I wrote Unlimiting God: Increasing Your Capacity to Experience the Divine. I have found that churches can also place themselves on autopilot and at a comfortable altitude and speed so its members assume they are doing all they can or need to. That is why occasionally churches need revival. Revival is being reminded that there is far more to the Christian life than we are presently experiencing (That is why we included many stories about churches and individuals who went to a much higher level with God in our book, Fresh Encounter: God’s Pattern for Spiritual Awakening).

I love biographies. They often have the same impact on me as the space shuttle did. Whenever I read about a life that shot passed the norm to reach spectacular new heights, I am reminded that there is still far more to experience in life than I have so far. Recently I have been reading the business biographies: The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder and Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire. These two men both vowed they would become rich when they were still young and they both exceeded even their wildest expectations, becoming the two wealthiest people on the planet today. I also recently read Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink). In it he takes an interesting look at why some people become so successful at what they do.

Whether you look at the world of business or sports or politics or the military or the Christian world, there have always been some people who refused to accept the generally accepted limitations of their day and who pressed on to unheard of heights. As a young man, my father cited Proverbs 13:20 to me: “He who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed.” He told me to always surround myself with wise people so some of their passion and drive would rub off on me. One way to do that was to surround myself with biographies so I could place people around my life who excelled in their arenas of life. Over the years I have read about the greatest business tycoons: Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Astor, Ford, Carnegie, Gates and Buffett. I have read about great military leaders like Charlemagne, The Dukes of Marlboro and Wellington, Alexander the Great, Robert E. Lee. I have tried to read a biography on the major kings and queens of England as well as leading prime ministers su ch as Elizabeth I, Victoria, Churchill, Gladstone, Pitt. I’ve collected biographies on the U.S. presidents, particularly the “top five:” Lincoln, Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

The category that most intrigues me is Christian leaders who took their life and service to God to breathtaking levels. I have enjoyed biographies on Billy Graham, D.L. Moody, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Oswald Chambers, Hudson Taylor and Charles Spurgeon to name a few. These were people who understood how precious and brief their life was and who did not want to squander one day of it. They invested themselves in eternity and people are still feeling the impact centuries later.

I and my family are preparing to travel to Israel next week. Along with pulling out my passport and camera for the trip, one of the most important decisions I make is which biographies I’ll bring with me. Why waste a trans-Atlantic flight watching six movies when I could get next to a great leader in history? Let me encourage you as you enter the summer months. This is a great time to do some reading. Find someone who chose to go to unusual heights in their service of God and be inspired to do the same as you enter the Fall. Have you been comfortably cruising at 35,000 feet for a while now? See if God does not want to blast you into a level of Christian walk you never dreamed was possible.

Posted by Richard Blackaby at 2:27 pm